Criminal Procedure: Constitutional Constraints Upon Investigation and Proof (9th ed.) by Tomkovicz

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – Katz v. United States
Year: 1967
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: the Government’s activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner’s words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a search and seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: The petitioner was convicted under an eight-count indictment charging him with transmitting wagering information by telephone from LA to Miami and Boston in violation of a federal statute.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The petitioner has strenuously argued that the booth was a constitutionally protected area. -> Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
The government stresses that the telephone booth was constructed partly of glass, so that he was as visible after he entered it as he would have been if he had remained outside. -> what he sought to exclude was the uninvited ear. A person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment.
The government contends that the activities of its agents should not be tested by Fourth Amendment requirements, for the surveillance technique involved no physical penetration of the telephone booth. -> the 4th Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any technical trespass under local property law.
Harlan concurring: what protection does the 4th Amendment afford to the people. Requirements: a person has exhibited an actual expectation of privacy and the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as “reasonable.” The booth is temporarily private place whose occupants’ expectations are recognized as reasonable. Goldman should now be overruled, since reasonable expectations of privacy may be defeated by electronic and physical invasion.
Black dissenting: a conversation overheard by eavesdropping, whether by plain snooping or wiretapping, is not tangible and, under the normally accepted meanings of the words, can neither be searched nor seized. Eavesdropping was an ancient practice. If the Framers had desired to outlaw or restrict the use of evidence obtained by eavesdropping, they would have used the appropriate language to do so. The court arbitrarily substituted the Court’s language designed to protect privacy for the Constitution’s language designed to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – United States v. White
Year: 1971
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: it is untenable to consider the activities and reports of the police agent himself to be a reasonable investigative effort and lawful but to view the same agent with a reorder or transmitter as conducting an unreasonable and unconstitutional search and seizure.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment bars from evidence the testimony of governmental agents who related certain conversations which had occurred between Defendant White and a governmental informant, and which the agents overheard by monitoring the frequency of a radio transmitter carried by Jackson and concealed on his person.
5. Procedural History: the trial court overruled objections to the testimony of the agents. The jury returned a guilty verdict. The Court of Appeals reversed.
6. Facts: The conversations took place in Jackson’s home; each of these conversations was overheard by an agent concealed in a kitchen closet with Jackson’s consent and by a second agent outside the house using a radio receiver.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the Court of Appeals understood Katz to render inadmissible against White the agents’ testimony. -> Katz involved no revelation to the Government by a party to conversations with the defendant nor did the Court indicate in any way that a defendant has a justifiable and constitutionally protected expectation that a person with whom he is conversing will not then or later reveal the conversation to the police.
4th Amendment affords no protection to a wrongdoer’s misplaced belief that a person to whom he voluntarily confides his wrongdoing will not reveal it. Hoffa.
The Court of Appeals read Katz and the 4th Amendment to require a different result if the agent not only records his conversations with the defendant but instantaneously transmits them electronically to other agents. -> a police agent who conceals his police connections may write down for official use his conversations with a defendant and testify concerning them. No different result is required in this case.
Our problem is what expectations of privacy are constitutionally justifiable – what expectations the 4th Amendment will protect in the absence of a warrant.
Harlan dissenting: the critical question is whether we should impose on our citizens the risks of the electronic listener or observer without at least the protection of a warrant requirement. For those more extensive intrusions, at the least warrants should be necessary. Were third-party bugging a prevalent practice, it might well smother that spontaneity that liberates daily life. Third-party electronic monitoring has no place in our society.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – Smith v. Maryland
Year: 1979
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: affirmed.
3. Holding: petitioner entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed and, even if he did, his expectation was not legitimate.
4. Issue: whether the installation and use of a pen register constitutes a search within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.
5. Procedural History: the trial court denied the suppression motion, holding that the warrantless installation of the pen register did not violate the 4th Amendment. The pen register tape and the phone book were admitted. Petitioner was convicted.
6. Facts: Patricia McDonough was the victim of a robbery. She gave the police a description of the robber and of a 1975 Monte Carlo automobile that she had witnessed during the robbery. McDonough later received threatening phone calls from a man who claimed to be the robber. The police traced the license-plate number and learned that the car was registered to Smith. Without obtaining a warrant, the police requested the telephone company to install a pen register at its central offices to record the numbers dialed from Smith’s home. The pen register showed that Smith later placed another call to McDonough.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the application of the 4th Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a justifiable, a reasonable, or a legitimate expectation of privacy. This inquiry embraces: whether the individual has exhibited an actual expectation of privacy, and whether the individual’s subjective expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
Petitioner’s claim is that the State infringed a legitimate expectation of privacy that petitioner held. -> a pen register differs significantly from the listening device employed in Katz, for pen registers do not acquire the contents of communications.
Given a pen register’s limited capabilities, its installation and use constituted a search; petitioner had a legitimate expectation of privacy regarding the numbers he dialed on his phone -> we doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial. Even if petitioner harbored expectation that numbers would remain private, this expectation is not one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
He used the telephone in his house -> the site of the call is immaterial for purposes of analysis in this case.
Stewart dissenting: the role played by a private telephone is vital. The numbers dialed from a private telephone – like the conversation that occur during a call – are within the constitutional protection recognized in Katz.
Marshall dissenting: they do not expect monitoring information to be made available to the public in general or the government in particular. Whether privacy expectations are legitimate depends not on the risks an individual can be presumed to accept when imparting information to third parties, but on the risks he should be forced to assume in a free and open society. The use of pen registers constitutes an extensive intrusion.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – California v. Ciraolo
Year: 1986
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: the 4th Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Santa Clara police officers went to the home of Ciraolo (defendant) to investigate an anonymous tip that marijuana was being grown in the backyard. The yard was shielded from view by a six-foot perimeter fence and a 10-foot interior fence. The officers then flew over the house in a private plane and observed marijuana growing in the yard. The officers took photos with a standard 35 mm camera from a distance of 1,000 feet. Using the anonymous tip and the photos, police were able to secure a search warrant. The following day, police seized 73 marijuana plants from Ciraolo’s property.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: a 10 foot fence might not shield these plants from the eyes of a citizen or a policeman perched on the top of a truck or a tow-level bus. Whether respondent manifested a subjective expectation of privacy from all observations of his backyard is not entirely clear in these circumstances.
The test of legitimacy is whether the government’s intrusion infringes upon the personal and societal values protected by the 4th Amendment.
The observations by Officers took place within public navigable airspace in a physically nonintrusive manner. Respondent’s expectation that his garden was protected from such observation is unreasonable and is not an expectation that society is prepared to honor.
Powell dissenting: a standard that defines a search provides no real protection against techniques enabled by technology. Technological advances have enabled police to see people’s activities and associations without being in physical proximity. The capability now exists for police to conduct intrusive surveillance without any physical penetration. The curtilage has been considered part of the home. The actual risk to privacy from commercial or pleasure aircraft is virtually nonexistent. Katz was designed to prevent silent and unseen invasions of 4th Amendment rights.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – Bond v. United States
Year: 2000
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse.
3. Holding: It was 4th Amendment search.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The district court denied motion to suppress and found Petitioner guilty on both counts. The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial.
6. Facts: In the overhead bin at the back of the bus, where Bond (defendant) was seated, Cantu felt a green canvas bag and noticed that it contained a “brick-like” object. Bond said that the bag was his and allowed Cantu to search it. Cantu discovered, wrapped in duct tape, in an oval shape, a certain amount of methamphetamine.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: a traveler’s personal luggage is clearly an effect protected by the Amendment.
The Government asserts that by exposing his bag to the public, petitioner lost a reasonable expectation that his bag would not be physically manipulated -> Ciraolo and Riley involved only visual, as opposed to tactile, observation.
Petitioner argues that Agent’s physical manipulation of his luggage far exceeded the casual contact petitioner could have expected from other passengers. -> petitioner sought to preserve privacy by using an opaque bag and placing that bag directly above his seat. When a bus passenger places a bag in an overhead bin, he expects others to move it. He does not expect that others will feel the bag in an exploratory manner.
Breyer dissenting: how does the squeezing differ from the treatment that overhead luggage is likely to receive from strangers in a world of travel? This case will deter law enforcement officers searching for drugs near borders from using even the most non-intrusive touch to help investigate publicly exposed bags.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – Kyllo v. United States
Year: 2001
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: where the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, the surveillance is a search and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the trial court indicted petitioner and petitioner unsuccessfully moved to suppress the evidence and entered a conditional guilty plea. The District Court upheld the validity of the warrant and reaffirmed its denial of the motion to suppress. Court of Appeals reversed but the opinion was withdrawn and the panel affirmed.
6. Facts: The police came to discover the marijuana with the use of a thermal-imaging device used to detect the heat from the high-intensity lamps used to grow the plants inside. The thermal-imaging device was used by an officer on the street outside Kyllo’s home to scan the house. The scan revealed that part of the house was significantly hotter than the rest. The police used this information to obtain a warrant to search Kyllo’s home.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the government maintains that the thermal imaging must be upheld because it detected only heat radiating from the external surface of the house. -> we rejected a mechanical interpretation in Katz where the eavesdropping device picked up only sound waves. Reversing that approach would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology.
The government contends that the thermal imaging was constitutional because it did not detect private activities occurring in private areas. -> limiting the prohibition would not only be wrong in principle; it would be impractical in application, failing to provide a workable accommodation.
Stevens dissenting: the case before us merely involves indirect deductions from “off-the-wall” surveillance; that is, observations of the exterior of the home. This case involves nothing more than off-the-wall surveillance to gather information exposed to the general public. The detection of infrared radiation did not accomplish an unauthorized physical penetration into the premises. Heat waves enter the public domain if and when they leave a building. The Court’s new rule is at once too broad and too narrow. The thermal imager disclosed only the relative amounts radiating from the house.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – Carpenter v. United States
Year: 2018
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements as captured through CSLI. The location information obtained from Carpenter’s wireless carriers was the product of a search.
4. Issue: whether the Government conducts a search under the 4th Amendment when it accesses historical cell phone records that provide a comprehensive chronicle of the user’s past movements.
5. Procedural History: Carpenter moved to suppress the cell-site data provided by the wireless carriers. The District Court denied the motion. Carpenter was convicted on all but one of the firearm counts. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: The government obtained a court order under the Stored Communications Act allowing it to access cell-site-location-information (CSLI) records from Carpenter’s wireless carriers. The records identified cell sites Carpenter’s phone used to make or receive calls over a four-month period. That data effectively tracked Carpenter’s movements by logging his location about 100 times a day, placing him near four of the robberies.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The analysis is informed by historical understandings of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when the 4th Amendment was adopted.
A person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.
Historical cell-site records present even greater privacy concerns than the GPS monitoring of a vehicle we considered in Jones.
The Government contend that the collection of CSLI should be permitted because the data is less precise than GPS information. The Government thought the CSLI accurate enough to highlight it during the closing. Wireless carriers already have the capability to pinpoint a phone’s location within 50 meters.
Apart from disconnecting the phone from the network, there is no way to avoid leaving behind a trail of location data. As a result, in no meaningful sense does the user voluntarily assume the risk of turning over a comprehensive dossier of his physical movements. We decline to extend Smith and Miller to the collection of CSLI.
Having found that the acquisition of CSLI was a search, the Government must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before acquiring such records.
If law enforcement is confronted with an urgent situation, such fact-specific threats will likely justify the warrantless collection of CSLI.
We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information. In light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of 4th Amendment protection.
Kennedy dissenting: cell-site records are no different from the many other kinds of business records the Government has a lawful right to obtain by compulsory process. The location information revealed by cell-site records is imprecise, because an individual cell-site sector usually covers a large geographic area.
Persons with no meaningful interests in the records sought by a subpoena have no rights to object to the records’ disclosure. Carpenter lacks a requisite connection to the cell-site records. The Court errs when it concludes that cell-site records implicate greater privacy interests than financial records and telephone records. A person’s movements are not particularly private. This Court has held that individual do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in financial records.
The Court’s holding limits the effectiveness of an important investigative tool for solving serious crimes. The Court does not explain what makes something a distinct category of information. The Court gives no indication how to determine whether an information falls on the financial-records side or the cell-site-records side. Courts and officers will have to guess how much of the information that are more like the cell-site records can be requested before a warrant is required.
Alito dissenting: the order was the functional equivalent of a subpoena for documents and these were not regarded as searches. History shows that the 4th Amendment did not apply to the compulsory production of documents. The showing specified in the Stored Communications Act was fully consistent with that less demanding constitutional reasonableness standard.

The Threshold of the 4th Amendment right to be secure against searches – US v. Jacobsen
Year: 1984
Court: US Supreme Court
6. Facts: Defendants claimed two actions by the government had amounted to searches. Government agent reopened a package that had previously opened by Federal Express employees who qualified as private parties. A chemical field test was done that identified a substance found inside the package as cocaine.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the reopening did not violate a legitimate privacy expectation because the inspection enabled the agent to learn nothing that had not previously been learned during the private search.
The field test could disclose whether or not a suspicious white powder was cocaine. The fact that a substance is something other than cocaine is nothing of special interest and that it is cocaine is not something in which one can have a legitimate privacy interest.

Probable cause to search an area demands that there be a certain quantum of likelihood that (1) something that is properly subject to seizure by the government (2) will be in the specific place to be searched when the search occurs.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Draper v. United States
Year: 1959
Court: Supreme Court of the US
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: there had been probable cause to arrest Draper.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: a known informant told a federal narcotics agent that Defendant would be returning to Denver with three ounces of heroin and provided a detailed description of Defendant. Agents arrested him and found heroin.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the Court dismissed Defendant’s claim that hearsay could not be the basis of finding of probable cause. The hearsay came from a reliable source. The information provided to the agents was accurate.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Spinelli v. United States
Year: 1969
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: the informant’s tip – even when corroborated to the extent indicate – was not sufficient to provide the basis for a finding of probable cause. We cannot sustain this warrant without diluting important safeguards that assure that the judgment of a disinterested judicial officer will interpose itself between the police and the citizenry.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Spinelli was convicted under 18 USC 1952 of traveling to St. Louis to conduct gambling activities proscribed by Missouri law. The petitioner challenged the constitutionality of the warrant which authorized the FBI search that uncovered the evidence necessary for his conviction. (1) The FBI had kept track of Spinelli’s movements on five days, and on four of these occasions, Spinelli was seen crossing bridge leading into St. Louis and parking at and entering apartment. (2) two telephones. (3), (4) The application and an informant stated Spinelli is operating gambling operations.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: FIB affidavit is more ample than that in Aguilar because it contains a report from an anonymous informant and contains a report of an independent FBI investigation which is said to corroborate the tip.
The “totality of circumstances” approach taken by the Court of Appeals paints with too broad a brush. Where the informer’s tip is a necessary element in a finding of probable cause, its proper weight must be determined by a more precise analysis.
Can it fairly be said that the tip, even when certain parts of it have been corroborated by independent sources, is as trustworthy as a tip which would pass Aguilar’s tests without independent corroboration? Probable cause must be determined by a neutral and detached magistrate. A magistrate cannot rely on an informer’s tip which is not as reliable as one which passes Aguilar’s requirements when standing alone.
Though the affiant swore that his confidant was reliable, he offered the magistrate no reason in support of this conclusion. The tip does not contain a sufficient statement of the underlying circumstances from which the informer concluded that Spinelli was running a bookmaking operation. Draper’s inference cannot be made here. The only facts supplied here were that Spinelli was using two specified telephones and that these phones were being used in gambling.
Doubts raised by Aguilar are not adequately resolved by a consideration of the allegations detailing the FBI’s independent investigative efforts.
The allegations detailing the FBI’s surveillance of Spinelli and its investigation of the telephone company records contain no suggestion of criminal conduct when taken by themselves and they are not endowed with an aura of suspicion by virtue of the informer’s tip.
White concurring: personal observation attests to the facts asserted. But if the officer simply avers, the warrant should not issue. What is missing is a statement of the basis for the affiant’s believing the facts contained in the affidavit. Warrant should not issue if the officer’s information comes from an informant since the honesty of the informant and the basis for his report are unknown. The missing elements would not be completely supplied by the officer’s oath that the informant has often furnished reliable information in the past. Under Aguilar, did the information come from observation or from another?
If the affidavit rests on hearsay, the informant must declare either (1) that he has himself seen or perceived the fact or facts asserted; or (2) that his information is hearsay, but there is good reason for believing it.
The thrust of Draper relates to the reliability of the source: because an informant is right about some things, he is more probably right about other facts, usually the critical, unverified facts.
The report from a reliable informant that Spinelli is conducting a gambling business and Spinelli’s reputation in police circles as a gambler does not add up to probable cause. The informant did not reveal whether he had personally observed the facts or heard them from another and no basis for crediting the hearsay was presented.
Black dissenting: a search warrant was issued supported by an oath and particularly describing the place to be searched and the things to be seized. The affidavit given the magistrate was more than ample to show probable cause. The existence of probable cause is a factual matter that calls for the determination of a factual question. The Courts below are closer to practical, everyday affairs of life.
Fortas dissenting: the majority states the affidavit fails to meet the Aguilar test because (a) it does not set forth the basis for the assertion that the informer is reliable and (b) it fails to state the underlying circumstances upon which the informant based his conclusion that Spinelli was engaged in bookmaking. Other facts and circumstances may be attested which will supply the evidence of probable cause needed to support the search warrant. -> they are present. The affidavit showed relevant surveillance, Spinelli was using two telephone numbers identified by an informant in his illegal operations, the telephones were in an identified apartment, and that Spinelli frequented the apartment. This is enough.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Illinois v. Gates
Year: 1983
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: It is wiser to abandon the two-pronged test established by Aguilar and Spinelli. In its place we reaffirm the totality-of-the-circumstances analysis that traditionally has informed probable cause determinations.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The Illinois Supreme Court held that the affidavit did not contain sufficient additional information to sustain a determination of probable cause, applying Spinelli two-pronged test: the letter had to adequately reveal the basis of knowledge of the letter writer and it had to provide facts sufficiently establishing either the veracity of the affiant’s informant or the reliability of the informant’s report in this particular case.
6. Facts: Police received an anonymous letter implicating Sue and Lance Gates (defendants) in an elaborate illegal-drug scheme. The letter contained many details about the couple and their drug business, including how the Gateses would obtain their illegal marijuana to sell and when the next transaction would occur. Based on this information, the police department conducted its own investigation, which revealed that parts of the informant’s tip were true. The police were able to secure a search warrant of the Gateses’ home and car, where they found drugs, weapons, and other contraband.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: informant’s veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge should not be understood as entirely separate and independent requirements to be rigidly exacted in every case. They should be understood simply as closely intertwined issues that may usefully illuminate the common-sense, practical question whether there is probable cause to believe that contraband or evidence is located in a particular place.
Probable cause is a practical, nontechnical conception. It is the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men act. Informants’ tips doubtless come in many shapes and sizes from many different types of persons. One simple rule will not cover every situation.
In the informant’s veracity or reliability, and his basis of knowledge, a deficiency in one may be compensated for by a strong showing as to the other, or by some other indicia of reliability.
The rigorous inquiry into the Spinelli prongs and the complex superstructure cannot be reconciled with that many warrants are issued on the basis of nontechnical, common-sense judgments of laymen applying a standard less demanding. The built-in subtleties of the two-pronged test are particularly unlikely to assist.
After-the fact scrutiny by courts of the sufficiency of an affidavit should not take the form of de novo review. The traditional standard is as long as the magistrate had a substantial basis for concluding that a search would uncover evidence of wrongdoing, the 4th Amendment requires no more. Reaffirmation of this standard better serves the purpose of encouraging recourse to the warrant procedure and is more consistent with our traditional deference.
If the Spinelli prongs must be rigorously applied in every case, anonymous tips would be of greatly diminished value in police work. Anonymous tips seldom could survive a rigorous application of either Spinelli prongs, yet such tips frequently contribute to the solution of otherwise perfect crimes.
Magistrates remain perfectly free to exact assurances in making probable cause determinations. Fidelity to the commands of the Constitution suggests balanced judgment rather than exhortation.
It is enough that corroboration through other sources of information reduced the chances of a reckless or prevaricating tale, thus providing a substantial basis for crediting the hearsay. The anonymous letter contained a range of details to future actions of third parties ordinarily not easily predicted. It is enough that there was a fair probability that the writer of the letter had obtained his entire story from the Gateses or someone they trusted. Corroboration of major portions of the letter’s predictions provides just this probability.
White concurring: the question is whether those portions of the affidavit describing the results of the police investigation of the respondents would permit the suspicions engendered by the informant’s report to ripen into a judgment that a crime was probably being committed. The Gateses’ activity was quite suspicious. The proper focus should be on whether the actions of the suspects give rise to an inference that the informant is credible and that he obtained his information in a reliable manner. The informant’s tip was trustworthy. It is not necessary to overrule Aguilar-Spinelli. We held that the unsupported assertion or belief of an officer does not satisfy the probable cause.
Brennan dissenting: a neutral and detached magistrate, and not the police, should determine whether there is probable cause to support the issuance of a warrant. The use of hearsay to support the issuance of a warrant presents special problems because informants are not regarded as presumptively reliable or honest. The basis for an informant’s conclusions is not always clear. The rules advance an important underlying substantive value: findings of probable cause, and attendant intrusions, should not be authorized unless there is some assurance that the information has been obtained in a reliable way by an honest or credible person. I would not reject the standards of Aguilar and Spinelli.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Massachusetts v. Upton (1984)
We rejected the two-pronged test as hypertechnical and divorced from the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men act. The MA Court insisted on judging bits and pieces of information in isolation against the artificial standards provided by the two-pronged test.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Maryland v. Pringle (2003)
Issue: Whether there was probable cause to arrest a passenger in an automobile when there was probable cause to believe that felony narcotics possession had been committed by someone in the vehicle.
Holding: it was an entirely reasonable inference from these facts that any or all three of the occupants had knowledge of, and exercised dominion and control over, the cocaine. A reasonable officer could conclude that there was probable cause to believe Pringle committed the crime of possession of cocaine, either solely or jointly.
Reasoning: it was reasonable to infer a common enterprise among the three men because the quantity of drugs and cash indicated the likelihood of drug dealing, an enterprise to which a dealer would be unlikely to admit an innocent.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Florida v. Harris (2013)
Issue: how a court should determine if the alert of a drug-detection dog provides probable cause to search.
Holding: Florida’s demand is inconsistent with the flexible, common-sense standard of probable cause.
Reasoning: in evaluating whether the probable cause standard has been met, the Court has consistently looked to the totality of the circumstances. A checklist was unacceptable as the way to prove a dog’s reliability and thus establish probable cause. Errors may abound in the records, including false negatives and false positives. A better measure of a dog’s reliability is his performance in controlled testing environments. Ultimately, the question is whether all the facts surrounding a dog’s alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Whren v. United States
Year: 1996
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: affirmed.
3. Holding: The District Court found that the officers had probable cause to believe that petitioners had violated the traffic code. That rendered the stop reasonable, the evidence discovered admissible, and the upholding of the convictions correct.
4. Issue: whether the temporary detention of a motorist who the police have probable cause to believe has committed a civil traffic violation is inconsistent with the 4th Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures unless a reasonable officer would have been motivated to stop the car by a desire to enforce the traffic laws.
5. Procedural History: the District Court denied the suppression motion. Petitioners were convicted. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: Plainclothes officers became suspicious when they passed a truck with temporary license plates and youthful occupants. The truck remained stopped at the intersection for more than 20 seconds. The truck turned suddenly to its right, without signaling, and sped off at an unreasonable speed. The Officer approached the driver’s door and immediately observed two large plastic bags of what appeared to be crack cocaine in petitioner Whren’s hands.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Petitioners argue that in the unique context of civil traffic regulations probable cause is not enough. A police officer will almost invariably be able to catch any given motorist in a technical violation. Traffic stops are used as a means of investigating other violations, as to which no probable cause or even articulable suspicion exists. The test should be whether a police officer, acting reasonably, would have made the stop for the given reason.
Petitioners contend that the standard they propose is consistent with our past cases’ disapproval of police attempts to use valid bases of action against citizens as pretexts for pursuing other investigatory agendas. -> Only an undiscerning reader would regard it as endorsing that ulterior motives can invalidate police conduct that is justifiable on the basis of probable cause to believe that a violation of law has occurred.
The cases foreclose any argument that the constitutional reasonableness of traffic stops depends on the actual motivations of the individual officers involved.
Petitioners disavow any intention to make the individual officer’s subjective good faith the touchstone of reasonableness. Petitioners argue that the balancing inherent in any 4th Amendment inquiry requires us to weigh the governmental and individual interests implicated in a traffic stop. That balancing does not support investigation of minor traffic infractions by plainclothes police in unmarked vehicles. -> the result of balancing is not in doubt where the search or seizure is based upon probable cause. Where probable cause has existed, cases necessary to perform the balancing analysis involved searches or seizures conducted in an extraordinary manner. The making of a traffic stop out-of-uniform does not qualify and is governed by the rule that probable cause outbalances private interest in avoiding police contact.

Unreasonableness and the Probable Cause Requirement – Devenpeck v. Alford (2004)
Issue: whether an arrest is constitutional when an officer lacks probable cause to arrest a person for the offense he stated to be the basis for the arrest, but has probable cause to arrest the person for another offense that is not closely related to the stated offense.
Holding: such an arrest is consistent with the probable cause demand. Subjective intent of the arresting officer is simply no basis for invalidating an arrest. Those are lawfully arrested whom the facts known to the officers give probable cause to arrest.
Facts: Officers arrested Alford for violating the state’s Privacy Act by tape recording his conversations. The officers lacked probable cause to arrest for that offense, but might have had probable cause for impersonating or obstructing a law enforcement officer.
Reasoning: arresting officer’s state of mind is irrelevant to the existence of probable cause and that his subjective reason for making the arrest need not be the criminal offense as to which the known facts provide probable cause.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Atwater v. City of Lago Vista
Year: 2001
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: It does not. The standard of probable cause applies to all arrests, without the need to balance the interests and circumstances involved in particular situations. If an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual has commited even a very minor criminal offense, he may arrest the offender.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment forbids a warrantless arrest for a minor criminal offense, such as a misdemeanor seatbelt violation punishable only by a fine.
5. Procedural History: The City removed the suit to the USDC and the District Court ruled the 4th Amendment claim meritless and granted the City’s summary judgment motion. The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that an arrest for a first-time seat belt offense was an unreasonable seizure, vacated the panel’s decision, and affirmed the summary judgment.
6. Facts: Atwater was pulled over for driving without a seatbelt and for failing to secure her two children in the front seat. She could not produce license and insurance documents. She pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor seatbelt offenses and paid a $50 fine; other charges were dismissed. Petitioners allege respondents had violated Atwater’s 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Atwater contends founding-era common-law rules forbade peace officers to make warrantless misdemeanor arrests except in cases of breach of the peace. -> the argument ultimately fails. The common law commentators reached divergent conclusions with respect to officers’ warrantless misdemeanor arrest power. Parliament repeatedly extended express warrantless arrest authority to cover misdemeanor level offenses.
Today statutes in all 50 States permit warrantless misdemeanor arrests by peace officers without requiring any breach of the peace.
Atwater argues for a modern arrest rule forbidding custodial arrest, even upon probable cause when conviction could not ultimately carry any jail time and when the govt shows no compelling need for immediate detention.
Atwater’s argument may seem to respect the values of clarity and simplicity -> complications arise the moment we begin to think about the possible applications of the several criteria Atwater proposes for drawing a line between minor crimes with limited arrest authority and others not so restricted.
One line is between jailable and fine-only offenses. -> Atwater’s general rule and limiting proviso promise very little in the way of administrability.
An officer not sure that the drugs weighed enough to warrant jail time or not quite certain about a suspect’s risk of flight would not arrest; the costs to society of underenforcement could easily outweigh the costs to defendants of being needlessly arrested and booked.
It is easier to devise a minor-offense limitation by statute than to derive one through Constitution. There is a dearth of horribles demanding redress. The fact caps the reasons for rejecting Atwater’s request for the development of a new and distinct body of constitutional law.
O’Connor dissenting: the Court recognizes that the arrest was a pointless indignity that served no discernible state interest and yet holds that the arrest was constitutionally permissible. Warrantless misdemeanor arrests were not the subject of a clear and consistently applied rule at common law. We must engage in the balancing test required by the Fourth Amendment. A custodial arrest exacts an obvious toll on an individual’s liberty and privacy. When such considerations are not present, a citation or summons may serve the State’s remaining law enforcement interests every bit as effectively as an arrest. Giving police officers constitutional carte blanche to effect an arrest whenever there is probable cause to believe a fine-only misdemeanor has been committed irreconcilable with the 4th Amendment. The police officer should issue a citation unless the officer is able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant intrusion of a full custodial arrest. The majority’s concerns are addressed by the qualified immunity. The per se rule has serious consequences. A broad range of conduct falls into fine-only misdemeanors. The majority gives officers unfettered discretion without articulating a single reason.


Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – The issuance, content, and execution of warrants, US v. Grubbs
Year: 2006
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: the 4th Amendment does not require that the triggering condition for an anticipatory search warrant be set forth in the warrant itself.
4. Issue: whether anticipatory search warrants are categorically unconstitutional.
5. Procedural History: Grubbs moved to suppress the evidence, because the warrant failed to list the triggering condition. The District Court denied the motion. Grubbs pleaded guilty. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding the particularity requirement applies with full force to the conditions precedent to an anticipatory search warrant and the inspectors failed to present the affidavit with the triggering conditions listed.
6. Facts: Grubbs purchased a videotape containing child pornography from a Web site operated by an undercover postal inspector. Officers from the Postal Inspection service arranged a controlled delivery of a package containing the videotape to Grubbs’ residence. A postal inspector submitted a search warrant application to a Magistrate Judge accompanied by an affidavit describing the proposed operation in detail. The affidavit referred to attachments describing Grubbs’ residence and the items officers would seize. Grubbs’ wife signed and took the unopened package inside and the inspectors detained Grubbs as he left his home a few minutes later and searched the house. 30 minutes into the search, Grubbs was provided with a copy of the warrant. Grubbs consented to interrogation and admitted ordering. He was placed under arrest and items were seized.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: An anticipatory warrant is “a warrant based upon an affidavit showing probable cause that at some future time certain evidence of crime will be located at a specified place.” Most anticipatory warrants subject their execution to some condition precedent other than the mere passage of time – a triggering condition.
If the government were to execute an anticipatory warrant before the triggering condition occurred, there would be no reason to believe the item described in the warrant could be found at the searched location. Grubbs argues anticipatory warrants contravene that “no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause.” -> reject. Because the probable cause requirement looks to whether evidence will be found when the search is conducted, all warrants are anticipatory.
The fact that the contraband is not presently located at the place described in the warrant is immaterial, so long as there is probable cause to believe that it will be there when the search warrant is executed. Warrants require that (1) it is now probable that (2) contraband, evidence of a crime, or a fugitive will be on the described premises (3) when the warrant is executed.
The probability determination for a conditioned anticipatory warrant looks to the likelihood that the condition will occur, and thus that a proper object of seizure will be on the described premises. The warrant must be true not only that if the triggering condition occurs there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence will be found in a particular place, and that there is probable cause to believe the triggering condition will occur. The affidavit should provide both.
The 4th Amendment specifies “the place to be searched” and “the persons or things to be seized” that must be particularly described in the warrant. The particularity requirement does not include the conditions precedent to execution of the warrant.
Respondent argues that setting forth the triggering condition in the warrant itself is necessary to delineate the limits of the executing officer’s power. -> the principle is not to be found in the Constitution. The 4th Amendment does not require that the warrant set forth the magistrate’ basis or description of a triggering condition.
Respondent argues listing the triggering condition in the warrant is necessary to assure the individual whose property is searched or seized of the lawful authority of the executing officer, his need to search, and the limits of his power to search. -> the Constitution protects property owners by interposing, ex ante, the deliberate, impartial judgment of a judicial officer between the citizen and the police.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Franks v. Delaware
Year: 1978
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: it is permissible to challenge the truthfulness of statements made in an affidavit supporting application for a warrant.
8. Reasoning: where Defendant makes a substantial preliminary showing that a false statement knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, was included by the affiant in the warrant affidavit, and if the allegedly false statement is necessary to the finding of probable cause, the 4th Amendment requires that a hearing be held at the Defendant’s request. In the event that at the hearing the allegation of perjury is established by a preponderance of the evidence, and, with the affidavit’s false material set to one side, the affidavit’s remaining content is insufficient to establish probable cause, the search warrant must be voided.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Andresen v. Maryland
Year: 1976
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: The warrants did not authorize the executing officers to conduct a search for evidence of other crimes but only to search for and seize evidence relevant to the crime of false pretenses and Lot 13T.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: In 1972, a Bi-County Fraud Unit began investigation of real estate settlement activities in the DC area. Petitioner Andresen’s transaction involving Lot 13T came under scrutiny. The investigation involving interviews disclosed that petitioner, acting as settlement attorney, had defrauded the purchaser of Lot 13T. Petitioner had represented that the property was free of liens and that no title insurance was necessary when he knew that there were two outstanding liens on the property. Lienholders, by threatening to foreclose their liens, had forced a halt to the purchaser’s construction on the property. Petitioner responded to purchaser by issuing a title policy guaranteeing clear title to the property. By this action, Petitioner defrauded that insurance company by requiring it to pay the outstanding lien. The investigators concluded there was probable cause to believe false pretenses were committed and applied for warrants to search, which was granted. The investigator seized some files.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Petitioner claims 4th Amendment rights were violated because the descriptive terms of the search warrants were so broad as to make them impermissible “general” warrants and seizure violated Warden v. Hayden.
Petitioner claims the warrants were rendered general by the phrase “together with other fruits, instrumentalities, and evidence of crime at this time unknown.” -> 4th Amendment requires a particular description of the things to be seized. The phrase authorizes the search for and seizure of evidence relating to “the crime of false pretenses with respect to lot 13T.” The phrase is not a separate sentence but appears at the end of a lengthy list. In this context, the crime refers only to the crime of false pretenses with respect to the sale of Lot 13T. The “other fruits” clause are limited by what precedes the colon, namely “items pertaining to lot 13, block T.”
Brennan dissenting: General warrants are prohibited. The problem to be avoided is “not that of intrusion per se, but of a general, exploratory rummaging in a person’s belongings.” This Court’s construction of the warrants was not available to the investigators at the time they executed the warrants. The question is not how those warrants are to be viewed in hindsight, but how they were in fact viewed by those executing them. The overwhelming quantity suppressed or returned is irrefutable testimony to the unlawful generality.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Groh v. Ramirez
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirm.
3. Holding: the warrant was invalid and the search had been unreasonable.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The district court granted summary judgment for Groh, but the Ninth Circuit reversed.
6. Facts: Bureau of ATF agent (Groh) prepared an application for a warrant to search a ranch for various weapons and documents. A magistrate signed the warrant form. The application described the contraband sought but warrant did not. In the section calling for a description of the items to be seized, Groh typed in a description of the house to be searched. The warrant recited the Magistrate was satisfied the affidavit established probable cause to believe that contraband was on the premises and grounds existed for the warrant’s issuance. No illegal weapons or explosives were found.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The warrant failed to describe particularly the persons and things to be seized. The 4th Amendment requires particularity in the warrant, not in the supporting documents. The warrant did not describe the items to be seized at all. Presumptive rule against warrantless searches applies with equal force to searches whose only defect is a lack of particularity in the warrant.
Groh argues “a search conducted pursuant to a warrant lacking particularity should be exempt from the presumption of unreasonableness if the goals served by the particularity requirement are otherwise satisfied.” -> Groh did not have in his possession a warrant particularly describing the things he intended to seize, the search was unreasonable.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Maryland v. Garrison
Year: 1987
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: the officers’ conduct was consistent with a reasonable effort to ascertain and identify the place intended to be searched within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.
4. Issue: a search warrant is mistaken or ambiguous in its description of the place to be searched. Whether the warrant was valid when issued. Whether it was executed in a reasonable manner.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: The warrant authorized the search of Mr. “McWebb and ‘the premises known as 2036 Park Avenue, third floor apartment.’” At the time they obtained the warrant and at the time of its execution the police mistakenly believed that the third floor of the building described contained only one apartment. In fact, there were two separate apartments on the third floor, McWebb’s and Garrsion’s. By the time officers realized that was the case, they had already entered Garrison’s apartment and discovered contraband.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The court found no violation of the particularity or probable cause requirements. The Court found the warrant’s description of the place to be broader than appropriate. The court asserted that the discovery of facts demonstrating that a valid warrant was unnecessarily broad does not retroactively invalidate a warrant. A warrant’s validity must be assessed on the basis of the information that officers disclosed, or had a duty to discover and to disclose, to the issuing Magistrate. If the officers had known or should have known about the two separate units the warrant would not have been valid. The mistaken belief was reasonable and the warrant, as it authorized a search that was ambiguous, was valid when it issued.
If the officers had known or should have known about the two separate units before they entered Garrison’s apartment, they would have been obligated to limit their search to McWebb’s apartment. The validity of the search depends on whether the officers’ failure to realize the overbreadth of the warrant was objectively understandable and reasonable. Here it was, because the objective facts available to the officers suggested no distinction between McWebb’s apartment and third floor. Even if the warrant were to be read as authorizing a search limited, the entry of Garrison’s was reasonable because at the time of the entry the officers perceived McWebb’s apartment and the third floor as one and the same.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Wilson v. Arkansas
Year: 1995
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reverse and remand.
3. Holding: the common-law “knock and announce” principle forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry under the 4th Amendment. In some circumstances an officer’s unannounced entry into a home might be unreasonable.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: petitioner filed a motion to suppress the evidence asserting that the search was invalid for lack of knock and announce. The trial court denied the motion. Petitioner was convicted of all charges and sentenced to 32 years. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the conviction.
6. Facts: Wilson sold drugs to an informant for the Arkansas State Police in November and December of 1992. Wilson later threatened the informant with a gun. Police secured a warrant to search the home Wilson shared with Jacobs, who had convictions for arson and firebombing. Police announced themselves as they entered the unlocked screen door and passed through the open main door to the home. Wilson was in the bathroom flushing drugs down the toilet. Police found drugs, drug paraphernalia, and a gun.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: common law search and seizure leaves no doubt that the reasonableness of a search of a dwelling may depend in part on whether law enforcement officers announced their presence and authority prior to entering. Early American States enacted that the breaking of the door of a dwelling was permitted once admittance was refused. Early American courts embraced the common law knock-and-announce principle.
This is not to say that every entry must be preceded by an announcement under the 4th Amendment’s flexible requirement of reasonableness.
The common-law rule was justified in part by the belief that announcement would avoid the destruction or breaking of any house. An officer may dispense with announcement where a prisoner escapes and retreats to his dwelling or officers have reason to believe that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance notice were given. Law enforcement interests may also establish the reasonableness of an unannounced entry.
Respondents contend the officers reasonably believed that a prior announcement would have placed them in peril, given their knowledge of threat with a weapon and convictions, and would have produced an unreasonable risk that petitioner would destroy easily disposable narcotics evidence. -> remand to determine their sufficiency.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Richards v. Wisconsin
Year: 1997
Court: Supreme Court of the US
3. Holding: In each case, it is the duty of a court to determine whether the facts and circumstances of the particular entry justified dispensing with the known-and-announce requirement.
5. Procedural History: Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld an unannounced entry based on its conclusion that police officers never need to knock and announce when executing a search warrant in a felony drug investigation.
8. Reasoning: creating exceptions to the known-and-announce rule presents concerns: (1) the exception contains considerable overgeneralization. (2) the reasons for creating an exception in one category can, relatively easily, be applied to others. If a per se exception were allowed for each category of criminal investigation, the knock-and-announce element of the 4th Amendment’s reasonableness requirement would be meaningless.
The fact that felony drug investigations may frequently present circumstances warranting a no-knock entry cannot remove from the neutral scrutiny of a reviewing court the reasonableness of the police decision not to knock-and-announce in a particular case.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – United States v. Ramirez
Year: 1998
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: lawfulness of a no-knock entry does not depend on whether property is damaged in the course of the entry.
4. Issue: whether the reasonable suspicion standard the Richards Court announced for no-knock entries applies when the entry results in the destruction of property.
5. Procedural History: the Ninth Circuit held that a heightened standard governs unannounced entries when property is destroyed and that the heightened standard had not been met on the facts of this case.
6. Facts: Without knocking and announcing, the officers broke a window in the defendant’s garage.
8. Reasoning: Whether a reasonable suspicion exists depends in no way on whether police must destroy property to enter.
Excessive or unnecessary destruction of property in the course of a search may violate the 4th Amendment even though the entry itself is lawful and the fruits of the search are not subject to suppression.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – United States v. Banks
Year: 2003
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: the reasonableness of warrant execution must be determined “case by case” based on “the totality of circumstances.”
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: A trial judge denied Banks’ motion to suppress. The Court of Appeals reversed.
6. Facts: Officers with a search warrant arrived at Banks’ apartment. They called out “police search warrant” and rapped on the front door. After waiting “15 to 20 seconds” the officers “broke open the front door with a battering ram.” Banks was in the shower. A search produced contraband.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: after 15 to 20 seconds without a response, the police could fairly suspect that the cocaine would be disposed of if they were reticent any longer. Once the exigency matured, the officers were not bound to learn anything more or wait any longer before going in.
The facts that Banks was actually in the shower was irrelevant because “the facts known to the police are what count in judging reasonable waiting time,” and there was “no indication that the police knew that Banks was in the shower.”
(1) When officers justify an entry after a knock and announcement on the ground that an occupant’s failure to admit them fairly suggested a refusal to let them in, the reasonableness of suspecting refusal turns on whether an occupant has had time to get to the door. (2) the need to damage property in order to enter premises does play a role in assessing the reasonableness of entry in cases with no reason to suspect an immediate risk of frustration or futility in waiting at all.

Unreasonableness and the warrant requirement – Wilson v. Layne
Year: 1999
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: a media ride-along violates the 4th Amendment, when the presence of the third parties in the home is not in aid of the execution of the warrant.
6. Facts: as part of a federal operation Operation Gunsmoke, a special national fugitive apprehension program, officers identified Wilson who violated probation and was considered likely to be armed, to resist arrest, and to assault the police. The officers secured three arrest warrants. The officers and media personnel entered Wilson’s parents’ house. Charles, Wilson’s father, demanded that the officers state their business. Believing he was Dominic, the officers subdued Charles. The photographer took numerous pictures but none were published. Media representatives did not take part in executing the arrest warrant.
8. Reasoning: a search that is otherwise reasonable can be rendered unconstitutional because the scope of the search exceeds that permitted by the terms of a validly issued warrant. The present of the reporter and photographer in Wilson was not related to the objectives of the authorized intrusion. This was not a case in which the presence of the third parties directly aided in the execution of the warrant.
Defendants argued the reporters served a number of legitimate law enforcement purposes. Media furthered the law enforcement objectives in a general sense and officers should have reasonable discretion to decide when media presence would advance their mission. -> if such generalized law-enforcement objectives were sufficient to trump the residential privacy interests, the Amendment’s text would be significantly watered down.
Defendants argue the presence of third parties could publicize government efforts to combat crime and facilitate accurate reporting on law enforcement activities -> the possibility of good public relations is not enough to justify the ride-along and the need for accurate reporting bears no direct relation to the constitutional justification for the police intrusion into a home.
Defendants argue media presence could serve to minimize police abuses and protect suspects and protect the safety of officers -> media representatives were not present in this case to serve those interests but for private purposes.

For each exception, it should be identified and explored: (1) the underlying rationale of the exception; (2) the precise showing necessary to invoke the exception; and (3) the scope of the warrantless authority conferred by the exception.

Reasonable Searches without warrants: the nature and scope of the exceptions – Chimel v. California
Year: 1969
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: the search here went far beyond the petitioner’s person and the area from within which he might have obtained either a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him. The scope of the search was unreasonable.
4. Issue: whether the warrantless search of the petitioner’s entire house can be constitutionally justified as incident to that arrest.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Pursuant to a valid arrest warrant, the police went to the home of Chimel to arrest him for the burglary of a coin shop. Chimel’s wife let the police inside, and when Chimel returned home they arrested him. Without a search warrant and without permission, the police then conducted a complete search of Chimel’s three-bedroom house. The police instructed Chimel’s wife to remove items from drawers, and eventually the police found and seized a number of coins, medals, and tokens. The search took between 45 minutes and an hour.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Rabinowitz has come to stand for the proposition, inter alia, that a warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest may generally extend to the area that is considered to be in the possession or under the control of the person arrested. Even limited to its own facts, the Rabinowitz decision was, as we have seen, hardly founded on an unimpeachable line of authority.
Officer’s safety might well be endangered and the arrest itself frustrated. There is ample justification for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area within his immediate control. There is no comparable justification for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs.
It is reasonable to search a man’s house when he is arrested in it -> the argument is founded not on considerations relevant to Fourth Amendment interests. It is not easy to explain why it is less subjectively reasonable to search a man’s house when he is arrested on his front lawn or down the street than it is when he is in the house.
The petitioner points out that one results of Rabinowitz and Harris is to give law enforcement officials the opportunity to engage in searches not justified by probable cause, by the simple expedient of arranging to arrest suspects at home rather than elsewhere. -> correct.
White dissenting: the Amendment does not proscribe warrantless searches but instead it proscribes unreasonable searches and this Court has never held nor does the majority today assert that warrantless searches are necessarily unreasonable. The search of areas to which the accused does not have ready physical access is not enough to prove such searches unconstitutional. The Court has held and does not today deny that when there is probable cause to search and it is impracticable for one reason or another to get a search warrant then a warrantless search may be reasonable. Where as here the existence of probable cause is independently established and would justify a warrant for a broader search for evidence, I would follow past cases and permit such a search to be carried out without a warrant, since the fact of arrest supplies an exigent circumstance justifying police action before the evidence can be removed.

Reasonable Searches without warrants – US v. Robinson
Year: 1973
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the 4th Amendment, but is also a reasonable search under that Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the District Court convicted respondent. The Court of Appeals reversed.
6. Facts: Officer Jenks observed respondent driving and determined there was reason to believe respondent was operating a motor vehicle after the revocation of his operator’s permit. Jenks signaled respondent to stop and informed respondent that he was under arrest, effecting a full custody arrest. Jenks began to search respondent, and during the patdown, Jenks felt an object in the left breast pocket but couldn’t tell what it was. Jenks pulled out the object, a crumpled up cigarette package, and opened it, finding 14 gelatin capsules of white powder later found to be heroin.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Exception to the warrant requirement includes a search made of the person of the arrestee by virtue of the lawful arrest and a search made of the area within the control of the arrestee.
Virtually all of the statements of this Court affirming the existence of an unqualified authority to search incident to a lawful arrest are dicta.
The justification or reason for the authority to search incident to a lawful arrest rests quite as much on the need to disarm as it does on the need to preserve evidence on his person for later use at trial. The standards are not commuted to the stricter Terry standards by the absence of probable fruits or further evidence of the particular crime.
Marshall dissenting: in most jurisdictions and for most traffic offenses the determination of whether to issue a citation or effect a full arrest is discretionary with the officer. There is always the possibility that a police officer, lacking probable cause to obtain a search warrant, will use a traffic arrest as a pretext to conduct a search. Officer Jenks had no reason to believe and did not in fact believe that the object in respondent’s coat pocket was a weapon. The removal of the object from the pocket cannot be justified as part of a limited Terry weapons frisk. The difference between the two contexts relates to whether the officer has cause to believe that the individual he is dealing with possesses weapons which might be used against him. Nor was there any particular reason here to believe that respondent was dangerous. Clearly there was no justification consistent with the Fourth Amendment which would authorize his opening the package and looking inside. Opening the package did not further the protective purpose of the search. The search conducted by Officer Jenks went far beyond what was reasonably necessary to protect him from harm or to ensure that respondent would not effect an escape from custody.
Powell concurring: an individual lawfully subjected to a custodial arrest retains no significant 4th Amendment interest in the privacy of his persons. If the arrest is lawful, the privacy interest guarded by the 4th Amendment is subordinated to a legitimate and overriding governmental concern.

Reasonable Searches without warrants – Knowles v. Iowa
Year: 1998
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: the Court declined to extend the bright line rule of Robinson to a situation where the concern for officer safety is not present to the same extent and the concern for destruction or loss of evidence is not present at all.
6. Facts: An Iowa police officer pulled Knowles (defendant) over for speeding. The officer issued Knowles a citation and then searched the car. The officer did not have probable cause or a warrant, and Knowles did not consent to the search. After finding drugs and drug paraphernalia in the car, the officer arrested Knowles.
8. Reasoning: Defendant claimed that the search incident to citation authorized by Iowa law and conducted in his case violated the 4th Amendment.
Historical rationales for the search incident to arrest exception are: (1) the need to disarm the suspect and (2) the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial. Neither of these underlying rationales for the search incident to arrest exception is sufficient to justify a full search incident to a traffic citation.
The need to discover and preserve evidence cannot justify a full search. Once a driver is stopped for speeding and issued a citation, all the evidence necessary to prosecute that offense has been obtained. No further evidence of excessive speed is going to be found.

Reasonable Searches without warrants – Virginia v. Moore
Year: 2008
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: no support for the contention that the constitutionality of an arrest depends on its validity under state law in either history or traditional standards of reasonableness. When officers have probable cause to believe that a person has committed a crime in their presence, the 4th Amendment permits them to make an arrest.
4. Issue: whether a police officer violates the 4th Amendment by making an arrest based on probable cause but prohibited by state law.
8. Reasoning: an arrest based on probable cause serves interests sufficient to justify a seizure whether or not the state has chosen to forego the option of arrest. The interest in readily administrable rules supports a refusal to tie the constitutionality of an arrest to the dictates of state law. Linking reasonableness to state law would cause 4th Amendment protections to vary, undesirably.

Reasonable Searches without warrants – Arizona v. Gant
Year: 2009
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirm.
3. Holding: we reject this reading of Belton and Chimel rationale authorizes police to search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search.
Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied the motion to suppress. A jury found Gant guilty on both counts. The Arizona Supreme Court found the search unreasonable.
6. Facts: Acting on an anonymous tip that the residence was being used to sell drugs, Tucson police officers knocked on the front door and asked to speak to the owner. Gant answered and the officers conducted a records check, which revealed that Gant’s driver’s license had been suspended and there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest for driving with a suspended license. The officers returned and arrested a man for providing a false name and a woman for possessing drug. Gant arrived and parked his car. Gant approached officer Griffith and Griffith immediately arrested and handcuffed Gant. Gant was placed in the back of a patrol car and officers searched his car. They found a gun and a bag of cocaine. Gant was charged with possession of a narcotic drug for sale and possession of drug paraphernalia.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Belton held that when an officer lawfully arrests the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of the automobile and any containers therein. Neither the possibility of access nor the likelihood of discovering offense-related evidence authorized the search in this case.
Gant clearly was not within reaching distance of his car at the time of the search. Gant was arrested for driving with a suspended license, an offense for which police could not expect to find evidence in the passenger compartment. The search was unreasonable.
The State argues Belton searches are reasonable regardless of the possibility of access in a given case -> The State seriously undervalues the privacy interests at stake. A motorist’s privacy interest is important and deserving of constitutional protection. The State exaggerates the clarity that its reading of Belton provides. Courts are at odds regarding how close in time to the arrest and how proximate to the arrestee’s vehicle an officer’s first contact with the arrestee must be.
The State argues a broad reading of Belton would meaningfully further law enforcement interests -> it would serve no purpose except to provide a police entitlement and it is anathema to the 4th Amendment to permit a warrantless search on that basis.
Scalia concurring: when an arrest is made in connection with a roadside stop, police virtually always have a less intrusive and more effective means of ensuring their safety: ordering the arrestee away from the vehicle, patting him down in the open, handcuffing him, and placing him in the squad car. The risk of being shot is not at all reduced by allowing a search of the stopped vehicle. I am confronted with the choice of leaving the current understanding of Belton and Thornton in effect or acceding to what seems as the artificial narrowing of those cases. The latter does not provide the degree of certainty but the former is plainly unconstitutional searches and the greater evil.
Breyer dissenting: to change a well-established legal precedent heavily relied on bears a heavy burden and I have not found that burden met.
Alito dissenting: a precedent should be followed unless there is a special justification for its abandonment. Relevant factors include whether the precedent has engendered reliance, there has been an important change in circumstances in the outside world, the precedent has proved to be unworkable, the precedent has been undermined by later decisions, and the decision was badly reasoned. The Belton rule has been taught to police officers for more than a quarter century. It was well known in 1981 a person handcuffed and in a patrol car is unlikely to retrieve a weapon in his own car or destroy evidence. The Belton rule provides a test relatively easy to apply. The Belton rule was reaffirmed and extended. In many cases, an officer making an arrest is able to handcuff the arrestee and remove him to a secure place before conducting a search. It is safer for an arresting officer to secure an arrestee before searching.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Riley v. California
Year: 2014
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reverse and remand.
3. Holding: decline to extend Robinson to searches of data on cell phones and officers must generally secure a warrant before conducting such a search.
4. Issue: whether the police may, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.
5. Procedural History: Riley was charged with firing, assault, and attempted murder. Riley moved to suppress all evidence from his cell phone. He contended the searches had been performed without a warrant and were not otherwise justified by exigent circumstances. The trial court rejected that argument. Some photographs were admitted, and Riley was convicted on all three counts. The CA Court of Appeal affirmed.
Wurie was charged and moved to suppress evidence from the search. The District Court denied the motion. First Circuit reversed the denial.
6. Facts: Riley was stopped for driving with expired registration tags. The officer also learned that Riley’s license had been suspended. The officer impounded Riley’s car and another officer conducted an inventory search of the car. Riley was arrested for possession of concealed and loaded firearms after two handguns turned up under the car’s hood. An officer searched Riley and seized a cell phone. A detective examined the contents of the phone and discovered gang-related videos and some photographs of Riley standing in front of a car that officers suspected had been involved in a shooting a few weeks earlier.
An officer performing routine surveillance observed Wurie make an apparent drug sale from a car. Officers arrested Wurie and seized two cell phones. A flip phone received calls from a source identified as “my house,” and officers pressed one button on the phone to access its call log, and another button to determine the phone number. They next used an online phone directory to trace that number to an apartment. The officers saw Wurie’s name on a mailbox and observed a woman resembling the woman in the photograph. They obtained a search warrant and found contrabands.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: We generally determine whether to exempt a given type of search from the warrant requirement by “assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.” On the governmental interest side, Robinson concluded that harm to officers and destruction of evidence are present in all custodial arrests. There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data. A search of information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the search in Robinson.
Once an officer has secured a phone and eliminated any potential physical threats, data on the phone can endanger no one. The officer in Robinson knew the objects in pack were not cigarettes. No such unknowns exist with respect to digital data. Information on a cell phone may be destroyed by remote wiping and data encryption. Either problem is not prevalent. The police may be able to rely on exigent circumstances to search the phone immediately.
The US asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is materially indistinguishable from searches of physical items. -> modern cell phones implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of physical objects.
A cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information. A cell phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more. There is an element of pervasiveness with cell phones. A cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house. The US concedes that search cannot stretch to cover a search of files accessed remotely. Officers searching a phone’s data would not typically know whether the information was stored locally or has been pulled from the cloud.
The US proposes importing the Gant standard, allowing a warrantless search of an arrestee’s cell phone whenever it is reasonable to believe that the phone contains evidence of the crime of arrest. -> Gant relied on circumstances unique to the vehicle context to endorse a search. The circumstances were “a reduced expectation of privacy” and “heightened law enforcement needs.” Cell phone searches bear neither of those characteristics.
In the cell phone context, it is reasonable to expect that incriminating information will be found on a phone regardless of when the crime occurred. The sources of potential pertinent information are virtually unlimited.
The US proposes restricting the scope of a cell phone search to areas an officer reasonably believes information relevant will be discovered. -> officers would not be able to discern in advance what information is found where.
Officers should always be able to search a phone’s call log -> call logs contain more than phone numbers.
A warrant is generally required before a cell phone search. An exception is when the exigencies of the situation make the needs of law enforcement so compelling.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Birchfield v. North Dakota
Year: 2016
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: incident to a lawful arrest for drunk driving it is reasonable to administer a breath test, but not a blood test for evidence of intoxication.
8. Reasoning: both breath and blood tests constitute searches. Breath tests are reasonable incident to arrests because the state interest in preventing drunk driving outweighs the intrusion on the individual. Blood tests are unreasonable incident to arrests because they are significantly more intrusive and less invasive alternative of a breath test is available. Blood tests are permissible only if officers secure a search warrant or an exception applies. A warrantless blood draw could not be justified on the basis of a motorist’s implied consent.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Washington v. Chrisman
Year: 1982
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: an officer could enter the dormitory room of an arrested student without a warrant because it is not unreasonable under the 4th Amendment for a police officer, as a matter of routine, to monitor the movements of an arrested person, as his judgment dictates, following the arrest.
8. Reasoning: insofar as the monitoring requires a warrantless entry into a private place, an exception is justified by the officer’s compelling needs “to ensure his own safety” and “the integrity of his arrest.”

Reasonable searches without warrants – Steagald v. US
Year: 1981
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: Since warrantless searches of a home are impermissible absent consent or exigent circumstances, the instant search violated the 4th Amendment. In order to render the instant search reasonable under the 4th Amendment, a search warrant was required.
4. Issue: whether an arrest warrant is adequate to protect the 4th Amendment interests of persons not named in the warrant when their homes are searched without their consent and in the absence of exigent circumstances.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Confident informant contacted DEA agent saying he might be able to locate Ricky Lyons, a federal fugitive. The informant gave a telephone number where Lyons could be reached during the next 24 hours. DEA agent contacted Telephone Co. and secured the address corresponding to the telephone number. Lyons was subject of an arrest warrant. DEA officers drove to the address and observed two men standing outside. Gaultney’s wife answered the door and, during their search, the agents found what they believed to be cocaine. Later, they obtained a search warrant and found 43 pounds of cocaine in the home.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The search at issue here took place in the absence of consent or exigent circumstances. The challenge to the search is asserted by a person not named in the warrant who was convicted on the basis of evidence uncovered during a search of his residence for Lyons.
An arrest warrant is issued upon a showing that the subject of the warrant has committed an offense and the warrant primarily serves to protect an individual from an unreasonable seizure. A search warrant is issued upon a showing that the legitimate object of a search is located in a particular place and safeguards an individual’s interest in the privacy against unjustified intrusion of the police.
The officers relied on the warrant as legal authority to enter the home of a third person based on their belief that Lyons might be a guest there. Petitioner’s only protection from an illegal entry and search was the agent’s personal determination of probable cause.
Under a contrary conclusion, the police could search all the homes of that individual’s friends and acquaintances, and an arrest warrant may serve as the pretext for entering a home in which the police have a suspicion, but not probable cause.
The government contends that existing remedies, such as motions to suppress and damages, provide adequate means of address. -> do not agree. The 4th Amendment is designed to prevent, not simply to redress, unlawful police action.
The government contends that persons are inherent mobile and officers seeking to effect an arrest may be forced to return to the magistrate several times as the subject of the warrant moves from place to place. -> arrest warrant alone will suffice to enter a suspect’s own residence to effect his arrest. If probable cause exists, no warrant is required to apprehend a suspected felon in a public place. The additional burden of obtaining a search warrant is miniscule.
Rehnquist dissenting: the Court’s reasoning assumes the answer to the question presented and ignores the existence of an arrest warrant for a fugitive believed on the basis of probable cause to be in the dwelling. The government’s interests in the warrantless entry of a third-party dwelling to execute an arrest warrant are compelling, given the inherent mobility of the fugitive. The arrest warrant serves some of the functions of a separate search warrant would. It assures the occupants that the police is present on official business. The decision leads to increased uncertainty imposed on police officers in the field, committing magistrates, and trial judges.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden
Year: 1967
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The inference that he was in fact also looking for weapons is fully justified.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Police received a call that an armed man had just stolen money from a taxi company. Taxi drivers gave a description of the armed man, including the clothing he was wearing, and informed the police that the man had just entered a private residence. An officer found Bennie Hayden (defendant) upstairs, pretending to sleep. Around the same time, another officer found two firearms in a toilet tank in the house, and officers found ammunition matching the firearms in Hayden’s bedroom. One officer opened a washing machine, found clothing that matched the description of the robber’s clothing, and seized the clothing.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative. The 4th Amendment does not require delay if to do so would gravely endanger their lives or the lives of others. Speed here was essential.
While the weapons, ammunition, and cap may have been seized, the officer who seized the clothing was searching neither for the suspect nor for weapons when he looked into the washing machine. -> he knew that the robber was armed and he did not know that some weapons had been found at the time he opened the machine.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Welsh v. Wisconsin
Year: 1984
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: the warrantless entry was unreasonable.
6. Facts: the government relied on the exigent circumstances exception to justify a warrantless nighttime entry of a home to arrest a resident. Welsh was seen driving erratically. He swerved into an open field. When officers arrived, Welsh had departed on foot, abandoning the vehicle. A witness told an officer that Welsh was either inebriated or sick. Officers proceeded to Welsh’s house, entered, and arrested Welsh for driving while under the influence of an intoxicant.
8. Reasoning: the Court placed heavy reliance upon the relatively minor nature of the offense involved in Welsh.
The government asserted three different exigencies justified warrantless entry. (1) officers were in hot pursuit of a criminal. (2) they needed to prevent the threat he posed to the public safety. (3) they needed to preserve evidence of his blood alcohol level. -> there was no immediate and continuous pursuit of the petitioner from the scene of the crime, the suspect had abandoned his car and posed little remaining threat to the public safety, WI did not have a major interest in arresting such offenders.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Brigham City, Utah v. Stuart
Year: 2006
Court:
3. Holding: sustain the warrantless entry under the exigent circumstances exception.
6. Facts: officers entered a home without a warrant after witnessing an altercation in the kitchen that involved four adults and one juvenile.
8. Reasoning: one exigency obviating the requirement of a warrant is the need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury.
Defendants argue the entry was unreasonable because the officers were more interested in making arrests than quelling violence. -> an officer’s subjective motivation is irrelevant. An entry is valid if the objective circumstances establish sufficient need to assist or protect an occupant.
Defendants argue their conduct was not serious enough to justify the officers’ intrusion into the home. -> the officers were confronted with ongoing violence occurring within the home.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Michigan v. Fisher
Year: 2009
Court:
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: Officers could enter under the emergency aid exception because it was reasonable to believe that Fisher had hurt himself and needed treatment that in his rage he was unable to provide, or that Fisher was about to hurt, or had already hurt someone else.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: state court ruled the home entry violated the 4th Amendment.
6. Facts: officers responded to a complaint of a disturbance and were directed to a residence where a man was ‘going crazy.’ They found a household in considerable chaos. Police asked if he needed medical attention. Fisher did not respond to the knock and demanded that the officers go to get a search warrant. One officer pushed the front door partway and ventured inside. Fisher pointed a long gun at him.
8. Reasoning: officers may enter a home to provide assistance to an occupant who is injured or to prevent an imminent injury, and their authority depends on an objectively reasonable basis for believing that a person within the house is in need of immediate aid. The reasonableness of an entry depends on an objective inquiry into appearances and not upon a hindsight determination of whether there was in fact an emergency.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Kentucky v. King
Year: 2011
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: Where toe police did not create the exigency by engaging or threatening to engage in conduct that violates the 4th Amendment, warrantless entry to prevent the destruction of evidence is reasonable and allowed.
The exigent circumstances rule applies when the police do not gain entry to premises by means of an actual or threatened violation of the 4th Amendment. Because the officers did not violate or threaten to violate the 4th Amendment prior to the exigency, the exigency justified the warrantless search of the apartment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the Circuit Court charged respondent and denied motion to suppress. Respondent entered a conditional guilty plea. The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed, citing exigent circumstances. The Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed, because it was reasonably foreseeable that the occupants would destroy evidence when the police knocked on the door and announced their presence.
6. Facts: Police set up a controlled buy of crack cocaine outside an apartment complex. Officers entered the breezeway, heard a door shut, and detected a very strong odor of burnt marijuana. The officers saw two apartments. The odor came from the apartment on the left, so they announced themselves and heard people inside moving. Officers kicked in the door and, through a protective sweep, found drugs. Police entered the apartment on the right and found the drug dealer.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Officers may enter a home without a warrant to render emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent injury. Police may enter without a warrant when they are in hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect. The need to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence is a sufficient justification for a warrantless search. Under the “police-created exigency” doctrine, police may not rely on the need to prevent destruction of evidence when that exigency was created or manufactured by the conduct of the police.
Some courts ask whether officers deliberately created the exigent circumstances with the bad faith intent to avoid the warrant requirement -> we ask only whether the circumstances, viewed objectively justify the action.
Some courts hold that police may not rely on an exigency if it was reasonably foreseeable that the investigative tactics would create the exigent circumstances. -> it introduces an unacceptable degree of unpredictability. It creates unacceptable and unwarranted difficulties for officers who must make quick decisions and for judges required to determine whether the destruction was reasonably foreseeable based on what the officers knew at the time.
Some courts fault officers if officers do not week a warrant but instead knock on the door and seek either to speak with an occupant or to obtain consent to search. -> it unjustifiably interferes with legitimate law enforcement strategies. There are many entirely proper reasons why police may not want to seek a search warrant after evidence is acquired.
Some courts suggest officers may be found to have created or manufactured an exigency if the court concludes that the course of their investigation was contrary to standard or good law enforcement practices. -> it fails to provide clear guidance for officers and authorizes courts to make judgments on matters within the province of officers.
Respondent contends officers impermissibly create an exigency when they engage in conduct that causes a reasonable person to believe their entry is imminent and inevitable. Factors include tone of voice and forcefulness of knocks. -> ability of officers to respond cannot turn on such subtleties. It would be difficult for officers to know how loud they should be and for a court to determine whether the threshold has been passed. It is nebulous and impractical.
Ginsburg dissenting: I would not allow an expedient knock to override the warrant requirement.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Vale v. Louisiana
Year: 1970
Court:
3. Holding: the warrantless search was unreasonable, rejecting that potential removal, concealment or destruction of the narcotics gave rise to an exigency. Decline that an arrest on the street can provide its own exigent circumstance so as to justify a warrantless search of the arrestee’s house.
6. Facts: Officers saw Vale engage in an apparent drug transaction in the street in front of the home. The officers approached and arrested Vale outside the home. Vale’s family was informed about the arrest and the home was searched, leading to the discovery of narcotics.
8. Reasoning: the State had not carried its burden of showing the existence of an exceptional situation. Officers could remain on the premises, applying for and securing a warrant by telephone or other means.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Illinois v. McArthur
Year: 2001
Court:
3. Holding: Upon balancing the privacy-related and law enforcement-related concerns, the restriction was reasonable.
4. Issue: whether officers who had probable cause to believe that Defendant had marijuana in his home acted in violation of the 4th Amendment when they prevented him from entering the home.
5. Procedural History: The trial judge granted motion to suppress and the ruling was affirmed on appeal.
6. Facts: McArthur asked two police officers to accompany her back to her trailer home so that she could remove her belongings. She needed the officers to help her keep the peace. When she came out McArthur spoke to one of the officers, Chief Love, and suggested that he search the trailer because she said Charles had “dope” inside. She told him that her husband kept it under the couch. When Love knocked on the trailer door and told Charles what the wife had said, asking whether he could come in, the husband said no. Love then sent the other officer and McArthur to get a search warrant. When Charles was with Love on the porch, Love told the husband that he could not reenter the trailer unless a police officer went with him. The second officer returned two hours later with the search warrant, and they and other officers searched the trailer home.
8. Reasoning: the warrantless seizure of the premises was not per se unreasonable because of exigent circumstances.
The police had probable cause to believe that the trailer home contained evidence of a crime and contraband; they had good reason to fear that, unless restrained, Defendant would destroy the drugs; they made reasonable efforts to reconcile their law enforcement needs with the demands of personal privacy; and they imposed the restraint for a limited period of time.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Missouri v. McNeely
Year: 2013
3. Holding: reject a categorical rule that there was sufficient exigency to justify warrantless blood draws in every drunk-driving case. Whether a warrantless blood test of a drunk-driving suspect is reasonable must be determined case by case based on the totality of circumstances.
6. Facts: After arresting McNeely for driving under the influence, an officer, without obtaining a search warrant, took him to a hospital where his blood was drawn. The BAC was well above the legal limit.
8. Reasoning: the determination of whether a law enforcement officer faced an emergency that justified acting without a warrant must be based on the totality of circumstances.
The State argued that the inherently evanescent nature of BAC evidence justified a per se rule for blood testing in drunk-driving cases. -> unlike other evidence destruction scenarios that involve a suspect with control over easily disposable evidence, BAC evidence destruction is the result of natural dissipation. Because an officer must transport a suspect, delay is inevitable.
Roberts concurring: if there is time to secure a warrant before blood can be drawn the police must seek one I fan officer could reasonably conclude that there is not sufficient time to seek and receive a warrant, or he applies for one but does not receive a response before blood can be drawn, a warrantless blood draw may ensue.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Mitchell v. Wisconsin
Year: 2019
3. Holding: exigent circumstances doctrine almost always allows a warrantless blood test when police have probable cause to believe a person has committed a drunk-driving offense and the driver’s unconsciousness or stupor requires him to be taken to the hospital or similar facility before police have a reasonable opportunity to administer a standard evidentiary breath test.
8. Reasoning: exigency exists when (1) BAC evidence is dissipating and (2) some other factor creates pressing health, safety, or law enforcement needs that would take priority over a warrant application. When a driver is unconscious, the general rule is that a warrant is not needed. It is itself a medical emergency.
Sotomayor dissenting: even when the suspect falls unconscious, officers will have sufficient time to secure a warrant.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Lange v. California
Year: 2021
3. Holding: whether an exigency exists “turns on the particular facts of the case.”
5. Procedural History: The state courts agreed that the officer had probable cause to arrest Lange for the misdemeanor of failing to comply with a police signal, and pursuit of a suspected misdemeanant always qualifies as an exigent circumstance.
6. Facts: an officer sought to pull Lange over for a noise infraction when he was “about a hundred feet (some four-seconds drive) from his home. Rather than stopping, Lange continued to his driveway and entered his attached garage. The officer obtained evidence that Lange had been driving under the influence of alcohol.
8. Reasoning: The majority deemed “two facts about misdemeanors” to be important—that “[t]hey vary widely” and that they “may be (in a word) ‘minor.’” The addition of “a suspect’s flight” does change “the calculus[,] . . . but not enough to justify” a “categorical rule” for cases involving pursuit of a misdemeanant. [C]ase by case” assessment of “exigencies arising from misdemeanants’ flight” is required.
Roberts concurring: “hot pursuit is not merely a setting in which other exigent circumstances justifying warrantless entry might emerge. It is itself an exigent circumstance. A categorical rule is justified and reasonable because every pursuit “implicates substantial government interests, regardless of the offense precipitating the flight.” I

