Semayne's case

Facts

Richard Gresham and George Berisford were joint tenants of a house in Blackfriars, London. Berisford died while in debt to Peter Semayne. Semayne then secured a civil writ of attachment on Berisford's goods, which were located inside the house. After the Sheriff of London was denied entry by Gresham, the Sheriff offered to break and enter into the house. Instead, Semayne sued, bringing an action on the case against Gresham for his losses.

Initially, the court could not reach a decision, with Lord Chief Justice John Popham and Lord Justice Francis Gawdy believing the Sheriff could break and enter, while Lord Justices Edward Fenner and Christopher Yelverton insisting he could not. After the English coronation of King James VI and I and the appointment of Lord Justice David Williams to the bench, the case was reargued.

Judgment

In 1604, the Court of King's Bench gave judgment against Semayne. The court resolved that 1) it is not a felony for a man to defend his house to the death; 2) sheriffs may break and enter to recover seisin over real estate; 3) sheriffs may break and enter on the King's business after a request for entry is refused; 4) sheriffs may enter when the door is open; 5) the householder's privilege does not extend to strangers or their goods; and 6) that sheriffs should request entry in civil cases. As authority, Coke reported citation to a statute enacted by King Edward III of England in 1275, which, he said, merely affirmed the preexisting common law.

The holding of the case can best be summed by Coke's words,

The case is also famous for Coke's quote;

Influence

In 1605, Coke published the case in the fifth volume of his Reports. After his Petition of Right, Coke, in his Institutes of the Lawes of England adopted the view, alone, that warrants issued on bare suspicion violate the Magna Carta. After the Interregnum, Sir Matthew Hale wrote in his Historia Placitorum Coronæ that an arrest without a warrant could be made by forced entry.

After the Glorious Revolution, William Hawkins and Sir Michael Foster thought no forced entry was permissible if a warrant issued on bare suspicion. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Sir William Blackstone emphasized the castle doctrine but took the view that forced entry was permitted if the suspected felony had actually occurred.

The rule was relied upon in the landmark case of Entick v Carrington [K.B. 1765], where Lord Camden held that no general warrant could issue on suspicion of seditious libel. Lord Mansfield, however, was skeptical of limits to forced entry, holding in 1772 that officials may obtain entry by fraud and in 1774 that the limit only applied to a dwelling’s outer door.

The sentiment of "an Englishman's home is his castle" became very popular, with William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham famously speaking against the Cider Bill of 1763 by telling Parliament:

Blackstone’s language on the castle doctrine was also very popular in the United States, where it was widely followed by state courts. In Miller v. United States (1958), the Supreme Court of the United States recognized that police must give notice before making a forced entry and in Ker v. California (1963) a divided Court discovered that this limitation was extended against the states by the United States Constitution.

However, in Wilson v. Arkansas (1995) the U.S. Supreme Court created an exception to prevent the destruction of evidence and in Hudson v. Michigan (2006) the Court, by a 5-4 vote, held that the exclusionary rule does not require the suppression of evidence police seize during an illegal force entry. Recently, police in the United States often give no notice before forced home entry due to widespread use of no-knock warrants.