Supreme Court Knocks A Little More Off The 4th Amendment; Gives Cops Another Way To Salvage Illegal Searches
from the endlessly-forgiving dept
The Supreme Court hasn't necessarily been kind to the Fourth Amendment in recent years. While it did deliver the Riley decision, which instituted a warrant requirement for searches of cellphones, it has generally continued to expand the ability of police to stop and search anyone for almost any reason.
Its Heien decision said it was perfectly fine for police officers to remain ignorant of the laws they're enforcing by allowing them to continue making bogus traffic stops predicated on nonexistent laws. The Rodriguez decision at least prohibits officers from artificially extending stops to bring out drug dogs or beg for consent to search a vehicle, but it doesn't do anything to prevent the bogus stops in the first place.
With its just-released Strieff decision, the Supreme Court -- in a 5-3 ruling -- extends the reach of bogus stops/searches to pedestrians. To get to where we are now, you have to go back a decade:
The case, Utah v. Strieff, started in 2006, when the Salt Lake City police got an anonymous tip reporting drug activity at a house. An officer monitored the house for several days and became suspicious at the number of people he saw entering and leaving. When one of those people, Edward Strieff, left to walk to a nearby convenience store, the officer stopped him and asked for his identification.
A routine check revealed that Mr. Strieff had an outstanding “small traffic warrant.” The officer arrested him based on that earlier warrant, searched him and found a bag of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in his pockets.
The evidence obtained should have been suppressed because the officer had no reason to stop Strieff and demand his ID. The state of Utah has already conceded this was an illegal stop. But it has appealed it all the way to the nation's top court because it wants the fruits of the illegal search to remain unsuppressed and, more importantly, the government wants the precedent. It got it. From the opinion [PDF]:
To enforce the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” this Court has at times required courts to exclude evidence obtained by unconstitutional police conduct. But the Court has also held that, even when there is a Fourth Amendment violation, this exclusionary rule does not apply when the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefits. In some cases, for example, the link between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of the evidence is too attenuated to justify suppression. The question in this case is whether this attenuation doctrine applies when an officer makes an unconstitutional investigatory stop; learns during that stop that the suspect is subject to a valid arrest warrant; and proceeds to arrest the suspect and seize incriminating evidence during a search incident to that arrest. We hold that the evidence the officer seized as part of the search incident to arrest is admissible because the officer’s discovery of the arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized incident to arrest.
Working backwards from the arrest and search incident to the arrest, the court finds that the warrant the officer knew nothing about before stopping Strieff is all the connective tissue lower courts will need to refuse suppression of evidence obtained from similar illegal stops. The majority says this reverse engineering is perfectly fine because it probably won't be abused -- and even if it is, those whose rights are violated can always lawyer up and file a civil suit.
Strieff’s counterarguments are unpersuasive. First, neither Officer Fackrell’s purpose nor the flagrancy of the violation rises to a level of misconduct warranting suppression. Officer Fackrell’s purpose was not to conduct a suspicionless fishing expedition but was to gather information about activity inside a house whose occupants were legitimately suspected of dealing drugs. Strieff conflates the standard for an illegal stop with the standard for flagrancy, which requires more than the mere absence of proper cause. Second, it is unlikely that the prevalence of outstanding warrants will lead to dragnet searches by police. Such misconduct would expose police to civil liability and, in any event, is already accounted for by Brown’s “purpose and flagrancy” factor.
The majority acts as though this sort of thing is an isolated incident -- a unicorn in the pantheon of law enforcement. Justice Sotomayor's angry dissent tears this argument apart, pointing out how the majority has just given law enforcement a permission slip for illegal searches while claiming this is a narrow reading of a one-off incident.
The Court today holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language: This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong. If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant.
The majority's decision pretends outstanding warrants won't encourage police fishing expeditions. But to mix a couple of metaphors, law enforcement agencies have access to massive honeypots.
These factors confirm that the officer in this case discovered Strieff ’s drugs by exploiting his own illegal conduct. The officer did not ask Strieff to volunteer his name only to find out, days later, that Strieff had a warrant against him. The officer illegally stopped Strieff and immediately ran a warrant check. The officer’s discovery of a warrant was not some intervening surprise that he could not have anticipated. Utah lists over 180,000 misdemeanor warrants in its database, and at the time of the arrest, Salt Lake County had a “backlog of outstanding warrants” so large that it faced the “potential for civil liability.”