Vehicle and Container Searches – Chambers v. Maroney
Year: 1970
Court:
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: The blue station wagon could have been searched on the spot when it was stopped since there was probable cause to search and it was a fleeting target for a search.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Chambers was indicted for both robberies. His first trial ended in a mistrial and was convicted at the second trial.
6. Facts: A Gulf service station was robbed by two men carrying a gun. Two witnesses told police that four men were in the station wagon and one was wearing a green sweater. Kovacich told the police that one wore a green sweater and the other was wearing a trench coat. The occupants were arrested and the car was driven to the police station. In the car the police found two guns, money, and other evidence linking one of the car’s occupants, Chambers (defendant), with both the robbery of the gas station and another robbery that had occurred a few days earlier.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: if an effective search is to be made at any time, either the search must be made immediately without a warrant or the car itself must be seized and held without a warrant for whatever period is necessary to obtain a warrant for the search.
Carroll holds a search warrant unnecessary when there is probable cause to search an automobile stopped on the highway; the car is movable, the occupants are alerted, and the car’s contents may never be found again if a warrant must be obtained.
We see no difference between on the one hand seizing and holding a car before presenting the probable cause issue to a magistrate and on the other hand carrying out an immediate search without a warrant.
Harlan concurring in part and dissenting in part: Making a warrantless search of the entire vehicle on the highway and the removal of the car to the police station for a warrantless search there is not consistent with our insistence that departures from the warrant requirement strictly conform to the exigency presented. The occupants of the car have an interest in privacy that is protected even where the circumstances justify a temporary seizure. The Court’s endorsement of a warrantless invasion of that privacy where another course would suffice is imply inconsistent with our mandate.

Vehicles parked on curtilage – Collins v. Virginia
Year: 2018
Court:
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: exception does not permit the warrantless entry of curtilage needed to gain access to a vehicle.
4. Issue: whether officers could rely on the Carroll-Chambers exception to the warrant rule to justify searching a vehicle parked on the curtilage of a home.
5. Procedural History: The VA Supreme Court held that because the officer had probable cause to believe the motorcycle was stolen before search, the automobile exception justified the warrantless search.
6. Facts: Defendant parked a motorcycle beside a home where his girlfriend lived. An officer walked onto the residential property and up to the top of the driveway where the motorcycle was parked, removed a tarp, ran a search of the license plate and VIN, and confirmed that the motorcycle was stolen.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the warrant requirement applies to official intrusions into the curtilage that surrounds dwellings. To expand the scope of the automobile exception to include not only a vehicle search but also the entry of a home or its curtilage to access a vehicle would both undervalue the privacy protection afforded homes and curtilage and untether the exception from its two justifications, ready mobility and pervasive regulation.
Found support in plain view doctrine, which allows the warrantless seizure of an object that an officer has probable cause to seize, but does not allow the officer to enter private premises to effectuate such a seizure without first obtaining a warrant. Under doctrine pertaining to felony arrests, an officer may arrest a suspected felon in a public place without a warrant based on probable cause, but an entry of private premises to effectuate such an arrest is impermissible without a warrant.
Alito dissenting: the justifications for the authority to conduct warrantless searches of vehicles based on probable cause supported any additional intrusion. The motorcycle was no less mobile by virtue of its location and there were no greater privacy interests at stake than those implicated by the search of a vehicle on a public street.

Vehicle and Container Searches – Caniglia v. Strom
Year: 2021
2. Disposition: reverse and remand.
3. Holding: this Court has repeatedly “declined to expand the scope of ... exceptions to the warrant requirement to permit warrantless entry into the home.”
4. Issue: whether Cady’s acknowledgment of these “caretaking” duties creates a standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home.
5. Procedural History: The District Court granted summary judgment to respondents, and the First Circuit affirmed.
6. Facts: Caniglia retrieved a handgun from the bedroom, put it on the dining room table, and asked his wife to “shoot [him] now and get it over with.” She declined and instead left to spend the night at a hotel. The next morning, when petitioner’s wife discovered that she could not reach him by telephone, she called the police (respondents) to request a welfare check. Respondents accompanied petitioner’s wife to the home, where they encountered petitioner on the porch. They called an ambulance, and petitioner agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation—but only after respondents allegedly promised not to confiscate his firearms. Once the ambulance had taken petitioner away, however, respondents seized the weapons.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The First Circuit’s “community caretaking” rule, however, goes beyond anything this Court has recognized. But this recognition that police officers perform many civic tasks in modern society was just that—a recognition that these tasks exist, and not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere. What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes.

Reasonable searches without warrants – California v. Carney
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: decline to distinguish between “worthy” and “unworthy” vehicles which are either on the public roads and highways or situated such that it is reasonable to conclude that the vehicle is not being used as a residence.
4. Issue: whether law enforcement agents violated the 4th Amendment when they conducted a warrantless search, based on probable cause, of a fully mobile “motor home” located in a public space.
5. Procedural History: magistrate denied the motion to suppress. Respondent pleaded nolo contendere to the charges against him and was placed in probation.
6. Facts: Drug Enforcement Agency agents received a tip that Carney (defendant) was selling marijuana out of his mobile home. The DEA kept Carney under surveillance and watched as he entered the mobile home with another man. When the other man exited the mobile home, the police questioned him, and he told them that Carney had given him marijuana in exchange for sex. The police then had the man knock on Carney’s door, and when Carney answered, the police entered the home and found evidence of drugs.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the mobility of automobile creates circumstances of such exigency that rigorous enforcement of the warrant requirement is impossible. The expectation of privacy with respect to one’s automobile is significantly less. The reduced expectations come from the pervasive regulation of vehicles capable of traveling.
The vehicle falls clearly within the scope of the exception laid down in Carroll. An objective observer would conclude that it was being used as a vehicle.
Respondent urge to distinguish his vehicle because it was capable of functioning as a home. -> it would require that we apply the exception depending upon the size of the vehicle and the quality of its appointments. A motor home lends itself easily to an instrument of illegal activity.
Stevens dissenting: motor homes, by their common use and construction, afford their owners a substantial and legitimate expectation of privacy where they dwell within. Warrantless searches of motor homes are only reasonable when the motor home is raveling on the public streets or highways, or when exigent circumstances otherwise require an immediate search without the expenditure of time necessary to obtain a warrant. A warrantless search of living quarters in a motor home is presumptively unreasonable absent exigent circumstances.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Pennsylvania v. Labron, Pennsylvania v. Kilgore
Year: 1996
Court:
2. Disposition: Reverse.
3. Holding: the searches of the automobiles in these cases did not violate the 4th Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: PA Supreme Court found that the warrantless search of the stationary vehicle was unconstitutional.
PA Supreme Court held that the search violated the 4th Amendment because no exigent circumstances were present.
6. Facts: police observed a series of drug transactions on a street. They arrested the participants and searched the trunk of a car from which the drugs had been produced.
Officers developed probable cause to believe that narcotics would be found in a pickup truck. The truck was parked on the driveway of a farmhouse that belonged to another individual. Officers searched the pickup.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: If a car is readily mobile and probable cause exists to believe it contains contraband, the 4th Amendment thus permits police to search the vehicle without more.

Reasonable searches without warrants – Florida v. White
Year: 1999
Court:
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: the principle extends to the seizure of a vehicle in a public place when there is probable cause to believe the vehicle is forfeitable contraband.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the trial court and Court of Appeal rejected Defendant’s claim that the warrantless seizure violated the 4th Amendment. The FL Supreme Court concluded that the probable cause cannot ordinarily justify a seizure.
6. Facts: police officers saw Defendant use his car to deliver cocaine, developing probable cause to believe that the car was subject to forfeiture. Officers arrested Defendant on unrelated charges and seized his car from his employer’s parking lot without obtaining a warrant to do so.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Carroll-Chambers fully support the warrantless seizure of a vehicle when there is probable cause to believe it is subject to forfeiture as “contraband.” The need to act without a warrant is equally weighty when the automobile, as opposed to its contents, is the contraband that the police seek to secure.

Reasonable searches without warrants – US v. Chadwick
Year: 1977
Court:
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: There being no exigency, it was unreasonable for the Government to conduct this search without the safeguards a judicial warrant provides. Respondents were entitled to the protection of the Warrant Clause with the evaluation of a neutral magistrate, before their privacy interests in the contents of the footlocker were invaded.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Amtrak officials suspected that Machado and Leary (defendants) were traveling from California to Massachusetts with a footlocker full of marijuana. Federal agents greeted the train in Boston and used a police dog to confirm there were drugs in the footlocker. Chadwick (defendant) arrived at the train station to pick up the footlocker. Chadwick, Machado, and Leary were arrested immediately after they placed the footlocker in the trunk of Chadwick’s car. The footlocker was brought to the federal building, where it was searched about an hour and a half after the arrests were made. The agents did not obtain a search warrant.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the Government contends that only homes, offices, and private communications implicate interests which lie at the core of the 4th Amendment. In all other situations, less significant privacy values are at stake. -> the Warrant Clause does not in terms distinguish between searches conducted in private homes and other searches. There is no evidence that the Framers intended to exclude from protection all searches occurring outside the home.
By placing personal effects inside a double-locked footlocker, Respondents manifested an expectation that the contents would remain free from public examination.
The factors which diminish the privacy aspects of an automobile do not apply to Respondents’ footlocker. Luggage contents are not open to public view, and luggage is not subject to regular inspections and official scrutiny. A person’s expectation of privacy in personal luggage are substantially greater than in an automobile.
The Government urges that the Constitution permits the warrantless search of any property in the possession of a person arrested in public, so long as there is probable cause. -> warrantless searches of luggage cannot be justified if the search is remote in time or place from the arrest or no exigency exists.
Blackmun dissenting: I would hold generally that a warrant is not required to seize and search any movable property in the possession of a person properly arrested in a public place. A warrant would be routinely forthcoming in the vast majority of situations where the property has been seized in conjunction with the valid arrest of a person in a public place. Requiring the authorities to go through the formality of obtaining a warrant would not have much practical effect in protecting 4th Amendment values.

Reasonable Searches without Warrants – Arkansas v. Sanders
Year: 1979
Court:
3. Holding: the warrant requirement of the 4th Amendment applies to personal luggage taken from an automobile to the same degree as it applies to such luggage in other locations.
6. Facts: Police officers developed probable cause to believe that a green suitcase contained marijuana. Defendant and others loaded the suitcase into the trunk of a taxicab and drove away. The officers stopped the cab and opened the trunk and the suitcase without a warrant.
8. Reasoning: there was no justification for the extension of the automobile exception to the warrantless search of one’s personal luggage merely because it was located in an automobile.
Burger concurring: Chadwick clearly controlled this situation.

Reasonable Searches without Warrants – Robbins v. California
Year: 1981
Court:
3. Holding: Sanders warrant requirement governed every container unless the container is such that its contents may be said to be in plain view.
8. Reasoning: Powell concurring: warrantless searches of the containers were impermissible. Distinctions should be made among containers found in automobiles.

Reasonable Searches without Warrants – United States v. Ross
Year: 1982
3. Holding: the warrantless search of the paper bag was reasonable because it fell within the ambit of the automobile doctrine.
6. Facts: with probable cause to believe that an automobile contained narcotics, officers pulled it over. A search of the trunk revealed a closed paper bag. Upon opening the bag, officers found glassine bags containing white powder that proved to be heroin.
8. Reasoning: In Sanders, officers had probable cause to search the container in the vehicle. In Ross, container turned up during a search of a vehicle based on probable cause to search the vehicle. The scope of a warrantless vehicle search should be the same as the scope of a vehicle search made pursuant to a search warrant.

Reasonable Searches without Warrants – California v. Acevedo
Year: 1991
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: eliminate the warrant requirement for closed containers set forth in Sanders. The police may search an automobile and the containers within it where they have probable cause to believe contraband or evidence is contained.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment requires the police to obtain a warrant to open the sack in a movable vehicle simply because they lack probable cause to search the entire car.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Officer Coleman received a call from a DEA agent in Hawaii, informing that he seized a package containing marijuana which was to have been delivered to the FedEx in Santa Ana. The agent arranged to send the package to Coleman. Coleman observed Daza who claimed the package. The police watched as a man entered his home carrying a package they had probable cause to believe contained marijuana. Before a search warrant could be obtained, Acevedo (defendant) arrived at the house and left after about 10 minutes carrying a bag that was the same size as the package. Acevedo put the bag in the trunk of his car and drove away. Fearful of losing the evidence, the police followed him, pulled him over, opened the trunk, and looked inside the bag, finding marijuana.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: in Carroll, a warrantless search of an automobile based upon probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained evidence of crime in the light of an exigency arising out of the likely disappearance of the vehicle did not contravene the Warrant Clause. In Chambers, the existence of exigent circumstances was to be determined at the time the automobile is seized. In Ross, a warrantless search of an automobile could include a search of a container or package found inside the car when such a search was supported by probable cause. In Chadwick the search of movable luggage could be considered analogous to the search of an automobile. In Sanders, the Court extended Chadwick rule to apply to a suitcase actually being transported in the trunk of a car. In Ross, the Carroll doctrine covered searches of automobiles when the police had probable cause to search an entire vehicle but Chadwick doctrine governed searches of luggage when the officers had probable cause to search only a container in a vehicle; the Court sated closed containers in cars could be searched without a warrant.
This case resembles Ross. The expectation of privacy in one’s vehicle is equal to that in the container.
By attempting to distinguish between a container for which the police are specifically searching and a container which they come across ins a car, we have provided minimal protection for privacy and have impeded law enforcement.
The Chadwick-Sanders rule failed to protect privacy and confused courts and officers and impeded enforcement.
Scalia concurring: the warrant requirement had become so riddled with exceptions that it was basically unrecognizable. The search of a container, outside a privately owned building, with probable cause to believe that the container contains contraband, is not one of those searches whose 4th Amendment reasonableness depends upon a warrant.
Stevens dissenting: The 4th Amendment dictates that the privacy interest is paramount, no matter how marginal the risk of error might be if the legality of warrantless searches were judged only after the fact. The decisions provide no evidence of confusion. Every citizen has an interest in the privacy of the contents of his luggage, briefcase, handbag, or others that conceals private papers and effects from public scrutiny. Suggestion that cases burden effective law enforcement is unsupported, inaccurate, and an insufficient reason.

Reasonable Searches without Warrants – Wyoming v. Houghton
Year: 1999
Court:
3. Holding: when there is probable cause to search a vehicle, the automobile exception permits the warrantless search of a passenger’s personal belongings. A package may be searched whether or not its owner is present as a passenger or otherwise, because it may contain the contraband that an officer has reason to believe is in a car.
8. Reasoning: Neither history nor precedent suggests that it makes a difference that the container searched belongs to a passenger. Even if the historical evidence was equivocal, extension of the automobile doctrine to a passenger’s belongings reflects a proper balancing of the relative interests. Criminals would be able to hide contraband in passenger’s belongings and thereby thwart law enforcement. Passengers might well claim all property as theirs to defeat law enforcement.

Inventory Searches – South Dakota v. Opperman
Year: 1976
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: in following standard police procedures, prevailing throughout the country and approved by the overwhelming majority of courts, the conduct of the police was not unreasonable under the 4th Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Local ordinances prohibit parking in certain areas of downtown Vermillion between 2 and 6 a.m. An officer observed respondent’s unoccupied vehicle illegally parked. The officer issued an overtime parking ticket and placed it on the car’s windshield. At 10 o’clock, another officer issued a second ticket. After the vehicle was inspected, the car was towed. At the officer’s direction, the car door was unlocked and the officer inventoried the contents including those in the glove compartment which was unlocked. There he found marijuana contained in a plastic bag.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Automobiles are subject to pervasive and continuing governmental regulation and controls, including periodic inspection and licensing requirement. The expectation of privacy is further diminished by the obviously public nature of automobile travel.
When vehicles are impounded, officers follow a practice of securing and inventorying the automobiles’ contents. These procedures developed in response to the needs of: the protection of the owner’s property, the protection of the police against claims or disputes over lost or stolen property, and the protection of the police from potential danger.
The officers were indisputably engaged in a caretaking search of a lawfully impounded automobile. The inventory was conducted only after the car had been impounded. The inventory itself was prompted by the presence in plain view of a number of valuables inside the car.
Powell concurring: Many owners might leave valuables in their automobile temporarily that they would not leave there unattended for the several days that police custody may last. There is a substantial gain in security if automobiles are inventoried and valuable items removed for storage.
Marshall dissenting: none of the three “needs” can suffice to justify the inventory search procedure. The purpose was to secure valuables. There is no indication that the officer’s search was tailored in any way to safety concerns. South Dakota Supreme Court’s interpretation of state law explicitly absolves the police from any obligation beyond inventorying objects in plain view and locking the car. The Court’s result authorizes the routine search of nearly every car impounded. A search should fulfill two requirements: (1) there must be specific cause to believe that a search of the scope to be undertaken is necessary in order to preserve the integrity of particular valuable property and (2) even where a search might be appropriate, such an intrusion may only follow the exhaustion and failure of reasonable efforts under the circumstances to identify and reach the owner of the property, for the right to refuse remains with the owner.

Inventory Searches – Illinois v. Lafayette
Year: 1983
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: it is not unreasonable for police, as part of the routine procedure incident to incarcerating an arrested person, to search any container or article in his possession, in accordance with established inventory procedures.
4. Issue: whether it is reasonable for police to search the personal effects of a person under lawful arrest as part of the routine administrative procedure at a police stationhouse incident to booking and jailing the suspect.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Officer found respondent in an altercation with the theatre manager. The officer arrested respondent for disturbing the peace and took him to the police station. Respondent was ordered to empty and place the contents on the counter and he took a package of cigarettes from his shoulder bag and placed the bag on the counter. Officer removed the contents of the bag and found amphetamine pills inside a cigarette case package.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the governmental interests underlying a stationhouse search of the arrestee’s person and possessions may in some circumstances be even greater than those supporting a search immediately following arrest. At the stationhouse, it is entirely proper for police to remove and list or inventory property found on the person or in the possession of an arrested person who is to be jailed. Persons employed in police activities may steal property. Arrested persons may injure themselves or others. Inspection of an arrestee’s personal property may assist the police in ascertaining or verifying his identity.
Even if less intrusive means existed, it would be unreasonable to expect officers to make fine and subtle distinctions in deciding which containers or items may be searched and which must be sealed as a unit.
Marshall concurring: the police do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct an inventory search prior to incarcerating a suspect.

Inventory Searches – Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlingon
Year: 2012
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The majority stressed “the importance of deference to correctional officials” who are charged with maintaining the safety and security of their facilities.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment allows prison authorities to require individuals arrested and detained for minor offenses “to remove their clothing and expose the most private areas of their bodies to close visual inspection as a routine part of the jail intake process.”
8. Reasoning: The petitioner claimed “officials could conduct this kind of search only if they had reason to suspect a particular inmate of concealing contraband.”
Close visual inspections of the naked bodies of all inmates are reasonable because “there is a substantial interest in preventing any new inmate, from putting all who live or work at institutions at risk when he is admitted to the general population.”
The seriousness of an offense is a poor predictor of who has contraband.
The holding did not encompass searches of detainees who were held “without assignment to the general jail population and without substantial contact with other detainees.” There was no need to consider whether there should be a narrow exception which might restrict whether an arrestee whose detention has not yet been reviewed by a judicial officer may be subjected to the types of searches. The case did not address intentional humiliation or other abuse practices.

Inventory Searches – Maryland v. King
Year: 2013
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: when officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is a legitimate police booking procedure.
8. Reasoning: the majority balanced the intrusiveness of the testing procedure against the interests it served. The search of the human body involved in a buccal swab was characterized as negligible, minimal, and brief.
The DNA testing serves significant state interests because identifying the arrestee not only so that the proper name can be attached to his charges but also so that criminal justice system can make informed decisions concerning pretrial custody.
The holding was limited to DNA testing of individuals arrested and held for serious offenses. Maryland authorized the DNA testing for those arrested for crimes of violence or for burglaries.
Scalia dissenting: suspicionless DNA testing is constitutionally forbidden. The searches served crime detection purposes not special needs.

Inventory Searches – Colorado v. Bertine
Year: 1987
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: it does not. The principles in Opperman and Lafayette govern the present case.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment prohibits the State from proving these charges with the evidence discovered during the inventory of the van.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Steven Lee Bertine (defendant) was arrested for driving under the influence. In accordance with standard local police procedures, a police officer conducted an inventory search of Bertine’s van after Bertine was arrested but before a tow truck arrived to take the van to the impound lot. As part of the search of the van, the officer opened a closed backpack that he found behind the van’s front seat. The backpack contained a nylon bag with closed metal canisters. Upon opening the canisters, the officer found methaqualone tablets, cocaine, cocaine paraphernalia, and cash.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The Supreme Court of CO opined that Lafayette was not controlling here because there was no danger of introducing contraband or weapons into a jail facility. -> In both cases, the common governmental interests described above were served by the inventory searches.
The Supreme Court of CO expressed that the search was unreasonable because Bertine’s van was towed to a secure, lighted facility and Bertine himself could have been offered the opportunity to make other arrangements for the safekeeping of his property. -> the police may still wish to protect themselves or the owners of the lot against false claims of theft or dangerous instrumentalities. Reasonable police regulations relating to inventory procedures administered in good faith satisfy the 4th Amendment even though courts might as a matter of hindsight be able to devise equally reasonable rules requiring a different procedure.
The Supreme Court of CO thought it necessary to require that police, before inventorying a container, weigh the strength of the individuals’ privacy interest in the container against the possibility that the container might serve as a repository for dangerous or valuable items -> such a requirement is contrary to Opperman and Lafayette.
Bertine argues departmental regulations gave the police officers discretion to choose between impounding his van and parking and locking it in a public parking place -> the discretion afforded the police was exercised in light of standardized criteria.
Blackmun concurring: it is important to have such inventories conducted only pursuant to standardized police procedures.
Marshall dissenting: the officer is given little guidance as to which areas to search and what sort of items to inventory. In application, these so-called procedures left the breadth of the inventory to the whim of the individual police officer. By allowing the police unfettered discretion, the scheme is unreasonable because of the grave danger of abuse of discretion. Not only are the government’s interests weaker here than in Opperman and Lafayette, but respondent’s privacy interest is greater.

Inventory Searches – Florida v. Wells
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: inventory search of a locked suitcase found in the trunk of an impounded vehicle violated the 4th Amendment.
8. Reasoning: the FL highway patrol had no policy whatever with respect to the opening of closed containers encountered during an inventory search. In forbidding uncanalized discretion to police officers conducting inventory searches, there is no reason to insist that they be conducted in a totally mechanical all or nothing fashion.

Consent Searches – Schneckloth v. Bustamonte
Year: 1973
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: when the subject of a search is not in custody and the State attempts to justify a search on the basis of his consent, the 4th and 14th Amendments require that it demonstrate that the consent was in fact voluntarily given, and not the result of duress or coercion express or implied.
4. Issue: what must the prosecution prove to demonstrate that a consent was voluntarily given.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: While on a routine patrol, officer stopped an automobile for having one headlight and its license plate light burnt out. Only Alcala out of six men could produce a driver’s license and Alcala explained the car was his brother’s. Officer asked Alcala if he could search the car and Alcala replied, sure go ahead. Alcala actually helped in the search by opening the trunk and the glove compartment. Wadded up under the left rear seat, officer found three checks previously stolen from a car wash.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the most extensive judicial exposition of the meaning of voluntariness has been developed in those cases in which the Court has had to determine the voluntariness of a defendant’s confession. In determining whether a defendant’s will was overborne in a particular case, the Court has assessed the totality of all the surrounding circumstances – both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation.
In situation where the police have some evidence of illicit activity, but lack probable cause to arrest or search, a search authorized by a valid consent may be the only means of obtaining important and reliable evidence. The 4th and 14th Amendment require that a consent not be coerced, by explicit or implicit means, by implied threat or covert force.
The Court of Appeals’ ruling that the State must affirmatively prove that the subject of the search knew that he had a right to refuse consent -> would create serious doubt whether consent searches could continue to be conducted. Any Defendant who was the subject of a search authorized solely by his consent could effectively frustrate the introduction into the evidence by simply failing to testify that he knew he could refuse to consent.
A strict standard of waiver has been applied to those rights guaranteed to a criminal defendant to insure that he will be accorded the greatest possible opportunity to utilize every facet of the constitutional model of a fair criminal trial. It cannot be said that a search is somehow unfair if a person consents to a search.
A waiver approach to consent searches would be thoroughly inconsistent with our decisions that have approved third party consents. The failure to require the Government to establish knowledge as a prerequisite to a valid consent will relegate the 4th Amendment to the special province of the sophisticated, the knowledgeable and the privileged -> the traditional definition of voluntariness accepted has always taken into account evidence of minimal schooling, low intelligence, and the lack of any effective warnings to a person of his rights.
Brennan dissenting: the Court holds today that an individual can effectively waive this right even though he is totally ignorant of the fact that, in the absence of his consent such invasions of his privacy would be constitutionally prohibited.
Marshall dissenting: the issue is whether a simple statement of assent to search should be sufficient to permit the police to search and act as a relinquishment of Alcala’s right to exclude the police. Consent searches are permitted because we permit our citizens to choose whether or not they wish to exercise their constitutional rights. If consent to search means that a person has chosen to forgo his right to exclude the police from the place they seek to search, his consent cannot be considered a meaningful choice unless he knew that he could in fact exclude the police.
Must the government show that the subject knew of his rights, or must the subject show that he lacked such knowledge? The burden should be placed on the prosecution.

Consent Searches – United States v. Watson (1976)
3. Holding: the absence of proof that Watson knew he could withhold his consent, though it may be a factor in the overall judgment, is not to be given controlling significance.
8. Reasoning: rejected the contention that in order to establish a valid consent the government must prove that an individual in custody was informed of or otherwise aware of the right to refuse consent.

Consent Searches – Ohio v. Robinette
Year: 1996
3. Holding: reject the proposed per se rule and the voluntariness of consent is a question of fact to be determined based on the totality of facts. Advice that one is free to go is a relevant fact, but is not essential to voluntariness.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment requires that a lawfully seized Defendant must be advised that he is free to go before consent to search will be recognized as voluntary.
8. Reasoning: even if a lawful detention has ended, advice that a suspect is free to go is not a prerequisite for a voluntary consent to search. If an officer continues to detain an individual after he no longer has objective reasons to do so, the individual might successfully claim that a consent to search was the fruit of an unlawful seizure.

Consent Searches – United States v. Matlock
Year: 1974
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: given the admissibility of Mrs. Graff’s and respondent’s out-of-court statements, the Government sustained its burden of proving by the preponderance of the evidence that Mrs. Graff’s voluntary consent to search the east bedroom was legally sufficient to warrant admitting into evidence the $4995 found in the diaper bag.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the District Court ruled that before the seized evidence could be admitted, the Government had to prove (1) just prior to the search, that it reasonably appeared to the officers that facts existed which will render the consenter’s consent binding on the putative defendant and (2) just prior to the search, facts do exist which render the consenter’s consent binding on the putative defendant. It ruled that 1 was satisfied but 2 was not; the Government had not satisfactorily proved Mrs. Graff’s actual authority to consent to the search. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: Matlock (defendant) was indicted for robbing a federally insured bank. Matlock shared a room with Gayle Graff in a home rented by Graff’s parents. Law enforcement knew that Matlock lived in the home but did not know in which room. Law enforcement arrived at the home and arrested Matlock in the front yard. The officers proceeded to the home, and Graff consented to a search of the home, including the bedroom that Graff told the officers she shared with Matlock. The officers found $4995 in cash as incriminating evidence against Matlock.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the decisions make clear that when the prosecution seeks to justify a warrantless search by proof of voluntary consent, it is not limited to proof that consent was given by the Defendant, but may show that permission to search was obtained from a third party who possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effect sought to be inspected.
Douglas dissenting: the absence of a search warrant, where the authority had opportunity to obtain one, is fatal. Mrs. Graff’s permission to the police to invade the house, simultaneously violating the privacy of Matlock and the Marshalls, provides a sorry and wholly inadequate substitute for the protections in a warrant. It is inconceivable that a search conducted without a warrant can give more authority than a search conducted with a warrant.

