Fourth Amendment and police investigation into domestic violence collide at waterfront hotel

A North Carolina man who was staying with his girlfriend at the InterContinental Boston last November faces charges of assault and battery on a family member after his arrest at their room, where police were called because of a loud argument and found his girlfriend with "multiple bruises" on her chest, back and arms - standing near a bed with what appeared to be blood stains.

The thing is his arrest, around 2 a.m. on Nov. 13, was the second time that night police went to the hotel to investigate a possible attack by Keith Albert, 54, on the woman, but the first time, a hotel security manager turned them away because they did not have a warrant or subpoena - or any evidence an attack was happening at that moment, the Boston Licensing Board heard at a hearing earlier this week.

Without any of that, letting the police up to the couple's room would have been a violation of their rights against search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment, the hotel's attorney told the board, adding hotel managers actually receive training on just this point.

The board held a hearing on whether the incident showed the hotel was "hindering or delaying a police investigation of a Licensed Premise." At a meeting yesterday, the board deferred any action to let local hotel managers confer with the national hotel chain to find the chain's specific policies on letting police on premises - and to let their attorney consider the implications of a board rule that requires hoteliers to allow police to inspect their guest registry at any time.

According to BPD officers who testified at the Tuesday hearing, around 9:40 p.m. on Nov. 12, police responded to Prince and Salem streets in the North End on a report of a fight in which witnesses told police they saw Albert punching the victim and then, when an Uber arrived, kicking her from inside the vehicle. Witnesses managed to get the woman out of the vehicle and Albert left. Before EMS arrived and took her to Mass. General for evaluation, the woman told officers she and Albert were staying at the InterContinental and even gave them her room key.

Other officers went to the hotel with the key and asked if Albert was a guest, but a hotel security manager declined to say and would not let them in, so they left. The entire interchange took less than a minute and the officers never said they had the key to the room.

The situation changed when the woman left Mass. General and went back to her and Albert's room, police said. Det. Eddie Hernandez said hotel security called 911 after a worker reported a loud argument around 2 a.m. coming from inside room 851.

Hernandez said that when officers and hotel security guards went up to the room, the victim denied any physical altercation had occurred.

Albert said the woman's visible limp was from her falling down the stairs - after which she went to Mass. General - he said.

But officers noticed "red and brown stains splattered on sheets of the bed, which officers, through their training and experience, believed to be blood," he said. And then the victim took a woman officer aside and pulled down her top enough that the officer could see "multiple bruises" on her chest, back and arms, in addition to the bruises on her leg and ankle from Albert's alleged kicks in the North End, he said. He added the woman also called up photos on her phone of "past injuries" she said he'd caused in North Carolina.

Officers arrested Albert.

Sgt. Det. William Gallagher said the police would not have needed to be called at 2 a.m., had the hotel let the officers in earlier in the evening.

"If the officers were allowed to go up to the room and open the door with the key that they did and the suspect was inside, he would've been placed under arrest at that time and there would not have been a second call," Gallagher said. "God forbid what could have happened, that's just what I'm thinking. There was blood on the sheets, there was evidence of an assault. Although the victim did not let on she was assaulted in the room, there was clear evidence that an assault had taken place. ... God forbid she was killed, it would have been a completely different story."

But hotel attorney Jon Aieta said the Fourth Amendment is pretty clear: Unless police can show somebody is in mortal danger or a crime is being committed at the hotel the moment they arrive, the Fourth Amendment protects hotel guests against warrantless searches as much as it would protect people in their own homes against warrantless searches.

"All hotel guests are afforded that right," and the officers who showed up the first time did not show any such "exigent circumstances," he said, noting that when they arrived, the woman was either with police officers in the North End, or with doctors at Mass. General.

"We weren't really given a real sense of urgency from the police when they arrived, is my understanding," hotel General Manager Bradford Rice said.

Board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce told Aieta to do some thorough research into the interaction between the board's guest-registry rule and the Fourth Amendment, saying she shared Gallagher's what-if concern. "This could have ended very differently," she said.

Albert was arraigned that morning in Boston Municipal Court on two counts of assault and battery on a family member, one a misdemeanor, the other a felony. Judge James Coffey initially set bail at $500, and ordered him not to abuse the victim, then reduced bail to personal recognizance. He is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on March 7, according to court records.

Innocent, etc.

Watch the hearing: