St. Louis – The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri’s lawsuit on behalf of Jon Luer and Andrea Steinebach against two St. Louis County police officers for a warrantless entry and search of their home with will be heard in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri starting Monday, May 23, 2022.
Previously, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit concluded that the warrantless entry and search of the Luer-Steinebach home in the middle of the night clearly violated their Fourth Amendment rights. A jury will now determine the amount of damages Luer and Steinebach should be awarded for this unreasonable and unwarranted police action.
“This egregious constitutional violation of our clients’ rights could have easily resulted in serious injury or death, and now the Luer-Steinebach household finally get their day in court,” said Gillian Wilcox, Deputy Director for Litigation at the ACLU of Missouri. “With a federal court already determining that the warrantless search violated our clients’ rights, it is now up to a jury to award damages and ensure that the St. Louis County Police Department never does this again.”
Around 3 a.m. on July 10, 2016, two St. Louis County police officers were searching for an allegedly intoxicated man in his early to mid-30s whom a taxi driver said did not pay his fare and instead fled the cab in the suburban neighborhood where Luer and Steinebach lived.
Although the taxi driver claimed the customer had disappeared between two houses near the Luer-Steinebach home, no one saw the man go inside any home in the area. Nevertheless, the police officers decided to enter the Luer-Steinebach home with their guns drawn and without a warrant or consent while Luer, Steinebach, and their son slept.
Luer and Steinebach awoke when they heard the police officers in their living room. Luer was confronted by the armed officers outside their bedroom while their teenage son slept a few feet away . The officers ordered Luer to wake his son. They interrogated him, conducted a sobriety test, and searched his room before concluding the son could not have been the person of interest. The officers never filed an incident report with the police department.
