hot pursuit

Hot pursuit (also known as fresh or immediate pursuit) is the urgent and direct pursuit of a criminal suspect by law enforcement officers, or by belligerents under international rules of engagement for military forces. Such a situation grants the officers in command powers they otherwise would not have. Common law jurisdictions English law Hot pursuit has long formed a part of English common law. The principle can be traced back to the doctrine of distress damage feasant, which allowed a property owner to detain animals trespassing on his land to ensure that he was compensated for the damage they had caused. In particular, a case in 1293 held that a property owner could also chase after trespassing animals leaving his land and catch them if he could. Later cases extended this idea to allow a property owner to distrain the goods of a tenant behind on his rent outside his property (in Kirkman v. Lelly in 1314) and peace officers to make arrests outside their jurisdiction. In 1939, Glanville Williams described hot pursuit as a legal fiction that treated an arrest as made at the moment when the chase began rather than when it ended, since a criminal should not be able to benefit from an attempt to escape.