In Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385 (1978), undercover police officer Barry Headricks arranged to buy drugs from the defendant and, when Headricks arrived at the defendant's apartment to finalize the transaction, he brought with him several plainclothes police officers to effect the defendant's arrest. Id. at 387. When the defendant's friend opened the apartment door, Headricks quickly entered and walked to the bedroom. Id. As the other officers entered the apartment, they heard gunshots from the bedroom area. Id. Headricks then emerged from the bedroom, collapsed on the floor, and later died from his gunshot wounds. Id. There was a narcotics raid on defendant's apartment by undercover and plainclothes policemen. During the raid, defendant was wounded as were two other persons in the apartment. Other than looking for victims of the shooting and arranging for medical assistance, the narcotics agents, pursuant to a police department directive, made no further investigation. Shortly thereafter, however, homicide detectives arrived on the scene to take charge of the investigation and they proceeded to conduct an exhaustive four-day warrantless search of the apartment, which included the opening of dresser drawers, the ripping up of carpets and the seizure of 200 to 300 objects. The Arizona Supreme Court held that the warrantless search of a homicide scene was permissible under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. It created a so-called murder scene exception to the requirement for a warrant. The United States Supreme Court disagreed holding that there is no such murder scene exception and suppressed the evidence seized by the homicide detectives. However, the opinion of the United States Supreme Court explicitly created an exception to the requirement for a warrant where the police search only for other crime victims or criminals and the Court noted that the police may seize any evidence that is in plain view during the course of such legitimate emergency activities. Mincey, supra, 437 U.S. at 393. In Mincey v. Arizona, the United States Supreme Court recognized the right of police to respond to emergency situations. 437 U.S. at 392. This right is based on the need to respond to exigencies, as recognized in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 25-26 (approving a warrantless search "necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm an officer or others nearby"). Mincey involved the warrantless search of an apartment after a drug raid. Id. at 387-88. The Court in Mincey rejected the claim that a "four-day search" was a reasonable response to an emergency. Id. at 388-91. However, in doing so, the Court made clear that the police must be able to appropriately respond, without a warrant, when emergency aid is required: We do not question the right of the police to respond to emergency situations. Numerous state and federal cases have recognized that the Fourth Amendment does not bar police officers from making warrantless entries and searches when they reasonably believe that a person within is in need of immediate aid. Id. at 392. When the police are in such a situation, "the need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury is justification for what would be illegal otherwise." Id. at 392-93. The Court addressed the constitutionality of a warrantless search of an apartment after a shoot-out between officers and the occupants of the apartment. Id. at 390-95. The Court held, "The Fourth Amendment does not bar police officers from making warrantless entries and searches when they reasonably believe that a person within is in need of immediate aid." Id. at 392. According to the Court, "The need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury is justification for what would be otherwise illegal absent an exigency or emergency." Mincey, 437 U.S. at 392-93. But the Court was careful to limit this exception, noting that "a warrantless search must be 'strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its initiation.'" Id. The officers in Mincey conducted a four-day warrantless search that included opening dresser drawers and ripping up carpets; such a search, according to the Court, could "hardly be rationalized in terms of the legitimate concerns that justify an emergency search." Id. Therefore, despite the "constitutional difference between houses and cars" for purposes of the Fourth Amendment recognized by the Court in Cady, the Court, in Mincey, nonetheless recognized that "the need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury" justified a warrantless intrusion and limited search of a private residence. Id. at 392. The United States Supreme Court held, in an opinion joined in on this issue by all of the justices, that there is no "murder scene exception" to the requirement of the Fourth Amendment that a search warrant be procured before premises are entered. In the Mincey case, a narcotics officer was shot in Mincey's apartment when he and other officers entered during a narcotics investigation. After the shooting, the narcotics officers looked about the apartment for other victims. They found a woman, wounded, lying in a closet, Mincey, wounded, on the floor, and three other persons, one of them also wounded. Pursuant to a Tucson police procedure that officers should not investigate incidents in which they are involved, the narcotics officers merely guarded the suspects and the premises until homicide officers arrived a few minutes later. The latter proceeded to search the apartment over a period of four days, opening drawers, closets and cupboards, and seizing over 200 objects. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the search as being a reasonable search of the scene of a homicide where the officers were legally on the premises in the first place. It stated that for such a search to be reasonable, it must begin within a reasonable time after officers learn of the homicide and must be limited to determining the circumstances of the death. Rejecting this argument, the high court pointed out that such a search does not fall within any exceptions to the warrant requirement previously recognized. (437 U.S. at p. 390.) It held that the search could not be justified on the ground that no constitutionally protected right of privacy was invaded ( id . at p. 392), nor on the ground of exigent circumstances ( id. at pp. 392-393), nor on the ground that the state had a "vital public interest in the prompt investigation of the extremely serious crime of murder . . . ." ( Id. at p. 393.) It concluded "In sum, we hold that the 'murder scene exception' created by the Arizona Supreme Court is inconsistent with the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments -- that the warrantless search of Mincey's apartment was not constitutionally permissible simply because a homicide had recently occurred there." ( Id. at p. 395.)