This opinion gives officers the option to demand ID from every pedestrian they encounter in order to run a warrant check. There no longer needs to be a reason for the stop. Officers can work backwards by performing the stop, running an ID and, finally, arresting a person and performing a search if the database returns a hit. If you want a police state, you've got one, as Sotomayor points out.
By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time. It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.
We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.
The logic of the majority's decision -- now the law of the land -- says even a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket is a free pass for officers to perform a search of your person. It sounds innocuous but it isn't. You'll be stopped and not allowed to leave. You may be pushed up against a wall or bent over the hood of a police car. Your personal belongings will be taken, laid out, and cataloged. You may also have your genitalia and bodily orifices probed and inspected. And, most likely, all of this will happen in public in full view of passersby. A search is an invasion, but the Supreme Court's decision treats as a minor inconvenience -- and one whose illegality can be excused after the fact.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, illegal searches, police, scotus, strieff, supreme court
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Good faith?
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Re: Good faith?
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Would police checkpoints make us all safer?
That way, police have multiple opportunities to check 'your papers please'. And have drug dogs do some sniffing. And look in your car trunk, etc.
Police wouldn't need to know any laws.
Pedestrians could be stopped as easily as motorists. And vice versa.
Police would never abuse such authority and lack of accountability. It's for your safety.
To make you even safer, the next step should be that police make random but frequent 'safety visits' to everyone's private home. That way we can be sure everyone's ID is checked. Nobody has a police record. Police could see if there is anything within the home that is obviously in plain sight which they do not happen to like.
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Re: Would police checkpoints make us all safer?
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Re: Re: Would police checkpoints make us all safer?
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Re: Would police checkpoints make us all safer?
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Re: Re: Would police checkpoints make us all safer?
Aren't those checkpoints there to make Israelis safer?
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Re: Would police checkpoints make us all safer?
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For me, the "stop and identify" here wasn't out of line. The police had a tip that the location was a drug den, so it was pretty reasonable to me that someone coming from there might (a) have drugs, or (b) provide the police with information relative to who is in the house, etc. With a significant number of people coming and going from the property, the tip seems to be right on the money.
That should be enough probably cause to do a "stop and ask". The officer was clearly not stopping random people fishing for a warrant, he just wanted some additional info to perhaps build a better case for a search warrant for the house.
Now, seeing the courts don't feel that being one of many people coming out of a suspected drug den is enough for police to even ask, let's get to the meat of the issue:
Did the officer operate in the old good faith with decent intent? Answer is clearly yes, he was tryingto build a case against law breakers. In other words, doing his job.
In the end, it's the guys problem that he had an outstanding warrant. It's the guys problem that he was walking around with meth on his person. The warrant was valid, everything from that point on should be free of the proverbial poison tree.
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Re:
this shit doesn't matter to you, whatevs, because you are already in a prison of your own making...
you already genuflect to State...
you already grant them omniscience and omnipotence...
you already excuse their horrors...
you already have had yourself fitted for a brown shirt, size quizling...
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Note to self: due process and innocent until proven guilty are bad ideas, according to Whatever. Got it.
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Look, my point is only this: There was no search until the warrant was found. Only asking the guy coming out of a reported drug den to identify himself doesn't seem to be particularly abusive.
Remember, you have (a) the tip, and (b) the observations of the officer that a large number of people were coming and going from the location, which is ALMOST enough for a warrant for the location. The officer engaged in a stop and identify situation, and did not search the guy until the warrant was discovered.
So the question of "due process" is addressed. So the question of innocent until proven guilty is addressed as well. Had the guy not had an open warrant, he would have walked away unsearched. Oh snap, there goes your vapid little comeback!
Techdirt hates it when law enforcement do their job and catch criminals.
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If that's your definition of a competent job it's small wonder why you're a RIAA spokesman.
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Basically, he wants cops to be a combination of Deep Blue and Marty McFly. It's pretty funny to read how he thinks police should work (don't arrest anyone until they are convicted!)
