CRANSTON – The city has agreed to pay a resident and his lawyers $250,000 to settle a lawsuit that last year reached the U.S. Supreme Court over the search of his home and seizure of two guns in 2015.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island announced the settlement Monday, which it said ends the need for a civil trial to determine damages.
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“This was not a case about guns,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of RI. “This was a case going to the very core of the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy in the home from police intrusion.”
In 2015, Edward Caniglia had guns seized from his home after a wellness check from Cranston police. Responding officers called a rescue vehicle, believing that Caniglia posed a risk to himself and others. Caniglia agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation on the condition that the officers not confiscate his guns, which he legally owned.
But once he left, the officers located and seized the weapons.
Later, when Caniglia tried to retrieve the two guns, he was told by the police that it was department policy not to return weapons confiscated for safekeeping without a court order, the ACLU said.
Caniglia later sued, arguing that the search for and seizure of his weapons violated his Fourth Amendment right, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
A federal district court had previously found that the department’s policy of refusing to return the firearms was unconstitutional but upheld the warrantless search and seizure of the weapons on the grounds that police were engaged in a “community caretaking” function that did not require a warrant. A federal court of appeals upheld that decision.
On May 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Caniglia, concluding that engaging in a noncriminal “community caretaking” function should not apply to warrantless searches of a person’s home.
Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion for the unanimous court.
The ACLU of Rhode Island filed a “friend of the court brief” arguing that approval of such activities could lead to giving ”police free rein to enter the home without probable cause or a warrant, whenever they think it is ‘reasonable’ to do so.”
“”The city’s position, if it prevailed, could have given police free rein to enter homes without probable cause or a warrant, whenever they deemed it ‘reasonable’ to do so,” Brown said in a statement. “We are pleased that Mr. Caniglia has received the financial compensation he deserved for the violation of his rights, and that his decision to contest Cranston’s actions has ended up protecting privacy rights across the country.”
