Jurisprudential aspects of entering a home without a warrant: a comparative study between the Court of Justice of Santa Catarina and the Superior Court of Justice

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the issue of entry into a home by a police authority without a court order. Considering the possibilities of entry permitted by law, entering another person's home when there is no court order authorized to do so poses a separate problem, since there are specific criteria that must be applied by the police authority, otherwise the action will be considered unlawful and, consequently, the act null and void, with direct effects on the resulting legal proceedings. Considering that the Superior Courts have established some criteria that function as these guidelines, the question arises as to whether the Court of Justice of the state of Santa Catarina has applied these same criteria in its decisions, given that this inquiry is the research problem that drives this study. The conclusion was affirmative, despite the lack of a clear definition of when just cause is considered to justify the entry requested into a home by a police authority, which means that the recognition of a given police action in this sense as null and void is something case-by-case. The methodology used is an exploratory exploration of bibliographic review and jurisprudential research, guided by the methodological format by chance and convenience.