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Whether it's true or not is irrelevant. The agency I give that tip to then has exactly the amount of evidence of wrongdoing that the police officers in this case had. And the fact that the site has 'frequent' visitors is all the proof the police need of wrongdoing under this new evidence standard.
Do you really want to have a group of armed police kicking your door in 'for the children'? Remember, they won't stop tearing your house apart until they find the evidence they KNOW is there -- after all, there was a tip that said so!
That of course assumes you're still alive, because police are kinda trigger-happy these days.
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At this point they don't NEED a tip.
Though if you want to utilize some police mayhem for your own personal ends, feel free to tip them. I'm sure they'd totally appreciate the exercise.
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Re: At this point they don't NEED a tip.
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[pet_peeve_rant]
It's probable cause. The correct legal term is probable cause.
"Probably cause" indicates that something may make another thing happen in the future. "Probable cause" is a legal standard that indicates there is enough reason for an arrest or to do a search.
The terms mean very different things and are not interchangeable.
[/pet_peeve_rant]
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Re:
You're arguing the validity of the stop, but this case is arguing the validity of information found as a result of a stop that has been conceded as illegal.
What's the difference between an illegal stop like this one and one where they just randomly stop someone with no cause? Utah agreed that the facts didn't provide reasonable suspicion, but the fruits of the poisonous tree were still deemed admissible in court, and that's the problem. There may be a "good faith" argument to be made, but what officer is not going to be able to, after the fact, come up with _some_ reason that he was acting in good faith? This ruling, in effect, gives police the right to "card" anyone, anywhere, for any reason. After all, an officer at a DUI checkpoint can argue that he's operating in "good faith" and he gets to randomly card hundreds of people for no good reason. This ruling just extends that abuse of power to every cop in every situation.
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We've heard this before
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compulsory identification
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Re:
It's a balancing test between protecting the rights of citizens, and the right of government to win. Who would want the government to lose?
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ID is now required?
Up to now, there has been no legal requirement to supply identification to the police on request (outside of certain limited circumstances). Does this ruling affect that?
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Re: ID is now required?
If you are walking on the street, there is no requirement to identify yourself unless you are being detained by a LEO.. It is sufficient to state your name if you are detained in this manner. Failure to do so is a misdemeanor, though I don't know what level.
So it depends. It depends on the situation and it depends on what state you are in.
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Re: Re: ID is now required?
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[I am not a lawyer nor am I offering ANY legal or other advice.]
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Re: Re: Re: Re: ID is now required?
[I am not a lawyer nor am I offering ANY legal or other advice.]
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Re: Re: ID is now required?
Texas Penal Code § 38.02. Failure to Identify
(a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally refuses to give his name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has lawfully arrested the person and requested the information.
(b) A person commits an offense if he intentionally gives a false or fictitious name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has:
(1) lawfully arrested the person;
(2) lawfully detained the person; or
(3) requested the information from a person that the peace officer has good cause to believe is a witness to a criminal offense.
That hasn't stopped some idiot Texas officers from arresting people for 'refusal to identify' when they're just detained. That, generally, hasn't gone well for them.
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Re: Re: ID is now required?
As I remember it, the Supreme Court had ruled quite a while ago that the police cannot compel you to produce identification under ordinary circumstances -- even if you are a criminal suspect. However, if they have either probable cause or reasonable suspicion (I forget which) that you engaged in a crime, they can detain you for however long it takes them to obtain an identification of you through some other means.
But I am also not a lawyer. I would love for one to comment!
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Sounds like he willingly gave it up
I mean if that is the actual chain of events here then I don't see the actual problem.
Maybe I just find the "how should he have known he was wanted for a traffic citation" thing unconvincing" but this is basically "proactive policing 101". He got a tip, he checked it out, he made a stop.
Am I missing something there?
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Re: Sounds like he willingly gave it up
The warrant with regards to the traffic violation had absolutely nothing to do with searching him, it was just the excuse used to do so. Had he not been so forthcoming in presenting his ID I have no doubt they'd have found some other excuse, and the courts would have given them a pass then too because 'good faith exception' or some similar rot.
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Constitution?
