Would the fact that the one saying 'yes' was the reporting victim in a domestic disturbance call and the one saying 'no' was the alleged suspect be considered 'unusual circumstances' to you?
Tough case. If the wife was a documented victim of domestic violence, consented to the entry, then the cops accepted the husbands "No", there would be serious liability problems for the cops if she was subsequently injured.
Then again, the husband had a right to not consent to a search of his domicile.
If the evidence was in plain view, the police were lawfully in the house due to the wifes consent, and anything they saw in plain view was fair game under present case law-this article is unclear on if that happened.
If she led them to a location and identified it as having contraband (Drugs), then exigent circumstances may apply, and the police can execute the search based on the probable cause statement of the wife, and the exigent circumstances provided by the possibility that the evidence would be destroyed/lost while trying to get the warrant.
The probable cause used for the exigent circumstances would need to be the same as that needed for the warrant. In other words, given the time to get a warrant, could they have proven probable cause
Once again, the article doesn't give a clear view of what happened so that case law can be applied, just outlining the possibilities of what was applied, and why
Yes and no.