But the Court has also held that, even when there is a Fourth Amendment violation, this exclusionary rule does not apply when the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefits.
This pretty much states. We can shit on the 4th any fucking time we want even while we admit it is being violated. Fuck you Citizens, Fuck you so very much!
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"It's more of a guideline than a rule really..."
Translation: The ends justify the means. We'd rather uphold a violation of the Fourth, even when we admit that it's a violation, than exclude evidence if that's what it takes to stop the boogie- criminals. Because criminals and/or accused criminals have no rights of course, so it doesn't count.
And add another tally on the 'It'll only rarely be applied, and only to criminals who don't have rights anyway so it's fine' side, because screw that 'protection against unreasonable search and seizures' thing.
They need to save everyone some time and just flat out admit, 'We don't believe that the laws or restrictions should apply if it interferes with the ability to stop criminals or accused criminals. If a cop wants to stop you for any reason then they can absolutely do so, and it's perfectly fine for them to violate the laws so long as they think they're acting within the laws when they do it, and/or find a particularly juicy piece of evidence.' It's pretty clear that's what they are thinking, might as well make it public.
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Re: "It's more of a guideline than a rule really..."
Essentially that just killed the Fourth-amendment protections from illegal search. Law enforcement can search anyone for no reason. The evidence is still good.
We might as well have checkpoints.
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I guess that's what you just said.
That kinda kills the whole notion of the Bill of Rights, when SCOTUS refuses to enforce it.
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Re: "It's more of a guideline than a rule really..."
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"legitimately suspected"
Hairs on the back of the neck? Goosebumps? Knows he's carrying cash?
when there is a Fourth Amendment violation...the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefits
Does this mean that if the crime is severe enough, then we can ignore the illegality of the search that discovered it?
Because that's going to become a problem really fast.
Especially considering that possession is enough.
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It's All Over But the Crying
Aren't lifetime appointments to the bench wonderful?
Revolt slaves Revolt, cast off the repressive yoke of the criminal US government.
It can start on an individual level using non-violent disassociation/noncooperation with all levels of government wherever/whenever practicable.
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In plain English
In other words, we broke the rules, but that's okay because you're CRIMINAL SCUM and deserve to be in jail. So watch out, we're going to get you even if it means breaking the rules.
Of course these days, being "criminal scum" has never been easier. Maybe you anonymously insulted your corrupt Mayor on Twitter. Maybe you insulted a rich person's hair. Maybe you advertised to rent your home while you're away on summer vacation. Maybe you crossed the street outside a marked crosswalk. Guess what? You're criminal scum and the rules no longer apply for you.
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It will come back to haunt them
I wonder how many of these el supremo's have unpaid parking fines still on record?
The train for the land of the free and justice for all has long since departed.
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We've been there a while
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Re: We've been there a while
No need to waste words repeating yourself, either one works, no need to say the same thing twice twice.
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Re: We've been there a while
Fixed.
It's an illusion that's getting shattered with the growing ubiquity of personal video cameras.
Those friends of mine old enough to remember the 20th century and who were unfortunate enough to grow up on the wrong side of the streets (and with the wrong shade of skin) are pretty consistent in their stories of how the oppressive police dystopia prevailed in their neighborhoods.
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Re: Re: We've been there a while
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Subject to Invasion
Courts be-damned, but not so according to the Second Amendment and my Colt. Y'all might wanna think on that, LEOs.
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Time to impeach a whole bunch of justices
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Guilty supremes
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Ignorance of the law
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Way to go, guys...
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So by this logic, the police could have just stormed into the house without a warrant or any reasonable suspicion and as long as drugs were being sold there, everything would be fine, since the benefits of closing it down would outweigh the constitutional violations. Right?
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As I am not a lawyer...
And the does not apply threshold seems to be (at most) a gram of meth and drug paraphernalia.
They've given every officer in the nation license to rob.
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Re: As I am not a lawyer...
Yeah, they've had that in the form of 'asset forfeiture'/armed robbery at badge-point for years, this is more licence to conduct even more warrantless searches for something to steal.
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WONT STOP A BULLET
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It even further weakens if it is allowed to be interpreted by a party with a conflict of interest. The interpretation should be allowed only by the governed (The people).
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