Consent Searches – Georgia v. Randolph
Year: 2006
3. Holding: a warrantless search of a shared dwelling for evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically preset residence cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis of consent given to the police by another resident.
6. Facts: a co-occupant wife consented to the search of a home after her husband had expressly refused to consent. Officers searched the home. The husband claimed his wife lacked authority to consent when he objected.
8. Reasoning: Matlock’s common authority doctrine rested on widely shared social expectations and commonly held understandings about the authority of co-inhabitants.
Matlock acknowledged that shared tenancy is understood to include the assumption of a risk that in one’s absence co-dwellers will let others enter a home. There is no customary understanding that a landlord or hotel manager has authority to admit guests without the consent of a current occupant.
Because a o=co-tenant has no recognized authority to prevail over a present and objecting co-tenant, his disputed invitation gives an officer no better claim to reasonableness in entering than the officer would have in the absence of any consent at all.
This case has no bearing on the capacity of the police to protect domestic victims. There is no question that they have the authority to enter to protect a resident from domestic violence.
Roberts dissenting: the majority’s reliance on social expectations to determine authority to consent was unprecedented and misguided. The risk assumed by a joint occupant is comparable to the risk assumed by one who reveals private information to another.

Consent Searches – Fernandez v. California
Year: 2014
Court:
3. Holding: despite Fernandez’s initial objection to a search and his removal by the police, the consent given by the woman, a third party with authority to consent, rendered the search reasonable.
6. Facts: Fernandez was physically present in his apartment and objected to a police entry. He was arrested for assaulting a woman and taken to the police station. An officer returned to his apartment and obtained consent to search from the woman.
8. Reasoning: a physically present inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a police search is dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow occupant.
Fernandez’s removal was reasonable because he had been lawfully arrested. The contention that an objection should remain effective for some period of time could not be squared with the widely shared social expectations or customary social usage upon which the Randolph holding was based. Moreover, it would produce a lack of clarity and a plethora of practical problems.
Ginsburg dissenting: Fernandez’s objection should have rendered the consented-to search unreasonable as to him.

Consent Searches – Florida v. Jimeno
Year: 1991
3. Holding: the scope of a consent search is governed by a standard of objective reasonableness.
4. Issue: whether the consent’s scope extended to the interior of a closed paper bag on the floor of the vehicle.
6. Facts: a man had given general consent to search his automobile to officers who had made it evident that they were looking for narcotics.
8. Reasoning: when a person gives officers general, unrestricted consent to search for narcotics in his vehicle, it is reasonable to understand that consent extends to the vehicle itself and to any unlocked containers that are within the vehicle and could contain the contraband that is the object of the search. If a container is locked, it might lead to a different conclusion.

Consent Searches – Illinois v. Rodriguez
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: the Constitution is no more violated when officers enter without a warrant because they reasonably, though erroneously, believe that the person who has consented to their entry is a resident of the premises, than it is violated when they enter without a warrant because they reasonably, though erroneously, believe they are in pursuit of a violent felon who is about to escape.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the Cook County Circuit Court granted the motion to suppress, holding that Fischer did not have common authority over the apartment. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed.
6. Facts: Fischer told the officers that she had been assaulted by Rodriguez in an apartment in South California. Fischer consented to travel there with the police to unlock the door so that the officers could enter and arrest him. Fischer referred to the apartment as our apartment. Fischer unlocked the door and gave the officers permission to enter. Officers found drug in plain view, arrested Rodriguez, and seized the drugs.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The State contends that even if Fischer did not in fact have authority to give consent, it suffices to validate the entry that the law enforcement officers reasonably believed she did.
Respondent asserts that permitting a reasonable belief of common authority to validate an entry would cause a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights to be vicariously waived. -> disagree. A defendant’s waiver of his trial rights cannot be given effect unless it is knowing and intelligent. What Rodriguez is assured by the trial right of the exclusionary rule is that no evidence seized in violation of the 4th Amendment will be introduced at his trial unless he consents. What he is assured by the 4th Amendment is not that no government search of his house will occur unless he consents; but that no such search will occur that is unreasonable.
The essence of respondent’s argument is that we should impose upon this element a requirement that their judgment be not only responsible but correct. -> reasonableness with respect to the element of committing crimes does not demand that the government be factually correct in its assessment that that is what a search will produce. Warrants need only be supported by probable cause. With respect to a valid warrant, reasonableness does not preclude error in factual judgments. The reasonableness requirement is met not by being correct, but by being reasonable.
The surrounding circumstances could conceivably be such that a reasonable person would doubt the truth and not act upon it without further inquiry. As with other factual determinations, consent to enter must be judged against an objective standard.
Marshall dissenting: Because the sole law enforcement purpose underlying third-party consent searches is avoiding the inconvenience of securing a warrant, a departure from the warrant requirement is not justified simply because an officer reasonably believes a third party has consented to a search of the Defendant’s home. The weighty constitutional interest in preventing unauthorized intrusions into the home overrides any law enforcement interest in relying on the reasonable but potentially mistaken belief that a third party has authority to consent to such a search or seizure. In cases as this, the authority claimed by the third party will be false. Unlike searches conducted pursuant to the recognized exceptions, third-party consent searches are not based on an exigency and serve no compelling social goal. Our cases on searches based on third-party consent have never suggested that such searches are reasonable. The majority’s assertion is premised on the assumption that third-party consent searches are generally reasonable. The reasonableness of the officer’s mistaken belief that the third party had authority to consent is irrelevant.

The Plain View Doctrine – Arizona v. Hicks
Year: 1987
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: affirmed.
3. Holding: the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: A bullet was shot through the floor of the apartment of Hicks (defendant) and injured a man living below. Officers entered the apartment to search for the shooter, for other victims and for weapons. They found three weapons and a stocking-cap mask. Officer Nelson noticed two sets of expensive stereo components, which seemed out of place in the squalid apartment. He moved some of the components and read and recorded their serial numbers. He reported to his headquarters and learned that the turntable had been taken in an armed robbery and seized it. Some of the other serial numbers matched those on the stereo equipment and a warrant was obtained to seize them.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The State argues Officer Nelson’s actions constituted neither a search nor a seizure. -> The recording did not constitute a seizure. The moving of the equipment constituted a search. Taking action, unrelated to the objectives of the authorized intrusion, which exposed to view concealed portioned portions of the contents, did produce a new invasion.
Probable cause is required. To say otherwise would be to cut the plain view doctrine loose from its theoretical and practical moorings. The doctrine extends to nonpublic places such as the home the authority to make warrantless seizures in public places. No reason is apparent why an object should routinely be seizable on lesser grounds, during an unrelated search and seizure, than would have been needed to obtain a warrant for that same object if it had been known to be on the premises.
Although the interest protected by the 4th Amendment injunction against unreasonable searches is quite different from that protected by its injunction against unreasonable seizures, neither the one nor the other is of inferior worth or necessarily requires only lesser protection. To treat searches more liberally would especially erode the warning that the plain view doctrine may not be used to extend a general exploratory search from one object to another until something incriminating at last emerges.
Powell dissenting: The Court holds that the requirement of probable cause operates as a separate limitation on the application of the plain-view doctrine. The officers’ suspicion that the stereo components were stolen was both reasonable and based on specific, articulable facts. The distinction between looking at a suspicious object in plain view and moving it even a few inches trivializes 4th Amendment.
O’Connor dissenting: This case presents whether police must have probable cause before conducting a cursory inspection of an item in plain view. Such an inspection is reasonable if the police are aware of facts or circumstances that justify a reasonable suspicion that the item is evidence of a crime. In order to prevent a general search, we require that the relevance of the item be immediately apparent. Even a mere inspection of a suspicious item does not need to be supported by probable cause.

Probable cause and warrant norms are not appropriate measures of the reasonableness of the government conduct at issue.

Stop, Frisks, and the Right to be secure in one’s person, house, and effects – Terry v. Ohio
Year: 1968
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: the revolve seized from Terry was properly admitted in evidence against him. Officer had reasonable grounds to believe that petitioner was armed and dangerous and it was necessary for the protection of himself and others to take swift measures. The officer carefully restricted his search to what was appropriate to the discovery of the particular items which he sought.
4. Issue: whether in all the circumstances of this on-the-street encounter, his right to personal security was violated by an unreasonable search and seizure. Whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Officer was patrolling in plainclothes in downtown Cleveland when is attention was attracted by two men. Chilton and Terry paced, peered, and conferred multiple times. Officer approached three men, identified himself, and asked for their names. Officer grabbed Terry, spun him around, and patted down the outside of his clothing. Officer felt a pistol. Officer ordered all three men to enter Zucker’s store and to face the wall with their hands raised. Officer discovered another revolver in the outer pocket of Chilton’s overcoat.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: On the one hand, in dealing with the rapidly unfolding and often dangerous situations on city streets the police are in need of an escalating set of flexible responses graduated in relation to the amount of information they possess. On the other side, the authority of the police must be strictly circumscribed by the law of arrest and search as it has developed to date in the traditional jurisprudence of the 4th Amendment.
Courts still retain their traditional responsibility to guard against police conduct which is overbearing or harassing, or which trenches upon personal security without the objective evidentiary justification which the Constitution requires.
There is danger in the logic which proceeds upon distinctions between a stop and an arrest and between a frisk and a search. It seeks to isolate from constitutional scrutiny the initial stages of the contact between the policeman and the citizen. By suggesting a rigid all-or-nothing model of justification and regulation, it obscures the utility of limitations upon the scope and initiation of police action as a means of constitutional regulation. Officer seized and searched.
One general interest is effective crime prevention and detection. It is this interest that an officer may approach a person for purposes of investigating even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest. There is the more immediate interest of the officer in taking steps to assure himself that the person with whom he is dealing is not armed with a weapon. There is need for law enforcement officers to protect themselves and other prospective victims where they may lack probable cause for an arrest.
Petitioner says it is unreasonable for the police to search until such time as the situation evolves to a point where there is probable cause to make an arrest. -> it fails to take account of traditional limitations upon the scope of searches and recognizes no distinction in purpose, character, and extent between a search incident to an arrest and a limited search for weapons. The argument assumes that the law of arrest has already worked out the balance between the particular interests involved here, the neutralization of danger to the police in the investigative circumstances and the sanctity of the individual. There has to be a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the officer.
Harlan concurring: The holding has two logical corollaries. If the frisk is justified in order to protect the officer during an encounter with a citizen, the officer must first have constitutional grounds to insist on an encounter. He must first have a right not to avoid a dangerous person but to be in his presence. The right to frisk in this case depends upon the reasonableness of a forcible stop to investigate a suspected crime. Where such a stop is reasonable, the right to frisk must be immediate and automatic if the reason for the stop is an articulable suspicion of a crime of violence. Officer’s right to interrupt freedom of movement and invade his privacy arose only because circumstances warranted forcing an encounter in an effort to prevent or investigate a crime.
Douglas dissenting: frisk was a search, and how can it be Constitutional unless there was probable cause to believe that (1) a crime had been committed, (2) a crime was in the process of being committed, or (3) a crime was about to be committed.

Stop, Frisks, and the Right to be secure in one’s person, house, and effects – Sibron v. New York
Year: 1968
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The officer did not have reasonable grounds to believe that Sibron was armed and dangerous. It was unconstitutional for the officer to stop and frisk Sibron.
6. Facts: an officer watched a man converse with several known narcotics addicts over the course of the eight-hour period between 4 p.m. and midnight. The man entered a restaurant and officer told him to come outside. The officer said, “you know what I am after,” the man reached into his pocket, and the officer thrust his hand into the pocket and extracted packets of heroin.

Stop, Frisks, and the Right to be secure in one’s person, house, and effects – Adams v. Williams
Year: 1972
3. Holding: it was permissible under Terry to stop and frisk an individual suspected of possessing narcotics and a concealed weapon.

Stop, Frisks, and the Right to be secure in one’s person, house, and effects – Dunaway v. New York
Year: 1979
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Terry must not be read expansively the judicial interest balancing that had led to a lowering of the constitutional norm in Terry was generally forbidden, and the probable cause norm governed the vast majority of searches and seizures.
6. Facts: A pizza parlor proprietor was killed during an attempted robbery. Detectives learned information implicating the Defendant. They found him at a neighbor’s home and took him into custody. Even though the detectives did not tell him that he was under arrest, he would have been physically restrained if he had attempted to leave.
8. Reasoning: The Defendant claimed he had been unreasonably seized. The government conceded that the detectives lacked probable cause but no arrest had occurred and the officers had a reasonable suspicion that he possessed intimate knowledge about a serious and unsolved crime. -> the seizure exceeded the scope of those Terry had authorized on less than probable cause. The detention was indistinguishable from a traditional arrest.
White concurring: the key principle of the 4th Amendment is reasonableness – the balancing of competing interests. The door should be left open to the recognition in particular cases of extraordinary private or public interests and to the generic recognition of certain exceptions to the normal rule of probable cause where more flexibility is essential.

Seizure of Persons – United States v. Mendenhall
Year: 1980
3. Holding: the record provided adequate evidentiary support for the trial court’s conclusions that she had voluntarily consented to accompany the agents to the DEA office and had voluntarily consented to the search of her person.
6. Facts: DEA agents approached a woman in an airport concourse, escorted her to a DEA office, and found narcotics in her undergarments during a search of her person.
8. Reasoning: Two justices concluded that Ms. Mendenhall was not seized when the agents approached her, asked to see her ID and ticket, and asked questions. Three justices assumed that a seizure had occurred but was constitutional because they had reasonable suspicion. The four justices found a 4th Amendment violation because she was seized and the agents lacked reasonable grounds.
A seizure occurs only when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, in some way restrains the liberty of a citizen. Justice Stewart stated that a person has been seized if a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.

Florida v. Royer (1983): no seizure occurred when officers approached a suspect in an airport concourse and asked for and examined his airline ticket and driver’s license. Suspect was seized when the officers identified themselves, told him he was suspected, and asked him to accompany them, while retaining his ticket and license and not indicating he was free to leave.
Michigan v. Cesternut (1988): a man ran as a police car approached. The mere following of the suspect did not amount to a seizure.

Seizure of Persons – Florida v. Bostick
Year: 1991
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: In order to determine whether a particular encounter constitutes a seizure, a court must consider all the circumstances surrounding the encounter to determine whether the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that the person was not free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter. That rule applies on a bus. The FL Supreme Court erred in adopting a per se rule.
4. Issue: Whether a police encounter on a bus of the type described above necessarily constitutes a seizure within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied the motion to suppress. The FL District Court of Appeal affirmed. The FL Supreme Court adopted a per se rule that the practice of working the buses is unconstitutional. The result is the police may not approach and seek consent to search on a bus.
6. Facts: Broward County has adopted a program where officers routinely board buses at scheduled stops and ask passengers for permission to search their luggage. Two officers discovered cocaine when they searched Bostick’s suitcase.
Bostick (defendant) was riding a bus when two uniformed sheriff’s officers boarded. The officers singled out Bostick and asked him for identification. The officers told Bostick that they were narcotics agents searching for drugs and asked to search his luggage. The officers informed Bostick that he had a right to refuse to consent to the search. Bostick consented to the search, and the officers discovered drugs in his luggage.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Bostick insists this case is different because it took place in the cramped confines of a bus. A police encounter is much more intimidating in this setting. -> the state court erred in focusing on whether Bostick was free to leave rather than on the principle that those words were intended to capture.
The mere fact that Bostick did not feel free to leave the bus does not mean that the police seized him. Bostick’s movements were confined in a sense, but this was the natural result of his decision to take the bus. It says nothing about whether or not the police conduct at issue was coercive. Free to leave analysis is inapplicable. The appropriate inquiry is whether a reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.
We refrain from deciding whether or not a seizure occurred. The courts decided not on the totality of the circumstances.
Marshall dissenting: disagree that the suspicionless, dragnet-style sweep of buses in intrastate and interstate travel is consistent with the 4th Amendment. The officer showed an intimidating show of authority. If respondent was unlawfully seized when the officers approached him and initiated questioning, the resulting search was likewise unlawful. A passenger approached by the police at an intermediate point in a long bus journey cannot simply leave the scene and repair to a safe haven to avoid unwanted probing by law enforcement officials. Rather than requiring the police to justify the coercive tactics employed, he majority blames respondent for his own sensation of constraint.

Seizure of Persons – United States v. Drayton
Year: 2002
Court:
2. Disposition: reverse and remand.
3. Holding: Drayton and Brown were not seized and their consent to the searches was voluntary.
5. Procedural History: The district court denied motions to suppress but the 11th Circuit reversed.
6. Facts: The Greyhound bus that Drayton and Brown (defendants) were riding on made a scheduled stop. While the bus was stopped, three police officers boarded the bus, explained they were conducting an inspection, requested cooperation, and began asking the passengers for permission to search their bags for drugs and weapons. Drayton and Brown gave the officers permission to search the bag they shared, and the police found nothing incriminating inside. The officer asked Brown if he could conduct a search of his person, and Brown consented. The officer discovered packages of drugs hidden on Brown’s person, and Brown was then arrested. The officer then asked Drayton if he would consent to a body search. Drayton lifted his arms up as a sign of his consent, and upon patting him down the officer discovered packets of drugs on Drayton’s person as well. Drayton was also arrested.
8. Reasoning: For the most part per se rules are inappropriate in the 4th Amendment context and a consideration of all the circumstances surrounding the encounter is necessary to determine whether a bus passenger has been seized.
11th Circuit erred by adopting in effect a per se rule that officers must advise passengers of their right not to cooperate and to refuse consent. The officers gave the passengers no reason to believe that they were required to answer the officers’ questions.
Souter dissenting: the display of power can rise to a threatening level that may overbear a normal person’s ability to act freely, even in the absence of explicit commands or the formalities of detention.

Seizure of persons – California v. Hodari D.
Year: 1991
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: Assuming that pursuit constituted a show of authority enjoining Hodari to halt, since Hodari did not comply with that injunction he was not seized until he was tackled. The cocaine was not a fruit of seizure and Hodari’s motion to exclude evidence was properly denied.
4. Issue: whether, at the time he dropped the drugs, Hodari had been seized within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.
5. Procedural History: The court denied the motion to suppress. The CA Court of Appeal reversed.
6. Facts: Officers were on a patrol in a high-crime area. They saw youths huddled around a small red car and took flight. Hodari tossed away crack cocaine as the officer was almost upon him. The officer tackled and handcuffed Hodari.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: If Hodari had been seized, the drugs were fruit of that seizure and the evidence was properly excluded. If Hodari had not been seized, the drugs were abandoned and lawfully recovered by the police and evidence should have been admitted.
To constitute a seizure of the person, the mere grasping or application of physical force with lawful authority, whether or not it succeeded in subduing the arrestee, was sufficient. There is no continuing arrest during the period of fugitivity.
The present case does not involve the application of any physical force. Whether, with respect to a show of authority as with respect to application of physical force, a seizure occurs even though the subject does not yield. -> no.
An arrest requires either physical force or, where that is absent, submission to the assertion of authority.
Respondent contends his position is sustained by the Mendenhall test, which states that a person has been seized only if, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave. -> it states a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for seizure. Mendenhall establishes that the test for existence of a show of authority is an objective one; whether the officer’s words and actions would have conveyed that to a reasonable person.
Stevens dissenting: In the Katz opinion, the Court repeatedly used the word seizure to describe the process of recording sounds that could not possibly have been the subject of a common-law seizure. Terry broadened the range of encounters between the police and the citizen encompassed within the term seizure, while lowering the standard of proof necessary to justify a stop in the newly expanded category of seizures. The premise that the common law of arrest should define the term seizure is seriously flawed. The Court mistakenly hearkens back to common law, while ignoring the expansive approach that the Court has taken in 4th Amendment analysis since Katz and Terry. The officer’s chase adequately conveyed the message that respondent was not free to leave.

Seizure of Persons – Brendlin v. California
Year: 2007
Court:
3. Holding: reject that a passenger was not seized when the car in which he was riding was stopped to verify that its temporary operating permit was valid.
4. Issue: whether a reasonable passenger in a stopped car would believe himself free to terminate the encounter.
8. Reasoning: ordinarily a traffic stop necessarily curtails the travel a passenger has chosen just as much as it halts the driver. What may amount to submission depends on what a person was doing before an officer’s show of authority. Once the car has stopped, he submits merely by staying inside the vehicle.

Seizure of Persons – Torres v. Madrid
Year: 2021
Court:
2. Disposition: vacate and remand.
3. Holding: the application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure, even if the person does not submit and is not subdued.
4. Issue: whether a seizure occurs when an officer shoots someone who temporarily eludes capture after the shooting.
5. Procedural History: The district court granted summary judgment for the officers, and the court of appeals affirmed that ruling.
6. Facts: a woman who had been shot by officers, but had fled, filed a civil suit claiming that the officers had unreasonably seized her in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Hodari D. articulated: common law arrests are Fourth Amendment seizures, and the common law considered the application of force to the body of a person with intent to restrain to be an arrest, no matter whether the arrestee escaped.
A person was seized by even the “‘unsuccessful’” use of “‘physical force to restrain movement.’” In fact, “the slightest application of [physical] force” constituted “an arrest.” In this case the force was applied by bullets, not by hands.
Unlike a seizure by force, a seizure by acquisition of control involves either voluntary submission to a show of authority or the termination of freedom of movement.”
A seizure requires the use of force with intent to restrain. Moreover, the appropriate inquiry is whether the challenged conduct objectively manifests an intent to restrain.” The shooting of the plaintiff “applied physical force to her body and objectively manifested an intent to restrain her from driving away. [T]herefore[,] the officers seized [her] for the instant that the bullets struck her.”
Gorsuch dissenting: ‘seizing’ something doesn’t mean touching it; it means taking possession.

The Showing Needed to Stop and Frisk – Illinois v. Wardlow
Year: 2000
Court:
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: The officers found respondents in possession of a handgun and arrested him for violation of an Illinois firearm statute. No question of the propriety of the arrest itself is before us.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Illinois trial court denied motion to suppress. Wardlow was convicted of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. Illinois Appellate Court reversed, concluding that Nolan did not have reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify an investigative stop. Illinois Supreme Court agreed, noting that sudden flight in such an area does not create a reasonable suspicion justifying a sudden stop.
6. Facts: Officers were driving in an area known for heavy narcotics trafficking and observed Wardlow and he fled. THe officers cornered him on the street. Officer Nolan frisked Wardlow and discovered a handgun and arrested him.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Officers are not required to ignore the relevant characteristics of a location in determining whether the circumstances are sufficiently suspicious to warrant further investigation. The fact that the stop occurred in a high crime area was among the relevant contextual considerations in a Terry analysis. His unprovoked flight upon noticing the police arouse the officer’s suspicion. Nervous, evasive behavior is a pertinent factor in determining reasonable suspicion. Headlong flight is the consummate act of evasion and is certainly suggestive of wrongdoing.
Officer Nola was justified in suspecting that Wardlow was involved in criminal activity, and in investigating further. Flight is not going about one’s business.
Even in Terry, the conduct justifying the stop was ambiguous and susceptible of an innocent explanation. Terry recognized that the officers could detain the individuals to resolve the ambiguity.
Stevens concurring in part and dissenting in part: The State asks to announce a bright line rule authorizing the temporary detention of anone who flees at the mere sight of a police officer. Respondent asks to adopt a rule that a person fleeing upon seeing the police can never be sufficient to justify a temporary investigative stop. Although I agree with the Court’s rejection of the per se rules proffered by the parties, I am persuaded that in this case the brief testimony of the officer who seized respondent does not justify the conclusion that he had reasonable suspicion to make the stop. Given the diversity and frequency of possible motivations for flight, it would be unwise to endorse per se rule. Like the unprovoked flight itself, presence in a high crime neighborhood is a fact too generic and susceptible to innocent explanation to satisfy the reasonable suspicion inquiry. It is State’s burden to articulate facts sufficient to support reasonable suspicion.

The Showing Needed to Stop and Frisk – Alabama v. White
Year: 1990
Court:
2. Disposition: reverse and remand.
3. Holding: Under the totality of the circumstances the anonymous tip exhibited sufficient indicia of reliability to justify the investigatory stop of respondent’s car.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the trial court denied motion to suppress. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed.
6. Facts: The police received an anonymous tip that Vanessa White (defendant) would be leaving her apartment complex carrying a briefcase with cocaine inside. The informant gave the police White’s address and a description of her car and said that White would be heading to a certain hotel. The police immediately set up a surveillance team at the apartment complex and saw a car matching the description given by the informant outside the specified apartment building. The police soon observed White exit the building without the briefcase, get in her car, and head toward the hotel. Just before White arrived at the hotel, the police stopped the car. They informed White of what they were looking for and asked to search the car. She consented to the search, and when the police found a briefcase, she gave them the combination to the lock. The police found marijuana in the briefcase and arrested her. Later, at the police station, the police found three milligrams of cocaine in White’s purse.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the anonymous tip in this case is like the one in Gates. It provides virtually nothing from which one might conclude that the caller is either honest or his information reliable. A tip such as this one, standing alone, would not warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that a stop was appropriate.
Reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause in a sense that it can be established with information that is different in quantity or content and it can arise from information that is less reliable. If a tip has a relatively low degree of reliability, more information will be required to establish the suspicion than would if the tip were more reliable. When the officers stopped respondent, the anonymous tip had been sufficiently corroborated to furnish reasonable suspicion.
The independent corroboration by the police of significant aspects of the informer’s predictions imparted some degree of reliability to the other allegations made by the caller. Because only a small number of people are generally privy to an individual’s itinerary, it is reasonable for police to believe that a person with access to such information is likely to also have access to reliable information about the individual’s illegal activities.
Stevens dissenting: anybody with enough knowledge about a given person to make her the target of a prank or to harbor a grudge against her will certainly be able to formulate a tip about her. Every citizen is subject to being seized and questioned by any officer who is prepared to testify that the warrantless stop was based on an anonymous tip.

The Showing Needed to Stop and Frisk – Florida v. J.L.
Year: 2000
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirm.
3. Holding: an anonymous tip lacking indicia of reliability of the kind contemplated in Adams and White does notjustify a stop and frisk whenever and however it alleges the illegal possession of a firearm.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the trial granted the motion to suppress. The appellate court reversed, and the Supreme Court of FL quashed that decision.
6. Facts: An anonymous caller reported to the police that a young black male at a bus stop wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun. Police arrived at the scene and saw J.L. wearing a plaid shirt. An officer approached J.L., told him to put his hands up, and frisked him, seizing a gun.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the officers’ suspicion that J.L. was carrying a weapon arose not from any observations of their own but solely from a call made from an unknown location by an unknown caller. The tip lacked the moderate indicia of reliability.
FL contends that the tip was reliable because its description of the suspect’s visible attributes proved accurate. There really was a young black man wearing a plaid shirt at the bus stop. -> such a tip does not show that the tipster has knowledge of concealed criminal activity.
FL argues the Terry analysis should be modified to license a firearm exception. -> such an exception would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call.

The Showing Needed to Stop and Frisk – Navarette v. California
Year: 2014
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: the stop complied with the 4th Amendment because, under the totality of the circumstances, the officer had reasonable suspicion that the driver was intoxicated.
4. Issue: whether the 911 call was sufficiently reliable to create the allegation that the truck ran the caller off the roadway.
Whether the 911 caller’s report created reasonable suspicion of an ongoing crime.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: A person called 911 reporting that a truck driver was driving dangerously and had just run the person off the road. The person gave the make, model, color, and license-plate number of the truck to the State of California (plaintiff) highway patrol. A police officer saw the truck on the highway and followed it for five minutes before pulling it over. Upon approaching the truck, the officer smelled marijuana. The officer searched the truck and found 30 pounds of marijuana.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: under appropriate circumstances, an anonymous tip can demonstrate sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion.
The report was contemporaneous with the caller’s observations, it pertained to a startling event, and was made while under the stress of excitement, enhancing the caller’s veracity. The caller’s use of the 911 emergency system was an indicator of veracity.
Indicia of reliability were stronger than those in J.L. and were sufficient to provide the officer with reasonable suspicion.
Scalia dissenting: so long as a caller identifies where a car is, anonymous claims of a single instance of possibly careless or reckless driving will support a traffic stop. The issue was whether what she claimed to know was true. The caller’s report neither asserted that the driver was drunk nor raised the likelihood that the driver was drunk.

The Showing Needed to Stop and Frisk – Kansas v. Glover
Year: 2020
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: when the officer lacks information negating an inference that the owner is the driver of the vehicle, the stop is reasonable.
4. Issue: whether a police officer violates the 4th Amendment by initiating an investigative traffic stop after running a vehicle’s license plate and learning that the registered owner had a revoked driver’s license.
8. Reasoning: three facts known to the officer, that an individual was operating a certain truck with a particular license plate number, that the owner had a revoked license, and that the model matched the observed vehicle, allowed the officer to draw the commonsense inference that the owner was likely the drive of the vehicle.
The fact that the registered owner of a vehicle is not always the driver does not negate the reasonableness of an inference that he or she is the driver on a particular occasion. The fact that a registered owner has a revoked license does not render the inference that he is the driver unreasonable. State’s grounds for revocation lent credence to the inference that a registered owner with a revoked license might be the one driving the vehicle.
Dissent: officer’s inference was unreasonable because it was not grounded in his law enforcement training or experience. -> the 4th Amendment does not require it.
A finding that there was a constitutionally sufficient basis for the stop in this case would eviscerate the need for officers to base reasonable suspicion on specifi and articulable facts particularized to the individual and woul allow officers to rely exclusively on probabilities. -> officers may rely on probabilities in the reasonable suspicion context. The officer linked the license plate to the truck and that the owner had a revoked license. He used common sense to form a reasonable suspicion.

The Showing Needed to Stop and Frisk – Heien v. North Carolina
Year: 2014
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
5. Procedural History: The NC Supreme Court held that because the Officer’s mistaken understanding of the vehicle code was reasonable, the stop was valid.
6. Facts: an officer had stopped a vehicle that had only one functioning brake light. In a search of the vehicle that was consented to, the officer found cocaine.
8. Reasoning: the 4th Amendment allows for some mistakes by government officials because the provision only requires reasonableness. Ambiguities in the vehicle code meant that it was objectively reasonable for to think the law was violated.
Sotomayor dissenting: an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Hayes v. Florida
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: Absent probable cause and a warrant, Davis requires suppression of the evidence.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Hayes moved to suppress the fingerprint and the trial court denied it.
6. Facts: A series of burglary-rapes occurred in 1980. Police found latent fingerprints on the doorknob of the bedroom of a victim. Police found a herringbone pattern tennis shoe print near the victim’s front porch. Police interviewed 30-40 men who generally fit the description and suspected Hayes. Police did not seek a warrant but arrived at Hayes’ house and spoke with Hayes. Hayes expressed reluctance to voluntarily accompany the police to the station for fingerprinting and a police said they would arrest him. He blurted out that he would rather go with the officers. Officers seized a pair of herringbone pattern tennis shoes in plain view. Hayes was fingerprinted, which matched those left at the victim’s house.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: We have revisited and explored the reach of Terry v. Ohio but none of the cases has sustained against 4th Amendment challenge the involuntary removal of a suspect from his home to a police station and his detention there for investigative purposes, absent probable cause or judicial authorization. The line is crossed when the police, without probable cause or a warrant, forcibly remove a person from his home or other place in which he is entitled to be and transport him to the police station, where he is detained for investigative purposes.
4th Amendment would permit seizures for the purpose of fingerprinting, if there is reasonable suspicion that the suspect has committed a criminal act, if there is a reasonable basis for believing that fingerprinting will establish or negate the suspect’s connection with that crime, and if the procedure is carried out with dispatch.
Brennan concurring: This Court holds that on-site fingerprinting without probable cause or a warrant is constitutionally reasonable. On-site fingerprinting would involve a singular intrusion on the privacy and the intrusion would not be justifiable as necessary for the officer’s protection. How much time would elapse before the individual would be free to go? Could the police hold the individual until the fingerprints could be compared with others?

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – United States v. Sharpe
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: Agent Cooke pursued his investigation in a diligent and reasonable manner.
4. Issue: whether it was reasonable under the circumstances facing Agent Cooke an Officer Thrasher to detain Savage, whose vehicle contained the challenged evidence, for approximately 20 minutes.
5. Procedural History: The USDC for the District of SC denied respondents’ motion to suppress and respondents were convicted. The Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit reversed the convictions. The Court of Appeals concluded that the length of the detention alone transformed it from a Terry stop into a de facto arrest.
6. Facts: In 1978, Agent Cooke of the DEA was on patrol in an unmarked vehicle in an area under surveillance for suspected drug trafficking. At 6:30 a.m., Cooke noticed a blue pickup truck with an attached camper shell traveling in tandem with a blue car. The agent concluded that the truck was heavily loaded and a quilted material covered the rear and side windows of the camper. The agent decided to make an investigative stop. The blue car stopped and the agent identified himself and asked for identification. Sharpe produced a driver’s license bearing the name of Pavlovich. Officer stopped the pickup truck and patted Savage down. Savage produced his driver’s license and a bill of sale for the truck bearing the name of Pavlovich. Officer told Savage he would be held and Savage became nervous and said he wanted to leave. Officer replied he was not free to leave. Savage declined to give Cooke the permission to search the camper. Cooke put his nose against the rear window and could smell marihuana. Cooke removed the keys from the ignition, opened the rear of the camper, and observed bales resembling marijuana. Cooke arrested Savage, Sharpe, and Davis, unloaded the truck, and sampled bales that showed the samples were marijuana.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Respondents’ amicus curiae rely on Dunaway v. NY, FL v. Ryoer, and US v. Place. -> reliance is misplaced. The focus of the cases was on facts other than the duration of the defendant’s detention. The Court of Appeals did not conclude that the police acted less than diligently or that they unnecessarily prolonged Savage’s detention.
We have emphasized the need to consider the law enforcement purposes to be served by the stop as well as the time reasonably needed to effectuate those purposes. The Court of Appeals’ decision would establish a per se rule, at odds with our approach in this area.
We consider whether the police diligently pursued a means of investigation that was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly, during which time it was necessary to detain the defendant. The question is whether the police acted unreasonably in failing to recognize or to pursue an alternative.
Respondents produced no evidence that the officers were dilatory in their investigation. The delay in this case was attributable almost entirely to the evasive actions of Savage.
Marshall concurring: a Terry stop does not constitute the sort of arrest that the Constitution requires be made only upon probable cause. A seizure that in duration, scope, or means goes beyond the bounds of Terry cannot be reconciled with the 4th Amendment in the absence of probable cause. The requirement that Terry stops be brief is buttressed by pragmatic considerations. First, police practices will adapt to minimize the intrusions. A per se ban on stops that are not brief yields objective standards. There will be friction and resentment with the general standards. The lengthy stop at issue would have been brief but for the respondents’ effort to evade officers.
Brennan dissenting: Savage’s purported attempt to elude the police is a de novo factual finding. Officers did not testify that Savage sought to elude them. The lengthy detentions did not accord with Terry’s brevity requirement. The Court evaded Terry requirement that the investigative methods employed should be the least intrusive means reasonably available to verify or dispel the officer’s suspicion in a short period of time.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – United States v. Montoya de Hernandez
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: the detention in this case was not unreasonably long.
6. Facts: The defendant arrived at LA Airport on a direct flight from Bogota, Colombia. Customs agents’ inquiries and investigation led to a reasonable suspicion that she was concealing narcotics-filled balloons in her alimentary canal. Defendant refused to consent to an X-ray result and was detained for 16 hours. 88 balloons with narcotics were discovered.
8. Reasoning: The Court relied on the facts: (1) that the detention had occurred at the international border, where the 4th Amendment’s demands are less stringent; (2) that alimentary canal smuggling cannot be detected in the amount of time of brief Terry-type stops; (3) that the only alternative to an X-ray examination was a lengthy detention or the release of a person; and (4) that defendant’s heroic efforts to resist a bowel movement extended the period.

Florida v. Royer: in a Terry detention the investigative methods employed should be the least intrusive means reasonably available to verify or dispel the officer’s suspicion in a short period of time.

United States v. Sokolow: reasonableness of an officer’s decision to stop a suspect does not turn on the availability of less intrusive investigatory techniques. Such a rule would unduly hamper the police’s ability to make swift on-the-spot decisions and it would require courts to indulge in unrealistic second-guessing.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, Humboldt County
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: it was not unreasonable for officers to require a suspect who is being lawfully detained to identify himself.
6. Facts: Nevada law includes a stop and identify provision, which states a person properly detained for investigation shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry. Hiibel was under investigation for a suspected assault and he refused to respond to an officer’s request for identification. The officer arrested him.
8. Reasoning: Hiibel contended that the statutory mandate that he identify himself violated the 4th and the 5th Amendments. -> Hiibel’s detention was based on reasonable suspicion. The statute was sufficiently narrow and precise to avoid invalidation on vagueness grounds.
Reasonableness of a seizure is determined by balancing the intrusion on 4th Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate government interests. The statute satisfies that standard.
Hiibel argues the statute circumvents the probable cause requirement, in effect allowing an officer to arrest a person for being suspicious and creates a risk of arbitrary police conduct. -> unpersuaded, because these concerns are met by the requirement that a Terry stop be justified at its inception and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the initial stop.
The disclosure of name presented no reasonable danger of incrimination.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Rodriguez v. United States
Year: 2015
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violated the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures. A seizure justified only by a police-observed traffic violation becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: the trial court denied motion to suppress and the court of appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: An officer stopped a car driven by Rodriguez after seeing it veer onto the shoulder of the highway. The officer conducted record check on the driver and the passenger. He then began to write a warning ticket. The officer asked permission to walk his dog around Rodriguez’s vehicle, which he declined. The officer retrieved the dog, led him twice around the vehicle, and the dog alerted to the presence of drugs. The search revealed a large bag of meth.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: like a Terry stop, the tolerable duration of police inquiries in the traffic-stop context is determined by the seizure’s mission to address the traffic violation and attend to related safety concerns. The stop may last no longer than is necessary to effectuate that purpose and authority for the seizure ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are, or reasonably should have been, completed. Unrelated investigations are tolerable when they do not lengthen the roadside detention.
The mission of a traffic stop includes determining whether to issue a traffic ticket and ordinary inquiries incident to the stop. A dog sniff is aimed at detecting evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing and lacks a close connection to roadway safety. The question is whether the dog sniff prolongs, or add times to the stop.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – United States v. Place
Year: 1983
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: The seizure of the luggage in this case exceeded the scope of a permissible detention. When an officer’s observations lead him reasonably to believe that a traveler is carrying luggage that contains narcotics, the principles of Terry and its progeny would permit the officer to detain the luggage briefly to investigate the circumstances that aroused his suspicion, provided that the investigative detention is properly limited in scope.
4. Issue: whether the seizure of a piece of luggage, independently of the seizure of its owner, could be constitutional based on a reasonable suspicion that it contained narcotics.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Federal drug agents suspected a man had contraband in his luggage. He refused to consent to a search of his bags, and the agents seized them and transported them from LaGuardia to Kennedy Airport where a drug-sniffing dog was present. The dog alerted to one bag 90 minutes after the seizure and officers applied for and secured a warrant. Cocaine was discovered.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: There is a compelling public interest in detecting those who would traffic in deadly drugs. The inherently transient nature of drug courier activity is also relevant. Balanced against this interest was the intrusion.
The government argued that detentions of luggage without probable cause could last longer than detentions of persons under Terry because property seizures are generally less intrusive -> not in cases where property is taken from the immediate possession of a suspect. Such a seizure intrudes on both the suspect’s possessory interest in his luggage and his liberty interest.
The seizure of the luggage in Place was deemed excessive because the DEA agents’ lack of diligence in pursing their investigation resulted in a 90 minute detention prior to the dog sniff.
Because a dog sniff is limited both in the manner in which the information is obtained and in the content of the information revealed it does not constitute a search.
Brennan concurring: Terry did not authorize a seizure of property independent of the seizure of a person.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Illinois v. Caballes
Year:
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: officers do not need reasonable suspicion to conduct canine sniffs of lawfully stopped vehicle. The stop was not excessive in duration.
6. Facts: Defendant was lawfully stopped for speeding. One officer wrote him a warning ticket and another officer walked a canine around his vehicle. The dog alerted to the trunk and found marijuana.
8. Reasoning: turned dog sniff dicta in Place and Edmond into a holding.
The court already held that any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed legitimate, and that governmental conduct that only reveals the possession of contraband compromises no legitimate privacy interest.
The defendant argued the number of false positives by trained canines undermined the premise that they alert only to contraband. -> not persuaded. First, the record contained no evidence for this argument. The defendant has not suggested that an erroneous alert reveals any legitimate private information.
The intrusion upon privacy expectations effected by dog sniffs simply does not rise to the level of a constitutionally cognizable infringement. A dog sniff conducted during a lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the 4th Amendment.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Michigan v. Long
Year: 1983
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: Just as a Terry suspect on the street may reach into his clothing and retrieve a weapon, so might a Terry suspect in Long’s position break away from police control and retrieve a weapon from his automobile.
4. Issue: whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.
6. Facts: David Long (defendant) was stopped by police when officers observed Long’s car swerve into a ditch after he had been traveling erratically at a high speed. Long met the officers at the rear of the car and did not respond to officers’ repeated requests to produce his vehicle registration. The officers believed that Long might have been under the influence of some substance. Long began walking toward the car’s open driver-side door. The officers followed him and saw a large hunting knife on the driver-side floorboard. At that point, officers conducted a protective patdown to check Long for weapons, but they did not find anything. One of the officers then shined his flashlight into the car to check for other weapons. The officer saw something sticking out from under the front armrest, and when the officer lifted the armrest, he found a pouch of marijuana. The officers then arrested Long and searched the rest of the car. They found no other contraband or weapons in the car’s interior. Officers then decided to impound the car, and when one officer opened the car’s unlocked trunk, he found 75 pounds of marijuana inside. Long was charged with possession of marijuana.
8. Reasoning: PA v. Mimms: police may order persons out of an automobile during a stop for a traffic violation and may frisk those persons for weapons if there is a reasonable belief that they are armed and dangerous.
Adams v. Williams: the police, acting on an informant’s tip, may reach into the passenger compartment of an automobile to remove a gun from a driver’s waistband even where the gun was not apparent to police from outside the car and the police knew of its existence only because of the tip.
The search of the passenger compartment of an automobile, limited to those areas in which a weapon may be placed or hidden, is permissible if the police officer possesses a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts which reasonably warrant the officers in believing that the suspect is dangerous.
Brennan dissenting: nothing in Terry authorized police officers to search a suspect’s car based on reasonable suspicion. The search at issue in this case is a far cry from a frisk and certainly was not limited. The Court suggests no limit on the area search; a weapon may be placed or hidden anywhere in a car. A weapon might be hidden in a container in the car. A search of a crar and the containers based on nothing more than reasonable suspicion cannot be sustained.

PA v. Mimms: the balance of interests dictated the conclusion that it is reasonable for officers to routinely order drivers to get out of their vehicles.

Maryland v. Wilson: an officer making a traffic stop may order passengers to get out of the car pending completion of the stop. The only change in their circumstances that will result from ordering is that they will be outside of, rather than inside of, the stopped car. The additional intrusion is minimal.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Arizona v. Johnson
Year: 2009
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: if it was based on a reasonable suspicion that Johnson was armed and dangerous, the frisk was constitutionally valid.
5. Procedural History: The Arizona Court of Appeals deemed the pat down unlawful because the encounter had become consensual.
6. Facts: Officers stopped a car because the vehicle registration had been suspended. An officer asked Johnson to get out of the rear seat after observing suspicious behavior and receiving suspicious responses to her inquiries. The officer patted him down and found a weapon.
8. Reasoning: When an officer stops a vehicle for a traffic infraction, he seizes the vehicle and all of the occupants. The temporary seizure continues, and remains reasonable, for the duration of the stop. The stop ends when the police have no further need to control the scene and inform the driver and passengers they are free to leave. The encounter with Johnson had not become consensual because nothing would have conveyed to him that the traffic stop had ended or that he was free to leave.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Minnesota v. Dickerson
Year: 1993
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: The officer determined that the item was contraband only after conducting a further search, one not authorized by Terry or by any other exception to the warrant requirement.
4. Issue: whether the Fourth Amendment permits the seizure of contraband detected through a police officer’s sense of touch during a protective patdown search.
5. Procedural History: The trial court concluded that the officers were justified under Terry v .Ohio in stopping and frisking. It found under the plain view doctrine that the seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Respondent was found guilty in trial. The Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed. The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed holding that the seizure of cocaine was unconstitutional, because the seizure was through the sense of touch during a patdown.
6. Facts: In 1989, two police officers were patrolling an area in a marked squad car. At 8:15 p.m., one officer observed respondent leaving a 12-unit apartment building. The officer previously responded to complaints of drug sales in the building. Respondent began walking toward the police but, upon spotting the squad car, began walking in the opposite direction. The officer ordered respondent to stop and submit to a patdown search. The search revealed no weapons, but the officer felt a small lump in respondent’s nylon jacket. The officer examined it with fingers and it slid and felt to be a crack cocaine. The officer reached into the pocket and retrieved crack cocaine.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: whether police officers may seize nonthreatening contraband detected during a protective patdown search of the sort permitted by Terry. -> they may, so long as the officer’s search stays within the bounds marked by Terry.
If the police lack probable cause to believe that an object in plain view is contraband without conducting some further search of the object – i.e. if its incriminating character is not immediately apparent – the plain-view doctrine cannot justify its seizure.
If an officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect’s privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer’s search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain view context.
Terry itself demonstrates that the sense of touch is capable of revealing the nature of an object with sufficient reliability to support a seizure. The MN Supreme Court’s concern that touch is more intrusive into privacy than is sight is inapposite because the intrusion has already been authorized by the lawful search for weapons.
The officer’s continued exploration of respondent’s pocket after having concluded that it contained no weapon was unrelated to the sole justification of the search under Terry: the protection of the officer and others.
Scalia concurring: the purpose of the provision is to preserve the degree of respect for the privacy of persons and the inviolability of their property that existed when the provision was adopted.

The Permissible scope of stops, frisks, and sweeps – Maryland v. Buie
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Warrantless protective sweeps were justified if based on articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene. In other words, officers must have only a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the house is harboring a person posing a danger.
4. Issue: the level of justification required by the 4th Amendment before officers, while effecting the arrest of a suspect in his home, may conduct a warrantless protective sweep of the premises.
6. Facts: officers entered Buie’s home with an arrest warrant and arrested Buie for armed robbery. An officer entered the home’s basement, where Buie had been prior to his arrest.
8. Reasoning: The case involved protective sweep of a home – a quick and limited search of a premises incident to an arrest and conducted to protect the safety of police officers or others.
In home arrest situations give rise to an officer safety interest analogous to those involved in Terry and Long.
The Court rejected the State’s argument that no additional showing should be required for home sweeps. Suspension of the probable cause norm is justified because a protective sweep is not a full search of the premises. It involves only a cursory inspection of those spaces where a person may be found and it lasts no longer than is necessary to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger and in any event no longer than it takes to complete the arrest and depart the premises.
Brennan dissenting: ambush during in-home arrests does not approach the danger in Terry stops. A protective sweep involves an invasion of home privacy is not minimally intrusive.

Michigan v. Summers (1981): officers could reasonably detain an occupant of a home during the execution of a valid search warrant for narcotics even in the absence of additional, individualized suspicion pertaining to the occupant.

Ybarra v. Illinois (1979): it was unreasonable for officers to frisk patrons who were present in a bar during the execution of a valid warrant to search the bar for narcotics. The patrons could not be frisked merely because they were present in the place the warrant authorized the officers to search. Officers needed the individualized reasonable suspicion ordinarily required to justify a Terry frisk.

Bailey v. United States(2013): the interests did not apply with the same or similar force to the detention of recent occupants beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. To detain an occupant who was beyond the immediate vicinity of the home to be searched, officers need individualized reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

Special Balancing Contexts, School Searches – New Jersey v. T.L.O.
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: the search resulting in the discovery of the evidence of marijuana dealing was reasonable.
4. Issue: whether the 4th Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches conducted by public school officials. It does.
5. Procedural History: The Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court denied the motion to suppress, found TLO to be a delinquent, and sentenced her to a year’s probation. The Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed the judgment of the Appellate Division and ordered the suppression of the evidence.
6. Facts: In 1980, a teacher discovered two girls smoking in a lavatory, including 14 year old freshman TLO. The teacher took the two girls to the Principal’s office, where they met Choplick. In response to questioning by Choplick, TLO denied that she had been smoking at all. Choplick demanded TLO to see her purse. He found a pack of cigarettes and noticed cigarette rolling papers, associated with the use of marijuana. Choplick continued searching T.L.O.’s purse and discovered a small amount of marijuana, a pipe, a substantial number of one-dollar bills, a list of students, and two letters that indicated T.L.O. was dealing marijuana. The matter was turned over to the police, and the state brought juvenile-delinquency charges against T.L.O.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: NJ argues that the history of the 14th Amendment indicates that the Amendment was intended to regulate only searches and seizures by law enforcement officers. -> the Court has long spoken of the 4th Amendment’s strictures as restraints imposed upon governmental action – that is, upon the activities of sovereign authority.
Teachers and administrators act in loco parentis: their authority is that of the parent, not the State. -> School officials act as representatives of the State.
The State’s suggestion that children have no legitimate need to bring personal property into the schools does not seem well-anchored in reality. It is evident that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities re ordinarily subject. The warrant requirement is unsuited to the school environment.
The accommodation of the privacy interests of schoolchildren with the substantial need of teachers and administrators for freedom to maintain order does not require strict adherence to the requirements that searches be based on probable cause. The legality of the search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search.
The incident involved two separate searches with the first – the search for cigarettes – providing the suspicion that gave rise to the second – the search for marijuana. If Choplick had a reasonable suspicion that TLO had cigarettes in her purse, the search was justified despite the fact that the cigarettes would constitute mere evidence of a violation. Choplick’s suspicion was a common-sense conclusion about human behavior upon which practical people are entitled to rely and he did not act unreasonably.
TLO argues Choplick’s scope of the search exceeded permissible bounds when he seized and read certain letters. -> the discovery of the rolling papers gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that TLO was carrying marijuana.
Powell concurring: Students within the school environment have a lesser expectation of privacy than members of the population generally. There is commonality of interests between teachers and their pupils. Full panoply of rules do not apply with the same force in the schoolhouse.
Blackmun concurring: we used balancing test, rather than strictly applying the Warrant and Probable Cause Clause, only when we were confronted with a special law enforcement need for greater flexibility. The Court’s implication that the balancing test is the rule rather than the exception is troubling.
Brennan concurring and dissenting in part: extraordinary governmental interests exist and are sufficient to justify an exception to the warrant requirement in this case. I disagree with the Court’s decision to cast aside he probable cause standard when assessing the constitutional validity of a schoolhouse search. As compared with the relative ease with which teachers can apply the probable cause standard, the amorphous reasonableness under all the circumstances standard freshly coined will likely spawn increased litigation and greater uncertainty. Applying probable cause standard, I would find Choplick violated TLO’s 4th Amendment rights. Choplick was not entitled to search based on the mere presence of a package of cigarette papers.
Stevens concurring and dissenting in part: The majority’s standard will permit teachers and administrators to search students when they suspect that the search will reveal evidence of even the most trivial school regulation or precatory guideline for student behavior. The standard better attuned to this concern would permit teachers and administrators to search a student when they have reason to believe that the search will uncover evidence that the student is violating the law or engaging in conduct that is seriously disruptive of school order or the educational process.

Special Balancing Contexts, School Searches – Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding
Year: 2009
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: a strip search of a 13-year-old student by school officials looking for forbidden prescription and over-the-counter drugs violated the 4th Amendment because there were no reasons to suspect the drugs presented a danger or were concealed in the underwear.
8. Reasoning: the facts justified a search of the student’s backpack and outer clothing and these searches were not excessively intrusive. The content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion.

Checkpoints – Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: The balance of the State’s interest in preventing drunken driving, the extent to which this system can reasonably be said to advance that interest, and degree of intrusion upon individual motorists who are briefly stopped, weighs in favor of the state program.
4. Issue: whether a State’s use of highway sobriety checkpoint violates the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. It does not.
5. Procedural History: The court ruled that the Michigan program violated the 4th Amendment and MI Constitution. The MI Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: The Michigan Department established a sobriety checkpoint pilot program in early 1986. Checkpoints would be set up at selected sites along state roads. All vehicles passing through the checkpoint would be stopped and officers would briefly examine the drivers of the vehicles to determine if they were intoxicated. Where the officer believed the driver to be intoxicated, the driver would need to show his license and registration, further sobriety tests would be conducted, and arrest would be made if the tests so warranted. During the hour and 15 minute duration of the operation in Saginaw County, 126 vehicles passed with an average delay of 25 seconds for each vehicle. Two drivers were detained for further sobriety testing and two drivers were arrested for drunk driving. Sitz (plaintiff) filed a complaint the day before the checkpoint went into effect, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: seizure occurs when a vehicle is stopped at a checkpoint. The question is whether such seizures are reasonable.
No one can seriously dispute the magnitude of the drunken driving problem or the States’ interest in eradicating it. The weight bearing on the other scale – the measure of the intrusion on motorists – is slight.
The fear and surprise to be considered are not the natural fear of one who has been drinking over the prospect of being stopped but that engendered in law-abiding motorists by the nature of the stop. Checkpoints are selected pursuant to guidelines and officers stop every approaching vehicle. The intrusion is indistinguishable from the stops upheld in Martinez-Fuerte.
Sobriety checkpoints resulted in drunken driving arrests of around 1 percent of all motorists stopped. Illegal aliens were found in only 0.12 percent of the vehicles at checkpoints. We sustained its constitutionality then.
Brennan dissenting: the Court ignores the fact that in this class of minimally intrusive searches, we required the Government to prove that it had reasonable suspicion for a minimally intrusive seizure to be considered reasonable. By holding that no level of suspicion is necessary before stopping a car, the Court potentially subjects the general public to arbitrary or harassing conduct by the police.
Stevens dissenting: there is a critical difference between a seizure that is preceded by fair notice and one that is effected by surprise. A motorist with advance notice of the location of a permanent checkpoint has an opportunity to avoid the search entirely, or at least to prepare for, and limit, the intrusion on her privacy. No such opportunity is available in the case of a random stop or a temporary checkpoint. This case is not analogous to Matinez-Fuerte. The surprise intrusion upon individual liberty is not minimal.

Checkpoints – City of Indianapolis v. Edmond
Year: 2000
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: Because the primary purpose of the checkpoint program is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control, the checkpoints violate the 4th Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The USDC for the SD of IN agreed to class certification, denied the motion for a preliminary injunction, and held that the checkpoint did not violate the 4th Amendment. The Seventh Circuit reversed.
6. Facts: In 1998, Indianapolis began to operate vehicle checkpoints to interdict unlawful drugs. The city conducted six roadblocks, stopping 1161 vehicles and arresting 104 motorists. 55 arrests were for drug-related crimes while 49 were for offenses unrelated to drugs. At each checkpoint the police stopped a predetermined number of vehicles, and the driver was asked for a license and the car registration. The officer looks for signs of impairment and conducts an open-view examination of the vehicle. A dog walks around the outside of each stopped vehicle. The directives authorized the police to conduct a search only by consent or if they had “particularized suspicion.” The officers were required to stop cars in a particular sequence, and they could not stop vehicles out of sequence. Edmond and Palmer were stopped.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: A search or seizure is ordinarily unreasonable in the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.
A vehicle stop at a highway checkpoint effectuates a seizure. Walking a dog around the exterior of each car does not transform the seizure into a search.
We have never approved a checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing. Our checkpoint cases recognized only limited exceptions to the general rule that a seizure must be accompanied by some measure of individualized suspicion. Because the primary purpose of the checkpoint is to uncover evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing, the program contravenes the 4th Amendment.
Petitioner argues the checkpoints in Sitz and Martinez-Fuerte had the same ultimate purpose of arresting those suspected of committing crimes -> if we were to rest the case at this high level of generality, there would be little check on the ability of the authorities to construct roadblocks for almost any conceivable law enforcement purpose.
Petitioner emphasizes severe and intractable nature of the drug problem. -> gravity of the threat alone cannot be dispositive. In determining whether individualized suspicion is required, we must consider the nature of the interests threatened and their connection to the particular law enforcement practices at iasuse.
Petitioners likened the checkpoint agenda to that in Martinez-Fuerte. -> Checkpoints here are far removed from the border context. We must look closely at the nature of the public interests that such a regime is designed to serve. The primary purpose of this checkpoint is to advance the general interest in crime control. We decline to suspend the requirement of individualized suspicion. We cannot sanction stops justified by the generalized and ever-present possibility of crime.
Petitioners argue that our prior cases preclude an inquiry into the purposes of the checkpoint program -> Whren does not preclude an inquiry into programmatic purpose.
Petitioners argue the checkpoint is justified by its lawful secondary purposes of keeping impaired motorists off and verifying licenses and registrations. -> Law enforcement authorities cannot establish checkpoints for any purpose so long as they include a license or sobriety check.
Rehnquist dissenting: These seizures serve the State’s accepted and significant interests of preventing drunken driving and checking for driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, and there is nothing gin the record to indicate that the addition of the dog sniff lengthens these otherwise legitimate seizures. The constitutionality of a seizure turns upon a weighing of the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty. The use of roadblocks to look for signs of impairment was validated by Sitz and the use of raodblocks to check for licenses and registrations were recognized in Prouse.
Thomas dissenting: I am not convinced that Sitz and Martinez-Fuerte were correctly decided.

Checkpoints – Illinois v. Lidster
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: the police stops were reasonable and constitutional.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial court rejected that the checkpoint stop violated the 4th Amendment. The appellate court reversed. The IL Supreme Court held that the stop was unconstitutional.
6. Facts: In 1997, just after midnight, an unknown motorist struck and killed a 70-year-old bicyclist. The motorist drove off without identifying himself. A week later police set up a checkpoint to obtain more information about the accident from the motoring public. Police blocked the highway, forcing the traffic to slow down, and detained each car for about 10 to 15 seconds. Robert Lidster (defendant) was driving his minivan toward the checkpoint but suddenly swerved before the checkpoint and narrowly missed an officer. An officer smelled alcohol on Lidster’s breath and administered a sobriety test, after which Lidster was arrested. Lidster was tried and convicted in state court for driving under the influence of alcohol.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the checkpoint stop here differs significantly from that in Edmond. The stop’s primary law enforcement purpose was to ask vehicle occupants for their help in providing information about a crime. The police expected the information elicited to help them apprehend other individuals.
Special law enforcement concerns will sometimes justify highway stops without individualized suspicion. An information seeking stop is not the kind of event that involves suspicion, or lack of suspicion, of the relevant individual. Information seeking stops are less likely to provoke anxiety or to prove intrusive.
We must judge its reasonableness, hence its constitutionality, on the basis of the individual circumstances. The stop’s objective was to help find the perpetrator of a specific and known crime, not of unknown crimes of a general sort. The stops interfered only minimally with the liberty of the sort the 4th Amendment seeks to protect.
Stevens concurring and dissenting in part: motorists who confront a roadblock are required to stop and to remain stopped for as long as the officers choose to detain them. The likelihood of yielding useful information is speculative. The outcome of the multifactor test in Brown v. Texas is not clear.

Drug testing – National treasury employees union v. Van Raab
Year: 1989
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: upheld a US Customs Service drug testing program. The urinalysis searches without warrants and without individualized suspicion were reasonable.
6. Facts: This program made successful drug testing a condition of promotion for employees seeking to be promoted to three categories of positions: (1) positions directly involved with the interdiction of illegal drugs, (2) positions requiring the carrying of firearms in the line of duty, and (3) positions with access to classified material.
8. Reasoning: The Government has compelling interests in safeguarding our borders and the public safety that outweigh the privacy expectations of employees who seek to be promoted. The interest in protecting classified information was compelling. It had doubt about whether the category of employees for this reason was overbroad.
Scalia dissenting: the effect of the approval is the exposure of vast numbers of public employees and the potential exposure of even private citizens to needless indignity.

Drug testing – Vernonia School District 471 v. Acton
Year: 1995
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: the policy was constitutional.
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied relief. The Ninth Circuit reversed.
6. Facts: a school board policy required high school and grade school students who wished to participate in interscholastic athletics to consent to random urinalysis drug testing. Acton, a seventh grader, was denied the opportunity to participate in football because his parents had refused to sign the testing consent form. The Actons requested declaratory and injunctive relief.
8. Reasoning: Invoking the balancing analysis, the majority turned to the nature of the privacy interest intruded upon. The students’ privacy interests are diminished because they are in the custody of and under the supervision and control of school officials. Their interests are diminished by the nonprivate nature of lock rooms and their choice to subject themselves to a higher degree of regulation.
The majority examined the character of the intrusion. The monitoring of the urination was nearly identical to the condition encountered in public restrooms and the infringement negligible.
The majority considered the nature and immediacy of the governmental concern at issue and the efficacy of the means used for meeting it. The interests furthered by random drug testing do not have to be compelling but have to be important enough. The interest here was sufficiently important.
The Court cautioned against the assumption that suspicionless drug testing will readily pass muster in other contexts.
O’Connor dissenting: we do not think that an exemption from the individualized suspicion requirement was justified in the situation.

Drug testing – Board of education of independent school district no 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls
Year: 2002
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: the policy is constitutional.
6. Facts: the policy required middle and high school students to consent to urinalysis drug testing as a condition for participating in any extracurricular activities. It required students to undergo drug testing before participation, while participating in the activity, and at any time upon reasonable suspicion. Two students and their parents sued.
8. Reasoning: The special needs inhere in the public school context. Under interests at stake, students have a limited expectation of privacy. The regulation of extracurricular activities further diminishes the expectation of privacy.
Invasion of privacy was not significant because the method was deemed negligible and the only consequence of a failed test was limitation in participation.
Under the nature and immediacy of the governmental concern at issue and the efficacy of the means used for meeting it, rejected the contention that safety concerns were not at stake for nonathletes, asserting that the interest is substantial for all children.
The Court rejected an individualized suspicion requirement.
Ginsburg dissenting: the program targeted for testing a student population least likely to be at risk from illicit drugs.

Drug testing – Chandler v. Miller
Year: 1997
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: Georgia’s requirement that candidates for state office pass a drug test does not fit within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches.
4. Issue: whether the drug test requirement ranks among the limited circumstances in which suspicionless searches are warranted.
5. Procedural History: The DC denied petitioners’ motion for a preliminary injunction. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed and judged Georgia’s law constitutional.
6. Facts: Georgia requires candidates for designated state offices to certify that they have taken a drug test and that the test result was negative. Petitioners were Libertarian Party nominees in 1994 for state offices. About one month before the deadline for submission of the certificates, petitioners filed action in the USDC for the ND of GA that the tests violated their rights under the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Georgia’s drug testing requirement effects a search. To be reasonable, a search ordinarily must be based on individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. Particularized exceptions to the main rule are sometimes warranted based on special needs.
Is the certification requirement warranted by a special need? Special need must be substantial, important enough to override the individual’s acknowledged privacy interest, sufficiently vital to suppress individualized suspicion. Georgia has failed to show a special need of that kind.
Respondents’ defense of the statute rests on the incompatibility of unlawful drug use with holding high state office. Notably lacking in respondents’ presentation is any indication of a concrete danger demanding departure from the 4th Amendment’s main rule.
GA’s requirement is not well designed to identify candidates who violate antidrug laws. Users of illegal drugs could abstain for a pretest period sufficient to avoid detection.
Respondents rely on Von Raab. In Von Raab, it was not feasible to subject employees to kind of day-to-day security, but in GA program, candidates are subject to relentless scrutiny. GA displas its commitment to the struggle against drug abuse; the need revealed is symbolic, not special. The drug test diminishes personal privacy for a symbol’s sake.

Drug Testing – Ferguson v. City of Charleston
Year: 2001
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: invasion of privacy in this case was far more substantial than in prior cases.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: a task force formed by the Charleston Solicitor developed a policy for testing pregnant women. The policy stated (1) if drug use after labor was detected, the paint would be promptly arrested; and (2) if a patient tested positive during pregnancy or labor, the police were to be notified only if the patient tested positive a second time or missed an appointment with a substance abuse counselor. Ten women (plaintiffs) who were arrested after testing positive filed suit against the City of Charleston.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the state claimed the policy’s ultimate purpose was to protect the health of mother and child. -> the purpose actually served was ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control.
Because the primary purpose of the policy was to ensure that the threat of arrest and prosecution to force women into treatment and because of the extensive involvement of law enforcement officials at every stage of the policy, the case simply did not fit within the category of special needs.

DNA testing – Maryland v. King
Year: 2013
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: reversed.
3. Holding: when officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the 4th Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The Circuit Court judge upheld the statute as constitutional. King was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of a parole. Maryland Court of Appeals struck down the portions of the Act authorizing collection of DNA from felony arrestees as unconstitutional and a DNA swab was an unreasonable search.
6. Facts: King was arrested in 2009 for menacing a group of people with a shotgun and charged in state court with assault. Booking personnel used a cheek swab to take a DNA sample from him pursuant to Maryland DNA Collection Act. In 2009, King’s DNA record was uploaded to the database and his DNA profile matched to the DNA sample collected in the unsolved 2003 rape case. Detectives presented the evidence to a grand jury, which indicted him for the rape. Detectives obtained a search warrant and a second sample of DNA that matched the evidence from the rape.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: STR analysis makes it possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty. No purpose other than identification is permissible. The CODIS database is based on 13 loci at which the STR alleges are noted and compared. A random match is probable in approximately 1 in 100 trillion. The fact that a buccal swab is a negligible intrusion is of central relevance to determining reasonableness, although it is a search.
The application of traditional standards of reasonableness requires a court to weigh the promotion of legitimate governmental interests against the degree to which the search intrudes upon an individual’s privacy.
In booking and jailing, the law is in the act of subjecting the body of the accused to its physical dominion. When probable cause exists to remove an individual from the normal channels of society and hold him to legal custody, DNA identification plays a critical role in serving those interests. The government’s interest in identification goes beyond ensuring that the proper name is typed on the indictment. A suspect’s criminal history is a critical part of his identity. The only difference between DNA analysis and the accepted use of fingerprint databases is the unparalleled accuracy DNA provides.
A DNA profile is useful to the police because it gives them a form of identification to search the records already in their valid possession. Officers bear a responsibility for ensuring that the custody of an arrestee does not create inordinate risks for facility staff, the existing detainee population, and a new detainee. The Government has a substantial interest in ensuring that persons accused of crimes are available for trials. An arrestee’s past conduct is essential to an assessment of the danger he poses to the public, and this determines whether the individual should be released on bail. The ID may have the salutary effect of freeing a person wrongfully imprisoned for the same offense.
King argues DNA identification is not as fast as fingerprinting. -> DNA serves an essential purpose despite the delays.
The government interest must outweigh the degree to which the search invades an individual’s legitimate expectations of privacy. Nothing suggest that a buccal swab poses any physical danger whatsoever.
Scalia dissenting: Whenever this court has allowed a suspicionless search, it has insisted upon a justifying motive apart from the investigation of crime. No such noninvestigative motive exists in this case. Special needs searches reflects that they must be justified, always, by concerns other than crime detection. The objects of a search incident to arrest must be either (1) weapons or evidence that might easily be destroyed, or (2) evidence relevant to the crime of arrest. Neither is the object of the search at issue here. Suspicionless searches are never allowed if their principal end is ordinary crime-solving. The Court elaborates the ways that the search here served the special purposes of identifying. This search had nothing to do with establishing King’s identity. To identify someone one would compare the DNA against the Convict and Arrestee Collection, but here the officers compared it with unsolved crimes evidence. King was not identified, but the sample was identified by its association with King. Solving unsolved crimes occupies a lower place and the 4th Amendment must prevail.

Border searches – United States v. Flores-Montano
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: the Government’s authority to conduct suspicionless inspections at the border includes the authority to remove, disassemble, and reassemble a vehicle’s fuel tank.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: A grand jury indicted respondent on one count of unlawfully importing marijuana and one count of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. The District court held that reasonable suspicion was required to justify the search and granted motion to suppress. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: Manuel Flores-Montano (defendant) was attempting to cross the United States border through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in California when a customs official inspected his vehicle. The inspector took Flores-Montano’s car to a secondary inspection station. The gas tank sounded solid when tapped, so the inspector called a mechanic to remove the tank. The inspector found 37 kilograms of marijuana in the tank.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: In Molina-Tarazon, the court stated in order to conduct a search that goes beyond the routine, an inspector must have reasonable suspicion, and the critical factor in determining whether a search is routine is the degree of intrusiveness.
The government’s interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the international border. Gas tank drug seizures have accounted for 4619 of the vehicle drug seizures, or 25%.
Respondent asserts that he has a privacy interest in his fuel tank and that suspicionless disassembly of his tank is an invasion of his privacy. -> we have recognized that automobiles seeking entry into this country may be searched. It is difficult to imagine how the search of a gas tank could be more of an invasion of privacy than the search of the automobile’s passenger compartment.
Respondent asserts that the 4th Amendment protects property as well as privacy and the disassembly and reassembly of his gas tank is a significant deprivation of his property interest because it may damage the vehicle. -> a gas tank search involves a brief procedure that can be reversed without damaging the safety or operation of the vehicle.

Higher than usual standards of reasonableness – Tennessee v. Garner
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: affirmed.
3. Holding: Hymon did not have probable cause to believe that Garner, whom he correctly believed to be unarmed, posed any physical danger to himself or others. The statute is invalid insofar as it purported to give Hymon the authority to act as he did.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The DC held that Hymon’s actions were authorized by the TN statute, which was in turn constitutional. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, reasoning that the killing of a fleeing suspect is a seizure under the 4th Amendment and is constitutional only if reasonable.
6. Facts: Officers Hymon and Wright answered a prowler inside call. Hymon went behind the house and heard a door slam and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect stopped at a 6 feet high chain link fence at the edge of the yard. Hymon was able to see Garner’s face and hands and saw no sign of a weapon. Hymon called out “police, halt” and Garner began to climb over the fence. Convinced that if Garner made it over the fence he would elude capture, Hymon shot him. The bullet hit Garner in the back of the head and Garner died in the hospital. Garner’s father sued in the DC for the WD of TN. The complaint alleged that the shooting violated the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th Amendments.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Hymon was acting under the authority of a TN statute and pursuant to Police Department policy. The statute provides that if, after notice of the intention to arrest the defendant, he either flee or forcibly resist, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.
Petitioners argue that if an officer has probable cause, the 4th Amendment has nothing to say about how that seizure is made. -> we must balance the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s 4th Amendment interests against the importance of the government interests alleged to justify the intrusion.
The same balancing process demonstrates that, notwithstanding probable cause to seize a suspect, an officer may not always do so by killing him. The intrusiveness of a seizure by means of deadly force is unmatched.
While the meaningful threat of deadly force might be thought to lead to the arrest of more live suspects by discouraging escape attempts, the evidence does not support this thesis. The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects is constitutionally unreasonable. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. The TN statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against such fleeing suspects.
It is not unconstitutional on its face. Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.
The 4th Amendment must be construed in light of the common-law rule, which allowed the use of whatever force was necessary to effect the arrest of a fleeing felon. -> reliance on the common-law rule in this case would be a mistaken literalism that ignores the purposes of a historical inquiry.
The common law rule arose at a time when virtually all felonies were punishable by death. The justifications makes no sense today. Handguns were not carried by police officers until the latter half of the last century.
Laws permitting officers to use deadly force to apprehend unarmed nonviolent fleeing felony suspects do not protect, do not deter crime or alleviate problems, and do not improve the crime-fighting ability. We do not agree with petitioners that the rule adopted requires the police to make impossible, split-second evaluations of unknowable facts.
O’Connor dissenting: police use of deadly force to apprehend a fleeing criminal suspect falls within the rubric of police conduct necessarily involving swift action predicated upon the on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat. The public interest involved in the use of deadly force as a last resort to apprehend a fleeing burglary suspect relates primarily to the serious nature of the crime. The harsh potentialities for violence inherent in the forced entry into a home preclude characterization of the crime as innocuous, inconsequential, minor, or nonviolent.
Where a police officer has probable cause to arrest a suspected burglar, the use of deadly force as a last resort might well be the only means of apprehending the suspect. With respect to a particular burglary, subsequent investigation simply cannot represent a substitute for immediate apprehension of the criminal suspect at the scene. The reasonableness of this action for purposes of the 4th Amendment is not determined by the unfortunate nature of this case; instead, the question is whether it is constitutionally impermissible for officers, as a last resort, to shoot a burglary suspect fleeing the scene of the crime.

Higher than usual standards of reasonableness – Scott v. Harris
Year: 2007
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: Garner did not prescribe a standard designed to govern all official uses of deadly force.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Scott moved for summary judgment. The District Court denied the motion and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: When a county deputy attempted to pull Harris over for speeding, he sped away, initiating a chase. Scott applied his push bumper to the rear of Harris’s vehicle that caused Harris to lose control of and crash his vehicle. Harris was badly injured and rendered a quadriplegic. Harris sued, alleging he had been unreasonably seized.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Harris claimed that Garner governed and Scott’s actions were per se unreasonable. -> Garner was simply an application of the 4th Amendment’s reasonableness test. The factors had scant applicability to the vastly different facts of Harris.
It was necessary to consider the risk of bodily harm that Scott’s actions posed to Harris in light of the threat to the public that Scott was trying to eliminate. The videotape showed Harris posed an actual and imminent threat. Scott’s actions posed not the near certainty of death posed by shooting.
The justices were loath to lay down a rule requiring the police to allow fleeing suspects to get away whenever they drive so recklessly that they put other people’s lives in danger.
A police officer’s attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the 4th Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death.

Higher than usual standards of reasonableness – Barnes v. Felix
Year: 2025
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: vacate and remand.
3. Holding: The moment-of-threat rule applied below prevents that sort of attention to context, and thus conflicts with this Court’s instruction to analyze the totality of the circumstances.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The District Court granted summary judgment to Felix. The Court of Appeals affirmed, explaining that the moment-of-threat rule requires asking only whether an officer was “in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in [his] use of deadly force.” Under the rule, events “leading up to the shooting” are “not relevant.” “Precise moment of threat” was the “two seconds” when Felix was clinging to a moving car. Because Felix could then have reasonably believed his life in danger, the panel held, the shooting was lawful.
6. Facts: Felix pulled over Barnes for suspected toll violations. Felix ordered Barnes to exit the vehicle, but Barnes began to drive away. Felix jumped onto its doorsill and fired two shots inside. Barnes was fatally hit but managed to stop the car. Barnes’s mother sued Felix on Barnes’s behalf.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The 4th Amendment requires deciding whether a use of force was objectively reasonable demands “careful attention to the facts and circumstances” relating to the incident, as then known to the officer. Factors include severity of the crime, actions the officer took during the stop, and the stopped person’s conduct. The inquiry into the reasonableness of police force requires analyzing the “totality of the circumstances.”
A court deciding a use-of-force case cannot review the totality of the circumstances if it has put on chronological blinders.

Higher than usual standards of reasonableness – McNeely v. Missouri
Year: 2013
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: officers must obtain a search warrant before a blood sample is drawn in those drunk-driving investigations where they can reasonably obtain a warrant without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search for evidence of drunk driving.
8. Reasoning: one view of Schmerber was that the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream established a per se exigency that sufficed on its own to justify an exception to the warrant requirement for nonconsensual blood testing in drunk-driving investigations. Officers could always rely on their own assessments of probable cause. There was never a need to secure a search warrant to draw blood in such circumstances.
Another view was that the search warrant rule presumptively governed drunk-driving investigations and that judges had to determine on a case-by-case basis whether the government had demonstrated a sufficient exigency to justify dispensing with a magistrate’s predetermination of probable cause.
In McNeely, this natural process of evidence destruction did not justify a categorical, per se exception to the search warrant requirement. A judge must determine whether the government has shown exigent circumstances in each particular case, based on the totality of circumstances.

Higher than usual standards of reasonableness – Winston v. Lee
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: the Commonwealth has failed to demonstrate that it would be reasonable under the terms of the 4th Amendment to search for evidence of this crime by means of the contemplated surgery.
4. Issue: Whether a State may consistently with the 4th Amendment compel a suspect to undergo surgery of this kind in a search for evidence of a crime.
5. Procedural History: The state trial judge granted the motion to compel surgery. Respondent petitioned for a writ of prohibition and/or a writ of habeas corpus, which were denied. Respondent brought an action in the USDC for the ED of VA to enjoin the pending operation on the 4th Amendment grounds. The court refused to issue a preliminary injunction. Respondent moved for a rehearing based on the new evidence and the state trial court denied the rehearing and the VA Supreme Court affirmed. The District Court enjoined the threatened surgery. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: At 1 a.m. in 1982, Watkinson was closing his shop. He observed someone armed with a gun coming toward him. Watkinson drew his gun and the other person told him to freeze. Watkinson fired at the other person, who returned fire. Watkinson was hit in the legs, while the other person ran from the scene. Approximately 20 minutes later, officers found respondent eight blocks away. Respondent was suffering from a gunshot wound to his left chest and told he had been shot when two individuals attempted to rob him. Respondent at MCV hospital stated Watkinson was the man who shot him. Officers charged respondent with attempted robbery malicious wounding, and two counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony. X-ray revealed that the bullet was lodged one inch deep and general anesthetic would be desirable.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: a compelled surgical intrusion into an individual’s body for evidence implicates expectations of privacy and security of such magnitude that the intrusion may be unreasonable even if likely to produce evidence of a crime.
The reasonableness of surgical intrusions beneath the skin depends on a case-by-case approach, in which the individual’s interests in privacy and security are weighed against society’s interests in conducting the procedure.
The Commonwealth proposes to take control of respondent’s body, to drug this Citizen, not yet convicted of a criminal offense, into a state of unconsciousness, and then to search beneath his skin for evidence of a crime.
The Commonwealth claims to need the bullet to demonstrate that it was fired from Watkinson’s gun, which would show that respondent was the robber. Petitioners’ assertions of a compelling need for the bullet are hardly persuasive. The Commonwealth has available substantial additional evidence that respondent was the individual who accosted Watkinson: Watkinson’s spontaneous identification, and the location of the bullet.

Higher than usual standards of reasonableness – Zurcher v. Stanford Daily (1978)
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: neither ground required that 4th Amendment standards be heightened. The norms of probable cause and a search warrant were fully adequate to protect the interests at stake when a newsroom or an innocent third party’s premises are searched.
6. Facts: a university newspaper challenged the search of its newsroom for photographic materials that could have provided evidence of the identities of the perpetrators of assaults upon police officers.
8. Reasoning: Stanford argued two grounds that 4th Amendment standards had to be elevated: the peril to 1st Amendment values engendered when law enforcement officers searched a newsroom, and more serious threat to privacy inherent in the unannounced search of the premises of an innocent third party for evidence of a crime.

At common law, coerced confessions were excluded from evidence because of a fear that they would be untrustworthy. In Brown v. Mississippi (1936), the court overturned convictions based on confessions obtained after the defendants had been whipped until they agreed to confess. Between 1936 and 1964, the Due Process Clause was the only basis on which state defendants’ incriminating statements were found to be unconstitutional. In 1960s, the Court held that the 5th Amendment privilege and 6th Amendment also governed the constitutional admissibility of incriminating statements.

Due Process of law and confessions – Ashcraft v. Tennessee
Year: 1944
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: If Ashcraft made a confession it was not voluntary but compelled.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The Supreme Court of TN affirmed.
6. Facts: Zelma Ashcraft got in her automobile to visit her mother’s home. Late in the afternoon of the same day, her car was observed standing on the wrong side of a road. Just off the road, her lifeless body was found. Ware, a black, was indicted in a state court and found guilty of her murder. E Ashcraft was charged with having hired Ware as an accessory. Both were sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary.
The officers first talked to Ashcraft at 6 p.m. on the day of his wife’s murder until 2 a.m. and police made investigations in the neighborhood but could not find tangible evidence. On July 14, the officers took Ashcraft to the fifth floor of the jail and questioned him in relays from 7 Saturday evening until 9:30 Monday morning. Ashcraft says he was threatened and abused and his eyes became blinded, his body weary, and the strains on his nerves unbearable. Officers say they were kind and considerate. Ashcraft says the officers attempted to entrap him into a confession but he did not admit knowledge concerning or participation in the crime. The officers state, after 28 hours of questioning, Ashcraft stated Ware had overpowered him at his home and abducted the wife and was probably the killer. Ware made a self-incriminating statement as of early Monday morning and made a written confession that Ashcraft had hired him to commit the murder.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Ware and Ashcraft urge that alleged confessions were used at their trial which had been extorted from them by state law enforcement officers in violation of the 14th Amendment and that solely and alone on the basis of these confessions they had been convicted.
For 36 hours Ashcraft was questioned and denied that he had anything to do with the murder of his wife. Ashcraft pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. A situation such as that here is so inherently coercive that its very existence is irreconcilable with the possession of mental freedom by a lone suspect against whom its full coercive force is brought to bear. It is inconceivable that a court would permit prosecutors to keep a witness under continuous cross-examination for 36 hours without rest or sleep to extract a voluntary confession. Nor can we hold voluntary a confession where prosecutors do the same thing away from the restraining influences of a public trial in an open court room.
Jackson dissenting: A confession made by one in custody heretofore has been admissible in evidence unless it was proved and found that it was obtained by pressures so strong that it was in fact involuntarily made, that the individual will of the particular confessor had been overcome by torture, mob violence, fraud, trickery, threats, or promises. Respect for the sovereign character of the several States always has constrained this Court to give great weight to findings of fact of state courts. We have no supervisory power over state courts. The consequences upon society of limiting examination of persons out of court cannot fairly be appraised without recognition of the advantage criminals already enjoy in immunity from compulsory examination in the court. A confession obtained during or shortly after the confessor has been subjected to brutality, torture, beating, starvation, or physical pain is prima facie involuntary. Actual or threatened violence have no place in eliciting truth. Interrogation per se is not an outlaw. Questioning is an indispensable instrumentality of justice. Even going behind the state court decisions into the facts, no independent judgment on the whole evidence that Ashcraft’s confession was in fact coerced is possible. Could the state not confront Ashcraft with his false statements and ask his explanation? The time came when it dawned on him that his own story brought him under suspicion. Then he became desperate and accused the black.

United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez (1994): the federal statute governing the admissibility of statements given when there is a delay between arrest and arraignment does not apply to statements made by a person who is being held solely on state charges. A confession to the US Secret Service agents was held admissible even though the defendant gave the confession after being arrested and held in the custody of local law enforcement officers for nearly three days without being arraigned on either state or federal charges.

New York procedure: judge submits the defendants’ confessions to the jury. The jury is then directed to consider each defendant’s confession as evidence against that defendant if but only if it concluded the confession was voluntary.
Jackson v. Denmo (1964): New York procedure was in violation of due process.

Orthodox procedure: the judge resolves evidentiary conflicts and makes her own determination as to whether the confession is voluntary. If voluntary, the confession is introduced into evidence and the jury is instructed to consider it along with the other evidence presented.
Massachusetts procedure: If the judge admits the confession, the jury is instructed as to the definition of a voluntary confession and told to consider the confession as evidence only if it finds that it was a voluntary confession.

Due Process of law and confessions – Spano v. New York
Year: 1959
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: Petitioner’s will was overborne by official pressure, fatigue, and sympathy falsely aroused after considering all the facts in their post-indictment setting. Petitioner’s conviction cannot stand under the 14th Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The jury was instructed that it could rely on the confession only if it was found to be voluntary. The jury returned a guilty verdict and Spano was sentenced to death. The NY Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: Spano was drinking in a bar. The decedent took some of Spano’s money. Spano followed him out of the bar to recover it. A fight ensued. Spano walked to his apartment, secured a gun, and walked to a candy store where the decedent was frequently found. Spano fired five shots, two of which entered the decedent’s body, causing his death. The boy supervising the store was the only eyewitness. The Bronx County Grand Jury returned an indictment for first-degree murder against Spano. Spano called Bruno and told him about the incident and Bruno relayed the information to his superiors. Spano, accompanied by counsel, surrended himself to the authorities. His attorney told Spano to answer no questions. At 7:15 p.m. the questioning began and Spano refused to answer. Spano’s request to see his attorney was denied. Then, Bruno was told to tell Spano that the call had gotten him in a lot of trouble and he should seek to extract sympathy from Spano for his wife and children. In the fourth session, Spano succumbed to Bruno’s prevarications and agreed to make a statement. Detectives took Spano and attempted to find the bridge from which Spano said he had thrown the murder weapon. Spano further made statements during the process.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Spano argues that following indictment no confession obtained in the absence of counsel can be used without violating the 14th Amendment. -> we find the use of the confession obtained here inconsistent with the 14th Amendment.
The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their untrustworthiness. It also turns on the feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that life and liberty can be endangered.
Petitioner was questioned for eight straight hours before he confessed. The use of Bruno deserves mention in the totality of the situation. They instructed Bruno falsely to state that the call had gotten him into trouble, that his job was in jeopardy, and that loss of his job would be disastrous.
The police were not merely trying to solve a crime, or even to absolve a suspect. They were rather concerned primarily with securing a statement from defendant on which they could convict him.
Douglas concurring: The questions is whether after the indictment and before the trial the Government can interrogate the accused in secret when he asked for his lawyer and when his request was denied. Depriving a person, formally charged with a crime, of counsel during the period prior to trial may be more damaging. This is a case of an accused, who is scheduled to be tried by a judge and jury being tried in a preliminary way by the police.
Stewart concurring: The absence of counsel when this confession was elicited was alone enough to render it inadmissible under the 14th Amendment.

Mincey v. Arizona (1978): a detective questioned defendant in the ICU of a hospital. The defendant repeatedly expressed his wish not to be interrogated. The court held defendant’s confession was inadmissible for all purposes because it was involuntary.

Due Process of law and confessions – Colorado v. Connelly
Year: 1986
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: Coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not voluntary within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. The taking of respondent’s statements, and their admission into evidence, constitute no violation of that Clause.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Respondent moved to suppress all of his statements. Metzner, a psychiatrist, testified that respondent was suffering from chronic schizophrenia and was in a psychotic state. The CO trial court decided that respondent’s statements must be suppressed because they were involuntary. The CO Supreme Court affirmed.
6. Facts: Connelly approached Officer Anderson and, without any prompting, stated that he had murdered someone and wanted to talk about it. Anderson advised Connelly about the Miranda warning. Connelly denied that he had been drinking or taking drugs, and stated that he had been a patient in several mental hospitals. To Detective Antuna, Connelly stated he had come all the way from Boston to confess to the murder of Junta, a young girl, in Denver in 1982. A search of police records revealed the body of an unidentified female found in 1983. Connelly agreed to take the officers to the scene of the killing. Connelly directed the officers and pointed out the exact location of the murder. During an interview with the public defender’s office, Connelly began giving confused answers and stated that voices had told him to come to Denver and told him to confess. In 1984, the doctors determined he was competent to proceed to trial.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Absent police conduct causally related to the confession, there is simply no basis for concluding that any state actor has deprived a criminal defendant of due process of law. Courts have found the mental condition of the defendant a more significant factor in the voluntariness calculus. This does not justify that a defendant’s mental condition, by itself and apart from its relation to official coercion, should ever dispose of the inquiry into constitutional voluntariness.
Respondent argues Blackburn v. Alabama and Townsend v. Sain support that the deficient mental condition of the defendants was sufficient to render their confessions involuntary. -> it ignores the integral element of police overreaching present in both cases.
Our involuntary confession jurisprudence is entirely consistent with the settled law requiring some sort of state action to support a claim of violation of the Due Process Clause.
The central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence. The necessity for the collateral inquiry and the exclusion of evidence deflect a criminal trial from its basic purpose. Respondent would now have us require sweeping inquiries into the state of mind of a criminal defendant who has confessed, inquiries quite divorced from any coercion brought to bear on the defendant by the State.
Brennan dissenting: the Court denies Connelly his fundamental right to make a vital choice with a sane mind. The use of a mentally ill person’s involuntary confession is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness. The requirement that a confession be voluntary reflects a recognition of the importance of free will and of reliability in determining the admissibility of a confession, and thus demands an inquiry into the totality of the circumstances surrounding the confession. The Court has made clear that ensuring that a confession is a product of free will is an independent concern. The Court’s adoption today of a restrictive definition of an involuntary confession will require heightened scrutiny o f a confession’s reliability. No physical evidence links the defendant to the alleged crime. The trial court should find substantial indicia of reliability before admitting the confession of a mentally ill person into evidence.

Interrogation – Arizona v. Fulminante
Year: 1991
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: Defendant’s confession had been coerced and its admission into evidence violated due process.
5. Procedural History: Defendant was convicted and sentenced to death. AZ Supreme Court found the confession coerced.
6. Facts: defendant, in inmate in a federal penitentiary as a result of a weapons offense, was suspected of murdering his 11 year old stepdaughter. Defendant has been receiving rough treatment from other prisoners. Sarivola, another inmate, told his superior in the FBI that defendant was rumored to have killed his stepdaughter. Sarivola now offered defendant protection from the other inmates, but only if he would tell the truth about his stepdaughter’s death. Defendant admitted the murder. His confession to Sarivola was introduced into evidence.
8. Reasoning: Defendant’s will was overborne because defendant faced a credible threat of physical violence unless he confessed.
Rehnquist dissenting: Defendant offered no evidence that he believed that his life was in danger or that he in fact confessed to Sarivola in order to obtain the proffered protection.

The Constitutional Basis – Miranda v. Arizona
Year: 1966
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: The prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination. Prior to any questioning the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.
4. Issue: admissibility of statements obtained from an individual who is subjected to custodial police interrogation and the necessity for procedures which assure that the individual is accorded his privilege under the 5th Amendment.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: Defendant was questioned in a room in which he was cut off from the outside world. Defendant was not given a full and effective warning of his rights at the outset of the interrogation process. The questioning elicited oral admissions, and in three cases signed statements which were admitted.
The police arrested defendant and took him to a special interrogation room where they secured a confession.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the fact remains that in none of these cases did the officers undertake to afford appropriate safeguards at the outset of the interrogation to insure that the statements were truly the product of free choice.
Unless adequate protective devices are employed to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings, no statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of his free choice.
The privilege is fulfilled only when the person is guaranteed the right to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will.
If a person in custody is to be subjected to interrogation, he must be first informed in clear and unequivocal terms that he has the right to remain silent. The warning is simply needed to make them aware of it. The warning must be accompanied by the explanation that anything said can and will be used against the individual in court. This warning is needed to make him aware not only of the privilege, but also of the consequences of forgoing it. It is only through an awareness of these consequences that there can be any assurance of real understanding and intelligent exercise of the privilege. This warning may serve to make the individual more aware that he is faced with a phase of the adversary system.
Our aim is to assure that the individual’s right to choose between silence and speech remains unfettered throughout the interrogation process. The need for counsel includes having counsel present during any questioning. The assistance of counsel can mitigate the dangers of untrustworthiness. The likelihood that the police will practice coercion is reduced and the lawyer can testify to it in court. It also helps to guarantee that the accused gives a fully accurate statement to the police.
It is necessary to warn him not only that he has the right to consult with an attorney, but also that if he is indigent a lawyer will be appointed to represent him. If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. If the interrogation continues without the presence of an attorney and a statement is taken, a heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against his self-incrimination and his right to counsel.

The Constitutional Basis – New York v. Quarles
Year: 1984
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: this case presents a situation where concern for public safety must be paramount to adherence to the literal language of the rules enunciated in Miranda.
There is a public safety exception to the requirement that Miranda warnings be given before a suspect’s answers may be admitted into evidence, and that the availability of that exception does not depend upon the motivation of the individual officers involved.
The Court of Appeals erred in excluding the statement and the gun because of the officer’s failure to read respondent his Miranda rights before attempting to locate the weapon. It erred in excluding the subsequent statements as illegal fruits of a Miranda violation.
4. Issue: whether Officer Kraft was justified in failing to make available to respondent the procedural safeguards associated with the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination since Miranda.
5. Procedural History: The judge excluded the statement “the gun is over there,” and the gun because the officer had not given respondent the warnings before asking him where the gun was located. The judge excluded the statements about respondent’s ownership of the gun and the place of purchase as evidence tainted by the prior Miranda violation. The Appellate Division affirmed. The Court of Appeals affirmed, finding respondent in custody during all questioning and rejecting the State’s argument that the exigencies of the situation justified Kraft’s actions.
6. Facts: A young woman approached Kraft and Scarring’s car and told them she had just been raped by a black male, approximately six feet tall, who was wearing a black jacket with the name “big ben” printed in yellow letters on the back. She told the officers that the man had just entered an A&P supermarket and that the man was carrying a gun. Kraft entered the store and spotted respondent. Respondent turned and ran toward the rear of the store, and Kraft pursued him and ordered him to stop and put his hands over his head. Kraft frisked him, asked him where the gun was, retrieved a gun from a carton, arrested respondent, and read him Miranda rights. Kraft asked if he owned the gun and where he had purchased it, and respondent answered he owned it and purchased it in Miami.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Whatever the motivation of individual officers in such a situation, we do not believe that the doctrinal underpinnings of Miranda require that it be applied in all its rigor to a situation in which police officers ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety.
The police in this case, in the very act of apprehending a suspect, were confronted with the immediate necessity of ascertaining the whereabouts of a gun which they had every reason to believe the suspect had just removed. Had Miranda warnings deterred Quarles from responding to Officer Kraft’s question about the whereabouts of the gun, the cost would have been something more than merely the failure to obtain evidence useful in convicting Quarles. Officer Kraft needed an answer to insure that further danger to the public did not result from the concealment of the gun in a public area.
The exception, far from complicating the thought processes and the on-the-scene judgments of police officers, will simply free them to follow their legitimate instincts when confronting situations presenting a danger to the public safety.
O’Connor concurring in part and dissenting in part: Miranda is now the law and the Court has not provided sufficient justification for departing from it or for blurring its now clear strictures. I would require suppression of the initial statement. The Court concedes both that respondent was in custody and subject to interrogation and that his statement “the gun is over there” was compelled within the meaning of our precedent.
Marshall dissenting: the majority makes no attempt to deal with the constitutional presumption established by that case. Without establishing that interrogations concerning the public’s safety are less likely to be coercive than other interrogations, the majority cannot endorse the public safety exception and remain faithful to the logic of Miranda.

The Constitutional Basis – Dickerson v. United States
Year: 2000
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: Miranda, being a constitutional decision of this Court, may not be in effect overruled by an Act of Congress and we decline to overrule Miranda. Miranda and its progeny govern the admissibility of statements made during custodial interrogation in both state and federal courts.
Miranda announced a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Dickerson moved to suppress a statement he had made at a FBI field office, on the grounds that he had not received Miranda warnings before being interrogated. The District Court granted his motion to suppress. The Court of Appeals reversed and held that 3501, which in effect makes the admissibility of statements such as Dickerson’s turn solely on whether they were made voluntarily, was satisfied.
6. Facts: Petitioner Dickerson was indicted for bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery and using a firearm in the course of committing a crime of violence.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the due process test takes into consideration the totality of all the surrounding circumstances – both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation.
Two years after Miranda was decided, Congress enacted 3501. Congress intended by its enactment to overrule Miranda. If Congress has constitutional authority to supersede Miranda, 3501’s totality of the circumstances approach must prevail over Miranda’s requirement of warnings. If not, that section must yield to Miranda’s requirements.
Congress may not legislatively supersede our decisions interpreting and applying the Constitution. This case turns on whether the Miranda Court announced a constitutional rule or merely exercised its supervisory authority to regulate evidence in the absence of congressional direction.
As a factor that Miranda is a constitutional decision, both Miranda and two of its companion cases applied the rule to proceedings in state courts. We have consistently applied Miranda’s rule to prosecutions arising in state courts. The majority opinion in Miranda is replete with statements indicating that the majority thought it was announcing a constitutional rule. Miranda Court invited legislative action to protect the constitutional right against coerced self-incrimination.
We do not agree that more remedies available for abusive police conduct supplement 3501’s protections sufficiently to meet the constitutional minimum. The remedies together with 3501 do not render them an adequate substitute for the warnings required by Miranda.
The Court concluded that something more than the totality test was necessary. 3501 reinstates the totality test as sufficient. Section 3501 therefore cannot be sustained if Miranda is to remain the law. The totality test is more difficult than Miranda for law enforcement officers to conform to, and for courts to apply in a consistent manner.

The Constitutional Basis – Vega v. Tekoh
Year: 2022
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: a violation of the Miranda rules [does not] provide the basis for a claim under §1983. The use of an unwarned statement against an accused in a criminal trial does not constitute the deprivation of a right secured by federal law that can serve as the basis for a §1983 damages claim
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial judge in the civil suit refused to instruct the jury that if it found that the officer had obtained the statement from the plaintiff in violation of Miranda and that the statement was improperly used against him in his criminal trial, his Fifth Amendment right against compelled incrimination was violated. The judge reasoned that Miranda had “established a prophylactic rule . . . that . . . could not alone provide a ground for §1983 liability.” The Ninth Circuit reversed, “holding that the ‘use of an un-Mirandized statement against a defendant in a criminal proceeding violates the Fifth Amendment and may support a §1983 claim’ against the officer who obtained the statement.”
6. Facts: the accused was acquitted of a sex offense. He filed a civil suit under 42 U.S.C. §1983 against the officer who obtained his confession and others, claiming that the admission of his unwarned statement entitled him to damages.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the Ninth Circuit was “wrong” to hold that “a violation of Miranda “constitutes a violation of the Fifth Amendment.
A number of these post-Miranda decisions “would not have been possible if Miranda represented an explanation of the meaning of the Fifth Amendment right as opposed to a set of rules designed to protect that right.”
Because 11 “a violation of Miranda does not necessarily constitute a violation of the Constitution, . . . such a violation does not constitute ‘the deprivation of [a] right . . . secured by the Constitution’” under §1983.
Past decisions established that “‘[a] judicially crafted’ prophylactic rule should apply ‘only where its benefits outweigh its costs.’” The majority concluded that the benefits of permitting civil claims for Miranda violations “would be slight, [while] the costs would be substantial.”
Breyer dissenting: protections afforded by Miranda “are a ‘right[]’ ‘secured by the Constitution’ under” §1983.

Custody – Berkemer v. McCarty
Year: 1984
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: a person subjected to custodial interrogation is entitled to the benefit of the potential safeguards enunciated in Miranda, regardless of the nature or severity of the offense of which he is suspected or for which he was arrested.
Respondent was not taken into custody until Williams arrested him. The statements respondent made prior to that point were admissible against him.
4. Issue: Does Miranda govern the admissibility of statements made during custodial interrogation by a suspect accused of a misdemeanor traffic offense? Does the roadside questioning of a motorist detained pursuant to a traffic stop constitute custodial interrogation for the purposes of the doctrine enunciated in Miranda?
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied the motion and respondent pleaded no contest and was found guilty. The Court of Appeals ruled that the statements made by Respondent at the jail were inadmissible.
6. Facts: Williams observed respondent’s car weaving in and out of a lane. Williams forced respondent to stop and asked him to get out of the vehicle. Respondent had a difficulty standing. Williams concluded respondent would be charged with a traffic offense. Respondent was not told that he would be taken into custody. Respondent could not perform a field sobriety test without falling. Williams asked him whether he had been using intoxicants, and respondent replied that he drank and smoked. At the jail, respondent was given an Intoxilyzer but the test did not detect alcohol. Williams asked him whether he drank and whether the marijuana had been treated with chemicals. Respondent was charged with driving under the influence. Respondent moved to exclude statements on the grounds that he was not informed about his constitutional rights.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Petitioner argues that when a police arrests a person for allegedly committing misdemeanor traffic offense and then ask him questions without telling him his constitutional rights, his responses should be admissible against him -> we cannot agree. Clarity of Miranda rule is its principal advantage. The police are often unaware when they arrest a person whether he may have committed a misdemeanor or a felony.
Petitioner argues that a holding that every detained motorist must be advised of his rights before being questioned would constitute an unwarranted extension of the Miranda doctrine.
A traffic stop significantly curtails the freedom of action of the driver and the passengers of the detained vehicle. We must decide whether a traffic stop exerts upon a detained person pressures that sufficiently impair his free exercise of his privilege against self-incrimination to require that he be warned of his constitutional rights. Two features mitigate the danger that a person questioned will be induced to speak: detention of a motorist pursuant to a traffic stop is presumptively temporary and brief; circumstances associated with the typical traffic stop are not such that the motorist feels completely at the mercy of the police.
The typical traffic stop is public. The atmosphere surrounding an ordinary traffic stop is substantially less police dominated. The usual traffic stop is more analogous to a Terry stop. The officer may ask the detainee a moderate number of questions to determine his identity and to try to obtain information confirming or dispelling the suspicions. The noncoercive aspect of ordinary traffic stops makes temporarily detained pursuant to such stops not in custody.
We find nothing in the record that indicates that respondent should have been given Miranda warnings at any point prior to the time Williams placed him under arrest. We reject that the initial stop rendered him in custody.

Custody – Stansbury v. California
Year: 1994
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: An officer’s subjective and undisclosed view concerning whether the person being interrogated is a suspect is irrelevant to the assessment whether the person is in custody.
5. Procedural History: The lower courts held that Miranda warnngs were not required prior to incriminating admission because the investigation had not focused on Stansbury until he made the admission.
6. Facts: Police investigating the murder picked up Stansbury for questioning because Parks was seen talking to Stansbury and another driver hours before her disappearance. Police viewed Stansbury as a material witness but Stansbury made an incriminating admission and the police then gave him Miranda warning.
8. Reasoning:

Custody – Oregon v. Mathiason
Year: 1977
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: when a suspect comes voluntarily to the police station in response to an invitation by the police, he will not necessarily be in custody.
6. Facts: A police officer left his card at the defendant’s apartment, asking him to call so that they could discuss something. They agreed to meet at the state patrol office. The officer met and told defendant he was not under arrest. The officer falsely told defendant his fingerprints had been found at the burglary scene and defendant confessed.

Custody – J.D.B. v. North Carolina
Year: 2011
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: so long as the child’s age was known to the officer at the time of police questioning, or would have been objectively apparent to a reasonable officer, its inclusion in the custody analysis is consistent with the objective nature of that test.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied motion, deciding that J.D.B. was not in custody at the time of the schoolhouse interrogation and that his statements were voluntary. The NC Court of Appeals affirmed. The NC Supreme Court held J.D.B. was not in custody when he confessed.
6. Facts: Petitioner was a 13 year old student when he was removed by an officer, taken to a conference room, and questioned for at least half an hour. Five days earlier, two home break-ins occurred. Police had questioned J.D.B. after he was seen behind a residence where the crimes occurred. Police found a digital camera matching the stolen items in J.D.B.’s possession. The door to the conference room was closed and J.D.B. was not given Miranda warnings or the opportunity to speak to his grandmother. Nor was he informed he was free to leave. After learning of the prospect of juvenile detention, J.D.B. confessed that he and a friend were responsible for the break-ins. Two juvenile petitions were filed against J.D.B. J.D.B. moved to suppress statements and the evidence.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the pressure of custodial interrogation is so immense that it can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed. That risk is all the more troubling when the subject is a juvenile.
What were the circumstances surrounding the interrogation; and given those circumstances, would a reasonable person have felt he or she was at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave. The subjective views harbored by either the officer or the person questioned are irrelevant. Police must make in-the-moment judgments as to when to administer Miranda warnings.
The State contend a child’s age has no place in the custody analysis. -> we cannot agree. Our history is replete with laws and judicial recognition that children cannot be viewed simply as miniature adults. So long as the child’s age was known to the officer at the time of the interview or would have been objectively apparent to any reasonable officer it requires officer to consider it. Because childhood yields objective conclusions such that they are most susceptible to influence and outside pressures, considering age in the custody analysis in no way involves determination of how youth subjectively affects the mindset of any particular child.
The State argues that age is irrelevant to the custody analysis because it goes to how a suspect may internalize and perceive the circumstances of an interrogation. -> the same can be said of every objective circumstance.
The State argues the effect of age on the perception of custody is internal, or psychological. -> it cannot be the case that a circumstance is subjective simply because it has an internal or psychological impact on perception.
The State argues that a child’s age must be excluded from the analysis to preserve clarity. -> ignoring a juvenile defendant’s age will often make the inquiry more artificial and add confusion.
The State argues that excluding age from the custody analysis comes at no cost to juveniles’ constitutional rights because the due process voluntariness test independently accounts for a child’s youth. -> Miranda’s safeguards exist because the voluntariness test is an inadequate barrier when custodial interrogation is at stake.
Alito dissenting: The Court’s decision is inconsistent with the justification of Miranda, the need for a clear rule that can be applied easily in all cases. A key contributor to this clarity has been Miranda’s objective reasonable-person test for determining custody. Age is not the only personal characteristic that may correlate with pliability, and the Court will be forced to limit today’s decision by arbitrarily distinguishing a suspect’s age from other characteristics or effect a fundamental transformation of the Miranda custody test from a clear, easily applied rule into a highly fact-intensive standard.
The court has repeatedly cautioned against upsetting the careful balance that Miranda struck and it has refused to sanction attempts to expand the Miranda holding in ways that would reduce its clarity. There should be a strong presumption against the Court’s new departure from the established custody test.
Miranda is overinclusive to the extent that they provide a windfall to the most hardened and savvy of suspects. It is underinclusive to the extent that they fail to account for frailties, idiosyncrasies, and other considerations that might cause a person to bend more easily during a confrontation with the police.

Custody – Yarborough v. Alvarado
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The Court found prior history with law enforcement to be entirely irrelevant.
8. Reasoning: Police officers will not usually know a suspect’s interrogation history. The effect of a suspect’s past experiences upon a reasonable person’s feelings of restraint upon their freedom would be speculative. Officers are not required to take into account contingent psychological factors because they would make the inquiry turn on the suspect’s subjective state of mind.

Custody – Maryland v. Shatzer (2010): an inmate is not in custody simply by virtue of his confinement in prison.

Custody – Howes v. Fields
Year: 2012
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The categorical rule is simply wrong. The combination of imprisonment, questioning in private, and questioning about events in the outside world is not necessarily enough to create a custodial situation. Confinement will not implicate the same interests protected by the safeguards Miranda affords those subjected to custodial interrogation.
5. Procedural History: the sixth circuit affirmed a grant of habeas corpus relief, holding that an interrogation is per se custodial when an inmate is isolated from the general prison population and questioned about conduct occurring outside the prison.
6. Facts: While Fields was serving a jail sentence, an officer escorted him to a conference room to ask him about allegations of sexual conduct with a 12-year-old boy prior to his confinement. The deputies did not recite Miranda warnings. Fields confessed.
8. Reasoning: To decide whether a person is in custody, ascertain whether a reasonable person would have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave. Also determine whether the relevant environment presents the same inherently coercive pressures as the type of station house questioning at issue in Miranda.
Imprisonment alone is not enough to create a custodial situation because questioning a person serving a prison term does not generally involve the shock that very often accompanies arrest, a prisoner is unlikely to be lured into speaking by a logning for prompt release because he knows that he will remain under confinement, and a prisoner knows that the questioning officers probably lack the authority to affect the duration of his sentence and not fear reprisal or hope for leniency.

Interrogation – Rhode Island v. Innis
Year: 1980
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Vacated and remanded.
3. Holding: Miranda safeguards come into play whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent. Respondent was not interrogated within the meaning of Miranda. The RI Supreme Court erred in equating subtle compulsion with interrogation.
4. Issue: whether respondent was interrogated in violation of the standards promulgated in the Miranda opinion to remain silent until he had consulted with a lawyer.
5. Procedural History: The judge concluded that the respondent’s decision to inform the police of the location of the shotgun was a waiver of his Miranda right to remain silent. Without passing on whether the officers had in fact interrogated respondent the court sustained the admissibility of the shotgun and testimony. The RI Supreme Court set aside the conviction. It viewed that respondent was subject to subtle coercion that was the equivalent of interrogation within the meaning of the Miranda opinion. It concluded that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding of waiver. It concluded evidences were obtained in violation of Miranda and should not have been admitted and ordered a new trial.
6. Facts: Mulvaney, taxicab driver, disappeared after being dispatched to pick up a customer. His body was discovered four days later buried in a grave. He had died from a shotgun blast. The police received a call from Aubin, a taxicab driver, who reported that he had been robbed by a man wielding a shotgun. Aubin identified respondent on a bulletin board and in a photo array. Lovell arrested respondent, who was unarmed, and advised him of Miranda rights. Respondent stated he wanted to speak with a lawyer. Gleckman and McKenna talked that a school for handicapped children is located nearby and the shotgun should be found because a child might hurt itself. Respondent stated the officers should turn the car around so he could show them where the gun was located. Respondent led the police to a field, where he pointed out the shotgun under some rocks by the side of the road. Respondent moved to suppress the shotgun and the statements he made regarding it.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Miranda passage might suggest that Miranda rules were to apply only to those police interrogation practices that involve express questioning of a defendant while in custody. We do not construe so narrowly.
Not all statements obtained by the police after a person has been taken into custody are to be considered the product of interrogation. Interrogation must reflect a measure of compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself.
The conversation between Gleckman and McKenna included no express questioning of the respondent. That conversation was nothing more than a dialogue. It cannot be concluded that respondent was subjected to the functional equivalent of questioning. We cannot say that the officers should have known that it was reasonably likely that Innis would so respond. Respondent was not subjected to words or actions that police should have known were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from him.
Marshall dissenting: one can scarcely imagine a stronger appeal to the conscience of a suspect than the assertion that an innocent person will be hurt or killed. The appeal to a suspect to confess for the sake of others, to display some evidence of decency and honor is a classic interrogation technique. Gleckman’s remarks would be interrogation if directed to respondent and the result should not be different because they were nominally addressed to McKenna.
Stevens dissenting: statement that would normally be understood by the average listener as calling for a response is the functional equivalent of a direct question. The Court’s test creates an incentive for police to ignore a suspect’s invocation of his rights in order to make continued attempts to extract information from him. The Court turns Miranda’s unequivocal rule against any interrogation at all into a trap in which unwary suspects may be caught by police deception.

Interrogation – Illinois v. Perkins
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remand.
3. Holding: Undercover officers need not give Miranda warnings to incarcerated suspects. An undercover officer posing as a fellow inmate need not give Miranda warnings to an incarcerated suspect before asking questions that may elicit an incriminating response.
4. Issue: Whether an undercover law enforcement officer must give Miranda warnings to an incarcerated suspect before asking him questions that may elicit an incriminating response.
5. Procedural History: The trial court granted the motion to suppress. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed, holding that Miranda prohibits all undercover contacts with incarcerated suspects which are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.
6. Facts: In 1984, Stephenson was murdered. In 1986, Charlton told police that he had learned about a homicide from a fellow inmate at the Graham from Perkins. Police traced Perkins to a jail in Montgomery County where he was being held pending trial on a charge of aggravated battery. Police planned to place an undercover agent Parisi and Charlton to pose as escapees from a work release program who had been arrested in the course of a burglary. Parisi suggested that the three of them escape. The trio met in Perkins’ cell. Perkins said his girlfriend could smuggle in a pistol. Parisi told asked Perkins if he had ever done anybody. Perkins said that he had and proceeded to describe at length the events of the Stephenson murder. Parisi did not give Perkins Miranda warnings before the conversation. Perkins moved to suppress the statements.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Conversations between suspects and undercover agents do not implicate the concerns underlying Miranda. The essential ingredients of a police-dominated atmosphere and compulsion are not present when an incarcerated person speaks freely to someone that he believes to be a fellow inmate. Coercion is determined from the perspective of the suspect.
We reject the argument that Miranda warnings are required whenever a suspect is in custody in a technical sense and converses with someone who happens to be a government agent. Questioning by captors, who appear to control the suspect’s fate, may create mutually reinforcing pressures that the Court has assumed will weaken the suspect’s will, but where a suspect does not know that he is conversing with a government agent, these pressures do not exist.
Miranda forbids coercion, not mere strategic deception by taking advantage of a suspect’s misplaced trust in one he supposes to be a fellow prisoner. Miranda was not meant to protect suspects from boasting about their criminal activities in front of persons whom they believe to be their cellmates.
We held in Hoffa that placing an undercover agent near a suspect to gather incriminating information was permissible under the 5th Amendment. Based on Mathis, we find that where the suspect does not know that he is speaking to a government agent there is no reason to assume the possibility that the suspect might feel coerced.
Brennan concurring: when a suspect does not know that his questioner is a police agent, such questioning does not amount to interrogation in an inherently coercive environment so as to require application of Miranda. The deception and manipulation practiced on respondent raise a substantial claim that the confession was obtained in violation of the Due Process Clause. It is open to the lower court on remand to determine whether, under the totality of the circumstances, respondent’s confession was elicited in a manner that violated the Due Process Clause.
Marshall dissenting: the exception may result in a proliferation of departmental policies to encourage officers to conduct interrogations of confined suspects through undercover agents, circumventing Miranda warnings.

Interrogation – Arizona v. Fulminante
Year: 1991
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: Defendant’s confession had been coerced and its admission into evidence violated due process.
5. Procedural History: Defendant was convicted and sentenced to death. AZ Supreme Court found the confession coerced.
6. Facts: defendant, in inmate in a federal penitentiary as a result of a weapons offense, was suspected of murdering his 11 year old stepdaughter. Defendant has been receiving rough treatment from other prisoners. Sarivola, another inmate, told his superior in the FBI that defendant was rumored to have killed his stepdaughter. Sarivola now offered defendant protection from the other inmates, but only if he would tell the truth about his stepdaughter’s death. Defendant admitted the murder. His confession to Sarivola was introduced into evidence.
8. Reasoning: Defendant’s will was overborne because defendant faced a credible threat of physical violence unless he confessed.
Rehnquist dissenting: Defendant offered no evidence that he believed that his life was in danger or that he in fact confessed to Sarivola in order to obtain the proffered protection.

Interrogation – Pennsylvania v. Muniz
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: reject the government’s contention that routine booking questions did not constitute interrogation because they were not intended to elicit information for investigatory purposes.
8. Reasoning: Law enforcement questions designed to secure the biographical data necessary to complete booking or pretrial services do constitute interrogation under the Innis standard. A suspect’s answers to such questions are admissible because the questions fall within a routine booking question exception to Miranda. The questions qualified for the exception are those reasonably related to the police’s administrative concerns.
Dissent: it was unnecessary to determine whether the questions in Muniz fell within the routine booking question exception. The responses were not testimonial. The 5th Amendment forbids only compelled testimonial self-incrimination.

Warnings and waiver – California v. Prysock
Year: 1981
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The officer’s statements to the minor and his parents were sufficient to convey the required Miranda warnings relating to the right to have an attorney present during interrogation and the right of an indigent to have such an attorney appointed at no cost to himself.
5. Procedural History: A state appellate court held the warnings were inadequate because the minor was not explicitly informed of his right to have an attorney appointed before further questioning.
6. Facts: A minor was arrested for a murder and was given Miranda warnings. He declined to talk. After he met with his parents, he changed his mind. The officer stated, “you have the right to talk to a lawyer before you are questioned, have him present with you while you are being questioned, and all during the questioning,” “you have the right to have a lawyer appointed to represent you at no cost to yourself” and that he “would have an attorney when he went to court and that he could have one at this time if he wished one.”
8. Reasoning: Variations from the exact language of the warnings are permissible as long as the warnings given fully convey the rights included in the original four warnings.

Warnings and waiver – Duckworth v. Eagan
Year: 1989
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: the warnings given were sufficient to apprise the suspect of his entitlement to the assistance of counsel under Miranda.
5. Procedural History: The federal court of appeals held that the addition was constitutionally defective because it denies an indigent a clear and unequivocal warning of the right to appointed counsel before any interrogation and links an indigent’s right to counsel before interrogation to a future event. As a result, defendant believed he could not secure a lawyer during interrogation.
6. Facts: A stationhouse officer told a suspect that he had a right to speak with an attorney before and during questioning and that he had the right to the advice and presence of a lawyer even if he could not afford to hire one. He added “we have no way of giving you a lawyer, but one will be appointed for you, if you wish, if and when you go to court.”
8. Reasoning: Warnings given accurately describe Indiana’s procedure. The procedure followed was consistent with Miranda because Miranda requires that the suspect be informed that he has the right to an attorney before and during questioning, and that an attorney would be appointed for him if he could not afford one. The inquiry is simply whether the warnings reasonably convey to a suspect his rights as required by Miranda.

Warnings and waiver – Florida v. Powell
Year: 2010
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: Warnings recited satisfied Miranda’s absolute prerequisite to interrogation.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The FL Supreme Court concluded that these warnings did not adequately inform the suspect of his entitlement to have counsel present during questioning.
6. Facts: Officers warned a suspect of the right to remain silent and that anything he said could be used in court, and that he had “the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of [the law enforcement officers’] questions.” After apprising him of an indigent’s entitlement to appointed counsel, they stated “you have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview.”
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the four warnings required are invariable. The words used to communicate the essential information may vary, as long as they reasonably convey to a suspect his rights as required by Miranda. Although the warnings were not the clearest possible formulation, they were sufficiently comprehensive and comprehensible when given a commonsense reading.
Stevens dissenting: a suspect could conclude that all he was provided was a one-time right to consult with an attorney not a right to have an attorney present with him in the interrogation room at all times.

Warnings and waiver – Missouri v. Seibert
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Warnings would seem to reasonably convey the content of the original warnings when a reasonable person in the suspect’s position would understand them to express the rights and the consequences captured by the original warnings.
4. Issue: whether the circumstances are such that a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes would not have understood the warnings to convey a message that she retained a choice about talking.
6. Facts:
8. Reasoning: in some situations where officers interrogate a suspect in custody without warnings, obtain statements, then recite warnings and once again interrogate the suspect, the warnings are ineffective to render subsequent statements admissible.
Kennedy concurring: admonitions are inadequate, even if they are exact and complete, unless a reasonable person in the suspect’s situation would understand the import and effect of the Miranda warnings.

Warnings and waiver – Berghuis v. Thompkins
Year: 2010
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: After giving a Miranda warning, police may interrogate a suspect who has neither invoked nor waived his or her Miranda rights. The police were not required to obtain a waiver of Thompkin’s Miranda rights before commencing the interrogation.
4. Issue: Whether Thompkins waived his right to remain silent.
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied the motion. The jury found Thompkins guilty. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed, ruling for Thompkins.
6. Facts: In 2000, a shooting occurred. Morris died and France recovered. One year later Thompkins was found in OH and arrested there. The officer asked Thompkins to read “you have the right to decide at any time before or during questioning to use your right to remain silent and your right to talk with a lawyer while you are being questioned.” Police asked that he sign the form to show he understood his rights. Thompkins refused. When asked if he prayed that God forgive him for shooting the victim, Thompkins said yes. Thompkins was charged with first-degree murder, assault, and firearms-related offenses. Thompkins moved to suppress the statements made during the interrogation. He argued his statements were involuntary.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the warning given in this case was in full compliance with Miranda’s warning requirements. The dispute centers on the response, or non-response, from the suspect.
The waiver must be voluntary in the sense that it was the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than intimidation, coercion, or deception, and made with a full awareness of both the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it. A heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege.
In NC v. Butler, heavy burden meant waiver in accord with usual principles of determining waiver, which can include waiver implied from all the circumstances. In CO v. Connelly, heavy burden is not more than the burden to establish waiver by a preponderance of the evidence. In Butler, a waiver of Miranda rights may be implied through defendant’s silence, coupled with an understanding of his rights and a course of conduct indicating waiver.
If the State establishes that a Miranda warning was given and the accused made uncoerced statement, this showing is insufficient for a valid waiver. The prosecution must make the showing that the accused understood those rights. Where the prosecution shows that a Miranda warning was given and that it was understood by the accused, an accused’s uncoerced statement establishes an implied waiver.
Thompkins waived his right to remain silent. There is no contention that Thompkins did not understand his rights, and it follows that he knew what he gave up when he spoke. Thompkin’s answer is a course of conduct indicating waiver of his right to remain silent. There is no evidence that Thompkin’s statement was coerced.
Thompkins argues, even if his answer could constitute a waiver, the police were not allowed to question him until they obtained a waiver first. -> Butler forecloses this argument. Butler held that courts can infer a waiver of Miranda rights from the actions and words of the person interrogated. This would be inconsistent with a rule that requires a waiver at the outset.
Sotomayor dissenting: The Court’s opinion downplays record evidence that Thompkins remained almost completely silent and unresponsive throughout that session. It is undisputed here that Thompkins never expressly waived his right to remain silent. His refusal to sign even an acknowledgement evinces an intent not to waive those rights. That Thompkins did not make the statements after 3 hours serves as strong evidence against waiver. At best, the decision creates an unworkable and conflicting set of presumptions that will undermine Miranda’s goal of providing concrete constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and courts to follow. At worst, it overrules sub silentio an essential aspect of the protections Miranda has long provided for the constitutional guarantee against self-incrimination.

Warnings and waiver – Colorado v. Spring
Year: 1987
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: Awareness of the crimes that will be the subject of an interrogation is not necessary for a valid Miranda waiver. The failure to inform Spring about the subject matter of the interrogation could not have had a constitutionally significant effect on his waiver decision.
4. Issue: Whether a suspect’s awareness of all the crimes about which he may be questioned is relevant to determining the validity of his decision to waive the 5th Amendment privilege.
5. Procedural History: Spring was convicted of first-degree murder. The CO Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, concluding that he had not validly waived his rights before the first interrogation, because the agents had a duty to inform him that he was a suspect, or to readvise him of his Miranda rights before questioning him. The court held that the state had not demonstrated that the confession given to the officers during the second interrogation was not the product of the prior illegal statement.
6. Facts: An informant told federal agents that defendant was engaged in the interstate transportation of stolen firearms and that he had discussed participation in homicide in Colorado. The agents arranged for an undercover purchase of weapons from Spring, and then arrested him and advised him of his Miranda rights. Spring signed a written form stating he understood and waived his rights and he was willing to make a statement and answer questions. The agents questioned Spring about the firearms transactions. Then they asked Spring if he had a criminal record. Spring admitted to a shooting of his aunt. The agents asked if Spring had ever shot anyone else. He mumbled I hot another guy once. After being warned, Spring confessed to the CO murder.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: There was no doubt about the voluntariness of Spring’s waiver. A valid waiver does not require that an individual be informed of all information useful in making his decision or all information that might affect his decision to confess.

Warnings and waiver – Moran v. Burbine
Year: 1986
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: Defendant’s waiver was valid. The interactions between the officers and the attorney, which were unknown to defendant, could have no impact on the validity of defendant’s waiver. The police are not required to supply a suspect with a flow of information to help him calibrate his self-interest in deciding whether to speak or stand by his rights.
5. Procedural History: The lower court held that the police conduct fatally tainted defendant’s waiver of his 5th Amendment privilege. The court reasoned that by failing to inform defendant the police had deprived defendant of information critical to his ability to waive his rights knowingly and intelligently.
6. Facts: Defendant was in police custody following his arrest for murder. AN attorney called the police and said that she would act as defendant’s counsel in the event the police intended to question him. The attorney received assurances that defendant would not be questioned further until the next day. Later that evening, police gave defendant Miranda warnings but did not inform him of the attorney’s telephone call or say anything that would indicate an attorney was seeking to represent him. Defendant waived his rights and made incriminating statements.
8. Reasoning: The additional information might have affected defendant’s decision to confess.

Warnings and waiver – Connecticut v. Barrett
Year: 1987
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Defendant’s waiver of his Miranda rights was valid because Miranda gives Defendant a right to choose between speech and silence, and Defendant chose to speak. The fact that some might find Barrett’s decision illogical is irrelevant, for we have never embraced the theory that a defendant’s ignorance of the full consequences of his decisions vitiates their voluntariness.
6. Facts: Defendant was advised of his Miranda rights three times, Defendant indicated he would not make a written statement but was willing to talk about the incident. On the second and third occasion, he orally admitted his involvement in the crime.
8. Reasoning: Reject the contention that the distinction drawn by Defendant between oral and written statements indicates an understanding of the consequences so incomplete that we should deem his limited invocation of the right to counsel effective for all purposes.

Invocation of Protections – Michigan v. Mosley
Year: 1975
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Vacated and remanded.
3. Holding: The admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his “right to cut off questioning” was “scrupulously honored.”
The admission of Mosley’s incriminating statement did not violate the principles of Miranda.
4. Issue: Whether the conduct of the Detroit police that led to Mosley’s incriminating statement did in fact violate the Miranda guidelines, so as to render the statement inadmissible in evidence against Mosley at his trial.
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied the motion to suppress, and the statement was introduced in evidence. The jury convicted Mosley. Michigan Court of Appeals reversed, holding Hill’s interrogation had been a per se violation of the Miranda doctrine.
6. Facts: Mosley was arrested in connection with robberies that had recently occurred. Detective Cowie was acting on a tip implicating Mosley. The officer advised Mosley of his rights and had him read and sign the department’s constitutional rights notification certificate. Cowie began questioning Mosley about the robbery. When Mosley said he did not want to answer any questions about the robberies, Cowie ceased the interrogation. Detective Hill brought Mosley for questioning about the fatal shooting of Williams. Hill advised Mosley the Miranda rights that Mosley read silently and aloud. Mosley denied any involvement, but after the officer told him Smith named him as the shooter, Mosley made statement implicating himself in the homicide. Mosley was charged with first-degree murder. Mosley moved to suppress, arguing it was constitutionally impermissible for Hill to question him after he had told Cowie he did not want to answer any questions.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The passage states that “the interrogation must cease” when the person in custody indicates that “he wishes to remain silent.” It does not state under what circumstances, if any, a resumption of questioning is permissible. Neither this passage nor any other passage in Miranda can sensibly be read to create a per se proscription of indefinite duration upon any further questioning by any police officer on any subject, once the person in custody has indicated a desire to remain silent.
Mosley’s right to cut off questioning was fully respected in this case. The subsequent questioning did not undercut Mosley’s previous decision not to answer Detective Cowie’s inquiries. Hill focused exclusively on the Williams homicide, a crime different in nature and in time and place of occurrence from the robberies.
The police here immediately ceased the interrogation, resumed questioning only after the passage of a significant period of time and the provision of a fresh set of warnings, and restricted the second interrogation to a crime that had not been a subject of the earlier interrogation.
White concurring: Unless an individual is incompetent, we have in the past rejected any paternalistic rule protecting a defendant from his intelligent and voluntary decisions about his own criminal case. The majority says that such a requirement would be necessary to avoid undermining the will of the person being questioned. In order to achieve the majority’s only stated purpose, it is sufficient to exclude all confessions which are the result of involuntary waivers. To exclude any others is to deprive the factfinding process of highly probative information for no reason. There is no reason to rob the accused of the choice to answer questions voluntarily for some unspecified period of time following his own previous contrary decision.
Brennan dissenting: Miranda cannot justify adoption of a vague and ineffective procedural standard that falls somewhere between those extremes. Today’s decision virtually empties Miranda of principle, for plainly the decision encourages police asked to cease interrogation to continue the suspect’s detention until the police station’s coercive atmosphere does its work and the suspect responds to resumed questioning. Anything about the robberies may more than reasonably be interpreted as comprehending the Williams murder which occurred during a robbery.

Invocation of protections – Edwards v. Arizona
Year: 1981
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: The use of Edwards’ confession violated his rights under the 5th and 14th Amendments.
When an accused has invoked his right to have counsel present during custodial interrogation, a valid waive of that right cannot be established by showing only that he responded to further police-initiated custodial interrogation even if he has been advised of his rights. An accused, having expressed his desire to deal with the police only through counsel, is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.
4. Issue: Whether 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments require suppression of a post-arrest confession, which was obtained after Edwards had invoked his right to consult counsel before further interrogation.
5. Procedural History: The trial court initially granted the motion to suppress but reversed when presented with a controlling decision of a higher court. It found Edwards’ statement to be voluntary and convicted him. AZ Supreme Court held that Edwards invoked both his right to remain silent and his right to counsel but waived both rights when he voluntarily gave statement and upheld the trial court’s decision.
6. Facts: A sworn complaint was filed against Edwards charging him with robbery, burglary, and first-degree murder. Edwards was arrested and he was informed of his rights in Miranda. Petitioner said he was willing to submit to questioning. He denied involvement and gave a taped statement presenting an alibi defense. He sought to make a deal. He stated “I want an attorney before making a deal” and the questioning stopped. Two detectives visited Edwards in his jail cell. Edwards said he did not want to talk to anyone. The guard told him he had to talk. The officers informed him of his Miranda rights. Edwards wanted to hear the taped statement of the alleged accomplice. He stated he would make a statement so long as it was not tape-recorded. He implicated himself in the crime. He moved to suppress on the ground that his Miranda rights were violated when the officers returned to question him after he invoked his right.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Edwards insists that having exercised his right on the 19th to have counsel present during interrogation, he did not validly waive that right on the 20th. -> We agree.
AZ Supreme Court applied an erroneous standard for determining waiver. Waivers must not only be voluntary but also constitute a knowing and intelligent relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege, a matter which depends in each case upon the particular facts and circumstances.
The AZ Supreme Court cited Schneckloth v. Bustamonte but the issue there was under what conditions an individual could be found to have consented to a search. The courts did not undertake to focus on whether Edwards understood his right to counsel and intelligently and knowing relinquished it.
Additional safeguards are necessary when the accused asks for counsel.
Had Edwards initiated the meeting on Jan 20, nothing in the 5th and 14th Amendments would prohibit the police from merely listening to his voluntary, volunteered statements and using them against him at the trial. Here, without making counsel available, the police returned to him the next day. Edwards was subjected to custodial interrogation and his statement did not amount to a valid waiver and hence was inadmissible.
Burger concurring: the inquiry is whether resumption of interrogation is a result of a voluntary waiver, and that inquiry should be resolved under the standards established in Johnson v. Zerbst. That Edwards stated he did not wish to speak and the officer told him he had to is enough that the resumption of interrogation was not a voluntary waiver.
Powell concurring: I have thought it settled law that one accused of crime may waive any of the constitutional safeguards. If the Court’s opinion creates a new per se rule requiring a threshold inquiry as to precisely who opened any conversation between an accused and state officials, I cannot agree. I would not superimpose a new element of proof on the established doctrine of waiver of counsel. Once warnings have been given and the right to counsel has been invoked, the relevant inquiry – whether the suspect now desires to talk to police without counsel – is a question of fact to be determined in light of all of the circumstances. Who initiated a conversation is not the sine qua non to the inquiry.

Invocation of protections – Davis v. United States
Year: 1994
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: After a knowing and voluntary waiver of the Miranda rights, law enforcement officers may continue questioning until and unless the suspect clearly requests an attorney. We do not disturb the conclusion that “maybe I should talk to a lawyer” was not a request for counsel.
4. Issue: How law enforcement officers should respond when a suspect makes a reference to counsel that is insufficiently clear to invoke the Edwards prohibition on further questioning.
5. Procedural History: The military judge denied the motion, holding that the mention of a lawyer by petitioner during the course of the interrogation was not in the form of a request for counsel. Davis was convicted on unpremeditated murder. The convening authority approved and the Court of Military Review affirmed. The US Court of Military Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: Davis spend time shooting pool at a club. Shackleford lost a game and a $30 wager to Davis, but Shackleford refused to pay. Shackleford was beaten to death. NIS determined Davis was at the club that evening, he was absent from his duty station the next morning, Davis owned two cues with one with a bloodstain on it, and various people told the agents that Davis admitted committing the crime or recounted details. NIS agents interviewed Davis and Davis said “maybe I should talk to a lawyer” but said “I don’t want a lawyer” and resumed the interview until he said “I think I want a lawyer.” Davis moved to suppress.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: If a suspect requests counsel at any time during the interview, he is not subject to further questioning until a lawyer has been made available or the suspect himself reinitiates conversation. This is designed to prevent police from badgering a defendant into waiving his previously asserted Miranda rights.
The applicability of the rigid prophylactic rule requires courts to determine whether the accused actually invoked his right to counsel. If a suspect makes a reference to an attorney that is ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking the right to counsel, our precedents do not require the cessation of questioning.
We decline petitioner’s invitation to extend Edwards and require law enforcement officers to cease questioning immediately upon the making of an ambiguous or equivocal reference to an attorney.
In considering how a suspect must invoke the right to counsel, we must consider the need for effective law enforcement. The Edwards rule – questioning must cease if the suspect asks for a lawyer – provides a bright line.
When a suspect makes an ambiguous or equivocal statement it will often be good police practice for the interviewing officers to clarify whether or not he actually wants an attorney. But we decline to adopt a rule requiring officers to ask clarifying questions.
Souter concurring: I cannot join in the conclusion that if the investigators had been so inclined, they were at liberty to disregard Davis’s reference to a lawyer entirely, in accordance with a general rule that interrogators have no legal obligation to discover what a custodial subject meant by an ambiguous statement that could reasonably be understood to express a desire to consult a lawyer. When law enforcement officials reasonably do not know whether or not the suspect wants a lawyer, they should stop their interrogation and ask him to make his choice clear. Criminal suspects are an odd group to single out for the Court’s demand of heightened linguistic care. Many lack confident command of the English language, are ignorant, and are intimidated.

Invocation of protections – Smith v. Illinois (1984)
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: defendant’s initial request for counsel was unambiguous. An accused’s post-request responses to further interrogation may not be used to cast retrospective doubt on the clarity of the initial request itself.

Invocation of protections – McNeil v. Wisconsin
Year: 1991
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: A request for the offense-specific 6th Amendment right to assistance in proceedings pertaining to a charged offense does not constitute an invocation of Miranda’s 5th Amendment based entitlement to assistance for custodial interrogation concerning separate, uncharged crimes. To trigger the special protection of the Edwards rule, a suspect must make an unambiguous request for assistance with custodial interrogation.
6. Facts: Defendant who has been charged with armed robbery made an appearance in court with counsel. Officers initiated custodial interrogation with respect to three uncharged crimes, a murder, an attempted murder, and an armed burglary. Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches only after formal charges are initiated and is offense specific. Defendant had no 6th Amendment entitlement for the charges. After given Miranda warnings, Defendant waived his rights and made inculpatory statements about the uncharged offenses. Defendant claimed his waiver was invalid under Edwards.
8. Reasoning: Defendant argued his invocation of the 6th Amendment right to assistance regarding the armed robbery also served to invoke his Miranda entitlement to assistance for custodial interrogation regarding the uncharged offenses. -> reject.

Invocation of protections – Berghuis v. Thompkins
Year: 2010
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: A suspect must unambiguously invoke the right to remain silent.
8. Reasoning: Defendant argued he had invoked his right to remain silent by not saying anything for a considerable period of time while officers attempted to interrogate him. -> unpersuasive.
A rule that officer must stop after ambiguous acts or statements would require them to make difficult decisions and such a rule could lead to the suppression of a voluntary confession, which would place a significant burden on society’s interest in prosecuting criminal activity while only adding marginally to Mirada’s goal of dispelling the compulsion. The suspect did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk with the police.
Sotomayor dissenting: when a suspect ambiguously invokes the right to remain silent, the appropriate question is whether officers scrupulously honored the suspect’s right to cut-off questioning.

Invocation of protections – Oregon v. Bradshaw
Year: 1983
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Rehnquist concluded that Defendant, after initiating further communications with the officer, had validly waived his rights under Miranda.
6. Facts: Defendant was arrested for furnishing liquor to a minor. He was also suspected of driving a truck that left a roadway and struck a tree and embankment, causing a minor’s death. Officer read him the Miranda warnings and suggested he had been behind the wheel of the truck at the time of the accident. Defendant invoked his right to the presence of an attorney and the officer terminated the interrogation. Defendant asked the officer “well, what is going to happen to me now?” the officer reminded him that he had requested an attorney and told him “anything you say, it has to be at your own free will.” Defendant agreed to take a lie detector test. The examiner said Defendant was not telling the truth and Defendant made incriminating admissions.
8. Reasoning: Rehnquist, speaking for 4 justices, concluded “what is going to happen to me now?” was an initiation of communication because it evinced a willingness and a desire for a generalized discussion about the investigation. Some inquiries by a suspect would not qualify as initiation because they are so routine that they cannot be fairly said to represent a desire on the part of a suspect to open up a more generalized discussion relating directly or indirectly to the investigation.
Powell concurring: decline to accept the Edwards rule that a valid waiver cannot be secured unless a suspect initiates communication. The only relevant inquiry, even when there is an invocation of the right to counsel, is whether the suspect knowingly and intelligently waived that right.
Marshall dissenting: there was no initiation. When Edwards spoke of initiating further communications, it had in mind communication or dialogue about the subject matter of the criminal investigation. A question or statement which does not invite further interrogation before an attorney is present cannot qualify as initiation under Edwards.

Invocation of protections – Maryland v. Shatzer
Year: 2010
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: Edwards did not require exclusion of the statement in these circumstances. Because Shatzer experienced a break in Miranda custody lasting more than two weeks between the first and second attempts at interrogation, Edwards did not mandate suppression of his statements.
4. Issue: Whether a break in custody ends the presumption of involuntariness established in Edwards.
5. Procedural History: The trial court judge denied a motion to suppress and found Shatzer guilty of sexual child abuse of his son. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the incriminating statements were barred by the Edwards doctrine.
6. Facts: In 2003, while incarcerated for an unrelated offense, the accused was interviewed about allegations that he had sexually abused his three-year-old son. Upon being given Miranda warnings, he declined to speak without an attorney and the detective ended the interview. In 2006, after receiving additional allegations concerning the same incident, a detective interviewed Defendant at the prison. After receiving Miranda warnings, Defendant waived his rights and made an incriminating admission. Five days later, after warnings and a written waiver, he submitted to a polygraph examination and made another incriminating statement. He was charged with a number of sex offenses.
8. Reasoning: The rationale of Edwards is that after a suspect requests a counsel, a waiver prompted by the authorities is itself the product of the inherently compelling pressures and not the purely voluntary choice of the suspect. It rests on an assumption that the subsequent requests for interrogations pose a significantly greater risk of coercion. The increased risk is the product of the police’s persistence in trying to get the suspect to talk and the continued pressure that begins when the individual is taken into custody as a suspect and sought to be interrogated.
The presumption conserves judicial resources and preserves the integrity of an accused’s choice to communicate with police only through counsel by preventing authorities from badgering a suspect into waiving his rights.
When released, a suspect has not remained isolated, sought advice, and knows that he need only demand counsel. A suspect in that circumstance would be worn down by an inquiry about whether he wishes to waive his right is far-fetched. A change in heart is less likely the result of badgering than of further deliberation in familiar surroundings that has caused him to believe that cooperating with the investigation is in his best interest. The extension of Edwards would not significantly increase the number of genuinely coerced confessions excluded but increase the costs of the rule.
The only logical endpoint of Edwards disability is termination of Miranda custody and any of its lingering effects. The court selected 14 days because the period provides plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, consult, shake off residual coercive effects, and discourage police abuse of a break-in-custody rule.
Thomas concurring in part: rejected the 14-day rule. He would have terminated the presumption of involuntariness as soon as custody ends.
Stevens concurring: 14-day break should not always eliminate the presumption. Many problems with the Court’s new rule were exacerbated in situations involving incarcerated suspects.

Invocation of protections – Arizona v. Roberson
Year: 1988
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: A suspect who invokes the right to counsel during custodial interrogation after being given Miranda warnings as to one offense may not be questioned by a different officer about a separate offense unless the suspect initiates further communications or exchanges with the authorities.
4. Issue: Whether the protection afforded by the Edwards rule applies when different officers seek to interrogate a suspect about different offenses.
5. Procedural History: The trial court ruled that the statement was not admissible, based on Edwards. The AZ Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: After Roberson was arrested at the scene of a burglary, the arresting officer recited Miranda warnings. Roberson wanted a lawyer. Three days after the arrest, while Roberson was still in custody, a different officer sought to interrogate him about a different burglary that had occurred one day before the burglary for which he had been arrested. The officer was not aware of the fact that Roberson had requested the assistance of counsel. The officer issued Miranda warnings and interrogated Roberson, obtaining a statement that incriminated him in the earlier burglary.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: To a suspect who has indicated his inability to cope with the pressures of custodial interrogation by requesting counsel any further police-initiated interrogation without counsel having been provided will surely exacerbate whatever compulsion to speak the suspect may be feeling.
No significance can be attached to the fact that the second officer did not know the suspect had made a request for counsel. Edwards focuses on the state of mind of the suspect and not of the police, custodial interrogation must be conducted pursuant to established procedures, and those procedures must enable an officer who proposes to initiate an interrogation to determine whether the suspect has previously requested counsel.
Kennedy dissenting: the rule was not necessary to protect the rights of suspects, and it would deprive law enforcement of a legitimate investigative technique now routinely used to resolve major crimes. The extension would bar officials, even those from other city or jurisdiction, from questioning a suspect about an unrelated matter if he requested counsel. We would have allowed officers conducting a separate investigation to warn a suspect and ask him whether he wishes to invoke his rights.

Invocation of protections – Minnick v. Mississippi
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: Mere consultation with a lawyer does not terminate the protection Edwards affords against officer-initiated interrogation following a request for counsel. The statements should not have been admitted at Minnick’s trial.
4. Issue: Whether Miranda barred the use of his statements. Whether a waiver of the right to counsel made by a suspect who has clearly invoked his right to assistance during custodial interrogation can be valid if officers initiate communication with the suspect after he has consulted with a lawyer.
5. Procedural History: The trial judge refused to suppress the statements and he was convicted.
6. Facts: Minnick and another man escaped from jail in Mississippi. They broke into a mobile home to steal weapons and killed two men. Minnick was arrested. In an interview with FBI agents, Minnick asked for counsel. He spoke with the lawyer on two or three occasions. A MI officer arrived to question Minnick. Minnick refused to sign a rights waiver form but did tell the officer about events that occurred at the mobile home, making incriminating statements.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Both Miranda and Edwards granted a right to have counsel present during custodial interrogation. Edwards held that once a suspect asks for assistance, the authorities may not initiate questioning in counsel’s absence. This rule is appropriate and necessary because a single consultation with an attorney does not remove the suspect from persistent attempts by officials to persuade him to waive his rights, or from the coercive pressures that accompany custody and that may increase as custody is prolonged.
If consultation lowered the bar, a second request for counsel would raise the bar again. The consequence would be that Edwards’ protection could pass in and out of existence multiple times, a regime that could spread confusion and lead to a loss of respect for the principle.
Scalia dissenting: irrebutable presumption of invalidity for waivers given after the authorities initiate communication should not continue after a suspect has actually consulted with his attorney. Any discussion between the suspect and an attorney should be sufficient to eliminate the suspect’s feeling of isolation and to assure him the presence of legal assistance. The prophylaxis provided by Edwards should be suspended.

The Basic Doctrine – Massiah v. United States
Year: 1964
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: The petitioner was denied the basic protections of that guarantee when there was used against him at his trial evidence of his own incriminating words, which federal agents had deliberately elicited from him after he had been indicted and in the absence of his counsel.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The jury convicted the petitioner of narcotics offenses and the convictions were affirmed by the Court of Appeal.
6. Facts: The petitioner was in a member of the crew of the S.S. Santa Maria. Federal customs officials received information that the petitioner was going to transport a quantity of narcotics. The agents searched the ship and found cocaine. The petitioner was indicted for violating the federal narcotics laws. He was released on bail. Colson decided to cooperate with the government agents and installed a Schmidt radio transmitter under the front seat, by means of which Murphy could overhear from some distance away conversations. Colson and the petitioner held a lengthy conversation while sitting in Colson’s automobile. The petitioner made incriminating statements.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The petitioner argues that it was an error of constitutional dimensions to permit Murphy at the trial to testify to the petitioner’s incriminating statements which Murphy had overheard. He argues Murphy’s use of the radio equipment violated the petitioner’s rights under the 4th Amendment and the petitioner’s 5th and 6th Amendment rights were violated by the use in evidence against him of incriminating statements which government agents had deliberately elicited from him after he had been indicted and in the absence of his retained counsel.
Any secret interrogation of the defendant, from and after the finding of the indictment, without the protection afforded by the presence of counsel, contravenes the basic dictates of fairness in the conduct of criminal causes and the fundamental rights of persons charged with crime.
The Solicitor General argues the federal law enforcement agents had the right to continue their investigation of the petitioner and his alleged criminal associates even though the petitioner had been indicted. The Government was continuing its investigation to uncover not only the source of narcotics but also their intended buyer. The agents were completely justified in making use of Colson’s cooperation by having Colson continue his normal associations and by surveilling them. -> we do not question that. All we hold is that the statements could not constitutionally be used.
White dissenting: This case cannot be analogized to the ABA’s rule forbidding an attorney to talk to the opposing party litigant outside the presence of his counsel. Applying the new exclusionary rule is peculiarly inappropriate in this case. There was no suggestion or any possibility of coercion. If Colson had been cooperating with the police, instead of voluntarily turning them in, prior to his meeting, the evidence and the conversation are somehow inadmissible. Reporting criminal behavior is expected or demanded of the citizen. The courts must consider the absence of counsel as one of several factors by which voluntariness is to be judged. This is a wiser rule than the automatic rule announced by the Court, which requires courts and juries to disregard voluntary admissions.

Escobedo v. Illinois (1964): an individual who was in custody, but had not been formally charged with an offense did have an entitlement to the assistance of counsel.

The offense specific nature of the right to counsel – Texas v. Cobb
Year: 2001
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: Defendant’s right to counsel had not attached for the murder charge. When the 6th Amendment right to counsel attaches, it does encompass offenses that, even if not formally charged, would be considered the same offense under the Blockburger test.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Defendant was convicted of capital murder. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed, holding that his confession should have been suppressed because it was obtained in violation of the 6th Amendment right to counsel which had attached because the murder charge was very closely related factually to and factually interwoven with the charged burglary.
6. Facts: A home was burglarized, and the woman and young child were missing. Defendant confessed to the burglary but denied involvement in the disappearance. After Defendant was indicted for burglary, the court appointed counsel to represent him. Defendant’s father informed the police that his son had admitted murdering the woman and child. Defendant, who was released on bond, was arrested and given Miranda warnings. Defendant confessed to killing.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The 6th Amendment right to counsel is “offense specific,” – i.e. it attaches only for formally charged offenses. The definition of an offense is not necessarily limited to the four corners of a charging instrument.
Defendant predicts that the offense-specific rule would prove disastrous to suspects’ constitutional rights and would permit law enforcement officers almost complete and total license to conduct unwanted and uncounseled interrogations -> suspects are not left unprotected because the authorities must honor the dictates of Miranda, and the Constitution must be construed with a recognition that society has an interest in the ability of police to talk to witnesses and suspects, even those who have been charged with other offenses.
Breyer dissenting: the restriction would undermine the lawyer’s role as medium between Defendant and the government. They considered it inappropriate to employ Blockburger’s fifth Amendment test to define the breadth of the right to counsel’s assistance.

Massiah’s critical stage – Kuhlmann v. Wilson
Year: 1986
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: The Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the police deliberately elicited the statements conflicts with the decision of other judge who reviewed this record, and is clear error in light of 2254(d).
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial court denied the suppression motion. The jury convicted respondent.
6. Facts: Respondent and two confederates robbed the Garage and fatally shot the night dispatcher. Shortly before, employees of the garage had observed respondent conversing with others and fleeing after the robbery, carrying loose money in his arms. Respondent admitted he had been present at the crime scene, claimed he had witnessed the robbery, gave the police a description of the robbers, denied knowing them, and denied involvement. He was placed in a cell with Benny Lee, a police informant. Respondent made incriminating statements to Lee. Detective Cullen had instructed Lee not to ask respondent questions but simply to keep his ears open for the names of the other perpetrators. Over the next days, respondent changed details of his original account. Respondent received a visit from his brother who mentioned his family were upset. Respondent now admitted that he and two men planned and carried out the robbery and murdered the dispatcher.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: In Massiah, once a defendant’s 6th Amendment right to counsel has attached, he is denied that right when federal agents deliberately elicit incriminating statements from him in the absence of his lawyer. In United States v. Henry, the court held the informant deliberately used his position to secure incriminating information from Defendant when counsel was not present and amounted to indirect and surreptitious interrogation. In Maine v. Moulton, the court concluded an accomplice recording a conversation denied Defendant his right to counsel on the pending charges.
The primary concern is secret interrogation by investigatory techniques equivalent to direct police interrogation. The Court of Appeals erred in concluding that respondent’s right to counsel was violated under the circumstances. Its error stemmed from its implicit conclusion that this case did not present that open question.

Waiver of the right to counsel – Brewer v. Williams
Year: 1977
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: Although we do not lightly affirm the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus in this case, so clear a violation of the 6th and 14th Amendments as here occurred cannot be condoned.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: Williams was indicted for first-degree murder. The judge denied the motion to suppress. The judge ruled that Williams had waived his right to have an attorney present during the giving of such information. The jury found Williams guilty. Iowa Supreme Court affirmed. Williams petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in the USDC for the SD of Iowa and the Court concluded that the evidence in question had been wrongly admitted and that he was denied his constitutional right to the assistance of counsel, that he had been denied the constitutional protections, and that his self-incriminatory statements had been involuntarily made. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
6. Facts: 10-year-old girl Powers went with her family to the YMCA and failed to return from a trip to the washroom. Williams, who escaped from a mental hospital, was seen in the lobby carrying some clothing and a large bundle wrapped in a blanket. A boy saw in the bundle two legs. Williams drove away and his abandoned car was found. A warrant was issued for his arrest on charge of abduction. Williams turned himself in to the Davenport police where he was arrested. McKnight in Des Moines arranged for two officers to go pick Williams up in Davenport, and they agreed not to question Williams during the trip back to Des Moines. Williams was arraigned in Davenport, and he was able to consult with Kelly who advised him not to say anything until he arrived back in Des Moines and could talk with his attorney there. The detective and Williams embarked on a wide-ranging conversation including Christian burial speech, saying that it will be snowing and covering the girl’s body and the little girl is entitled to a Christian burial. As the car approached Mitchellville, Williams said he would show where the body was and directed the police to the body of Powers.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: the judgment must be affirmed upon the ground that Williams was deprived of the right to the assistance of counsel. The right to counsel granted by the 6th and 14th Amendments means a person is entitled to the help of a lawyer at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him.
There can be no doubt in the present case that judicial proceedings had been initiated against Williams before the start of the automobile ride. Detective Leaming deliberately and designedly set out to elicit information from Williams just as surely as, and perhaps more effectively than, if he had formally interrogated him.
The state court held that Williams had waived the right to the assistance of counsel. The District Court held that it is the government which bears a heavy burden, but that is the burden which explicitly was placed on Williams by the state courts. The Court of Appeals was correct in holding that the record in this case falls far short of sustaining petitioner’s burden. Waiver requires not merely comprehension but relinquishment, and Williams’ consistent reliance upon the advice of counsel in dealing with the authorities refutes any suggestion that he waived that right. The Court of Appeals did not hold, nor do we, that under the circumstances of this case Williams could not have waived his rights. It only held that he did not.
Stevens concurring: underlying the surface issues is the question whether a fugitive from justice can rely on his lawyer’s advice given in connection with a decision to surrender voluntarily. The defendant placed his trust in an experienced lawyer who in turn trusted the authorities to honor a commitment. This was a critical stage of the proceeding in which the participation of an independent professional was of vital importance to the accused and society.
Burger dissenting: The result mechanically and blindly keeps reliable evidence from juries whether the claimed constitutional violation involves gross police misconduct or honest human error. Williams was not threatened or coerced and he spoke and acted voluntarily and with full awareness of his constitutional rights. The Court now holds because Williams was prompted by the detective’s statement the jury must not be told how the police found the body. The Court assumes that Williams’ conduct and statements were voluntary and that Williams had been informed and fully understood his rights, and reaches conclusion that no valid waiver has been demonstrated. Record is replete with evidence that Williams knew precisely what he was doing when he guided police to the body.
White dissenting: In Johnson v. Zerbst, waiver requires the State to prove an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. That respondent knew of his right not to say anything without advice and presence of counsel is established on this record to a moral certainty. Respondent relinquished his right not to talk when the car approached the place where he had hidden the victim’s clothes. Without any prodding, respondent changed his mind about the timing of his disclosures. Respondent’s decision to talk can hardly be viewed as the product of an overborne will. Williams’ right to counsel does not support that his later relinquishment of his right not to talk was unintentional. Waiver is not a formalistic concept. Waiver is shown whenever the facts establish that an accused knew of a right and intended to relinquish it. The other basis for the majority’s holding is that the right not to be asked questions must be waived before the questions are asked. Such distinction cannot determine whether one goes free. Questions, unanswered, have no significance at all. Absent coercion an accused is amply protected by a rule of waiver.

Michigan v. Jackson (1986): The Court extended the Edwards rule to situations in which accused individuals assert the 6th Amendment right to assistance. An indigent defendant’s request for the appointment of counsel at an arraignment constitutes an invocation of the Massiah right for purposes of government efforts to deliberately elicit statements.

Waiver of the right to counsel – Montejo v. Louisiana
Year: 2009
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Jackson rule should be overruled because the marginal benefits of its prophylactic rule were dwarfed by its substantial costs.
8. Reasoning: Jackson holding is the Court had determined that a request for counsel at an arraignment was an effective invocation of Massiah’s 6th Amendment right to pretrial assistance, and that once an accused invoked his 6th Amendment entitlement, a waiver of the right to counsel was not possible if the subsequent encounter was initiated by the authorities.
Rejected that a request for counsel at an arraignment is an invocation of the right to counsel for purposes of police questioning. The request no longer impedes the ability of law enforcement officers to initiate efforts to obtain a waiver of counsel and secure disclosures from an unassisted accused. Abandoned bar to official-initiated waivers following clear requests for counsel during interactions with the police.
An unambiguous invocation of the right to counsel does not erect any additional barrier to the validity of a waiver. The only question is whether the accused knowingly and voluntarily relinquished the right to assistance.

Identifications and the right to counsel – United States v. Wade
Year: 1967
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Vacate and remand.
3. Holding: We cannot make determination whether the in-court identifications had an independent origin or whether the introduction of the evidence was harmless error.
4. Issue: Whether courtroom identifications of an accused at trial are to be excluded from evidence because the accused was exhibited to the witnesses before trial at a post-indictment lineup conducted for identification purposes without notice to and in the absence of the accused’s appointed counsel.
5. Procedural History: The motion was denied and Wade was convicted. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial at which the identification was to be excluded, holding that the lineup, held in the absence of counsel, was a violation of his 6th Amendment rights.
6. Facts: Bank was robbed in 1964. A man entered the bank, pointed a pistol, and forced employees to fill a pillowcase with the bank’s money. The man drove away with an accomplice waiting in a stolen car. An indictment was returned against Wade and two others for conspiring to rob the bank and against Wade and the accomplice for the robbery. Wade was arrested and counsel was appointed to represent him. Fifteen days later an FBI agent, without notice to Wade’s lawyer, arranged to have the two bank employees observe a lineup made up of Wade and other prisoners. Each person wore strips of tape and said “put the money in the bag.” Employees identified Wade. Wade’s counsel moved for a judgment of acquittal or to strike the identifications.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Neither the lineup nor anything shown by this record that Wade was required to do in the lineup violated his privilege against self-incrimination. The privilege protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature.
We have no doubt that compelling the accused merely to exhibit his person for observation by a prosecution witness prior to trial involves no compulsion of the accused to give evidence having testimonial significance. It is compulsion of the accused to exhibit his physical characteristics, not compulsion to disclose any knowledge.
It is urged that the assistance of counsel at the lineup was indispensable to protect Wade’s most basic right as a criminal defendant. It is central to that principle that the accused is guaranteed that he need not stand alone against the State at any stage of the prosecution where counsel’s absence might derogate from the accused’s right to a fair trial. We scrutinize any pretrial confrontation of the accused to determine whether the presence of his counsel is necessary to preserve the defendant’s basic fright to a fair trial as affected by his right meaningfully to cross-examine the witness against him and to have effective assistance of counsel at the trial itself.
The Government characterizes the lineup as a mere preparatory step in the gathering of the prosecution’s evidence. -> There are differences which preclude such stages being characterized as critical stages. The denial of a right to have his counsel present at such analyses does not violate the 6th Amendment. They are not critical stages since there is minimal risk that his counsel’s absence at such stages might derogate from his right to a fair trial.
The confrontation is peculiarly riddled with innumerable dangers and variable factors which might seriously even crucially, derogate from a fair trial. The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known. The accused’s inability effectively to reconstruct at trial any unfairness that occurred at the lineup may deprive him of his only opportunity meaningfully to attack the credibility of the witness’ courtroom identification.
Since there is grave potential for prejudice in the pretrial lineup, which may not be capable of reconstruction at trial, and since presence of counsel itself can often avert prejudice and assure a meaningful confrontation at trial, the post-indictment lineup was a critical stage. Both Wade and his counsel should have been notified of the impending lineup and counsel’s presence should have been a requisite to conduct of the lineup, absence an intelligent waiver.
Consider the prior opportunity to observe the alleged criminal act, the existence of any discrepancy between any pre-lineup description and the defendant’s actual description, any identification prior to lineup of another person, the identification by picture of the defendant prior to the lineup, failure to identify the defendant on a prior occasion, and the lapse of time between the alleged act and the lineup identification.
Clark concurring: I cannot see why a lineup is not a critical stage of the prosecution.
White dissenting in part and concurring in part: The Court creates a new per se rule that a criminal suspect cannot be subjected to a pretrial identification process in the absence of his counsel without violating the 6th Amendment. The rule applies to any lineup, to any other technique employed to produce an identification and a fortiori to a face-to-face encounter between the witness and the suspect alone. The Court suggests improper police suggestion which contributes to erroneous identifications as the basis. Requiring counsel at pretrial identifications trenches on other valid state interests. One is its concern with the prompt and efficient enforcement of its criminal laws. Witness will be required to be present at the convenience of the counsel. We require conduct which has little relation to the search for truth.

Identifications and the right to counsel – United States v. Ash
Year: 1973
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: The dangers of mistaken identification were removed from context by the Court of Appeals and were incorrectly utilized as a sufficient basis for requiring counsel.
The 6th Amendment does not grant the right of counsel at photographic displays conducted by the Government for the purpose of allowing a witness to attempt an identification of the offender.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial judge held that the Government had demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that in-court identifications would be based on observation of the suspect other than the intervening observation. The trial judge ruled that all five color photographs would be admitted into evidence. The Court of Appeals held that this constituted the introduction of a post-indictment identification at the prosecutor’s request and over the objection of defense counsel. The jury convicted Ash. Bailey’s motion for acquittal was granted. The Court of Appeals held Ash’s right to counsel was violated when his attorney was not given the opportunity to be present at the photographic displays.
6. Facts: A man with a stocking mask entered a bank and waved a pistol. A second man entered and scooped up money. They left and escaped. A Government informer, McFarland, told authorities that he had discussed the robbery with Ash. An FBI agent showed five black-and-white mug shots of black males of generally the same age, height, and weight, one of which was of Ash, to four witnesses. All four made uncertain identifications of Ash’s picture. An indictment was returned charging Ash and Bailey. At the trial, an FBI agent showed five color photographs to the four witnesses, three selected Ash, and one was unable to make any selection. None selected Bailey. The three witnesses were unwilling to state that they were certain of their identifications. The fourth witness, who had been in a car outside the bank, identified Ash and Bailey.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The historical background suggests that the core purpose of the counsel guarantee was to assure Assistance at trial. The extension of the right to counsel to events before trial has resulted in changing patterns that have tended to generate pretrial events that might appropriately be considered to be parts of the trial itself.
The lack of scientific precision and inability to reconstruct an event are tests to determine whether confrontation with counsel at trial can serve as a substitute for counsel at the pretrial confrontation. If accurate reconstruction is possible, the risks inherent in any confrontation still remain, but the opportunity to cure defects at trial causes the confrontation to cease to be critical.
Even if we were willing to view the counsel guarantee in broad terms as a generalized protection of the adversary process, we would be unwilling to go so far as to extend the right to a portion of the prosecutor’s trial-preparation interviews with witnesses.
Selection of the picture of a person other than the accused, or the inability of a witness to make any selection will be useful to the defense in precisely the same manner that the selection of a picture of the Defendant would be useful to the prosecution. The equality of access to a photograph removes any inequality in the adversary process.
The primary safeguard against abuses is the ethical responsibility of the prosecutors. Review remains available under due process standards. These same safeguards apply to misuse of photographs. We are not persuaded that the risks inherent in the use of photographic displays are so pernicious that an extraordinary system of safeguards is required.
Stewart concurring: A photographic identification is quite different from a lineup, for there are substantially fewer possibilities of impermissible suggestion when photographs are used, and those unfair influences can be readily reconstructed at trial. A photographic display cannot be fairly considered a critical stage of the prosecution.
Brennan dissenting: To the extent that misidentification may be attributable to a witness’ faulty memory or perception, or inadequate opportunity for detailed observation during the crime, the risks are obviously as great at a photographic display as at a lineup. A corporeal identification is normally more accurate and the dangers of misidentification are even greater at a photographic display than at a lineup. The possibilities for impermissible suggestion in the context of a photographic display are manifold. The photographs might tend to suggest which is the suspect. The manner in which the photographs are displayed may suggest a suspect. Gestures or comments of the prosecutor at the time of the display may lead to select a certain photograph. The defense can seldom reconstruct at trial the mode and manner of photographic identification. The accused is not present at the photographic identification and reduces the likelihood that irregularities in the procedures will ever come to light. There is no meaningful difference, in terms of the need for attendance of counsel, between corporeal and photographic identifications.

The Due Process Clause and Identification – Stovall v. Denno
Year: 1967
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: A claimed violation of due process of law in the conduct of a confrontation depends on the totality of the circumstances surrounding it, and the record in the present case reveals that the showing of Stovall in an immediate hospital confrontation was imperative.
4. Issue: Whether petitioner is entitled to relief on his claim that in any event the confrontation conducted in this case was so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that he was denied due process of law.
5. Procedural History: Petitioner was convicted. The New York Court of Appeals affirmed. Petitioner pro se sought federal habeas corpus in the DC for the SDNY. Petitioner claimed he had been compelled to submit to the confrontation without the help of counsel and under circumstances which unfairly focused the witness’ attention on him as the man believed to be the guilty person. The District Court dismissed the petition. The Second Circuit affirmed.
6. Facts: Dr. Behrendt was stabbed to death in the kitchen of his home in 1961. His wife was knocked to the floor and stabbed. The police found a shirt on the floor and keys which they traced to petitioner. The police, without affording petitioner time to retain counsel, arranged to bring petitioner to wife’s hospital room. Wife identified petitioner after being asked by an officer whether he was the man and to say a few words.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The practice of showing suspects singly to persons for the purpose of identification, and not as part of a lineup, has been widely condemned.

The Due Process Clause and Identification – Foster v. California
Year: 1969
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: A pretrial identification was so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that the introduction of testimony regarding that identification violated due process.
6. Facts: The sole witness to a robbery of a Western Union office identified Defendant only after he had viewed him in two line-ups and attempted to make an identification at a one-on-one confrontation. At the first line-up, the witness observed Defendant, who was close to 6 feet and two other five to six inches shorter men. Defendant was wearing a leather jacket which the witness said was similar to that of the robber. The witness thought Defendant was one of the robbers but he was not sure. In a second line-up Defendant was the only person who had appeared in the first line-up. The witness positively identified Defendant as a robber.
8. Reasoning: The suggestive elements in the identification procedure made it all but inevitable that the witness would identify Defendant whether or not he was in fact the man. This procedure so undermined the reliability of the eyewitness identification as to violate due process.

Coleman v. Alabama (1970): a courtroom identification following a pretrial identification so unnecessarily suggestive as to violate due process would still be admissible as long as the courtroom identification did not stem from the pretrial identification.

The Due Process Clause and Identification – Manson v. Brathwaite
Year: 1977
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed.
3. Holding: Reliability is the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony for both pre and post Stovall confrontations. The factors are the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness' degree of attention, the accuracy of his prior description of the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time between the crime and the confrontation. Against these factors is to be weighed the corrupting effect of the suggestive identification itself.
The criteria laid down in Biggers are to be applied in determining the admissibility of evidence offered by the prosecution concerning a post-Stovall identification, and that those criteria are satisfactorily met and complied with here.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The jury found respondent guilty. The Supreme Court of Connecticut affirmed. Respondent filed a petition for habeas corpus in the USDC for the D of CT. The District Court dismissed the petition. The Second Circuit reversed, finding that evidence as to the photograph should have been excluded because the examination of the single photograph was unnecessary and suggestive.
6. Facts: Glover, a trooper, and Brown, an informant, went to an apartment to purchase narcotics from Cicero. Glover knocked on the door and the door was opened 12 to 18 inches. Glover asked for two things and the door closed. The man returned and handed Glover two bags. Glover stood within two feet of the person. Glover described the seller to D’Onofrio. D’Onofrio obtained a photograph of respondent and left it at Glover’s office. Glover identified the person as the one from whom he had purchased the narcotics. Respondent was arrested. Glover testified that the person was respondent and made a positive in-court identification. Respondent testified he had been ill on the day and was not at the apartment. Doctor testified that respondent had consulted him.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Respondent proposes a per se rule of exclusion that he claims is dictated by the demands of the due process clause. The per se approach focuses on the procedures employed and requires exclusion of the out-of-court identification evidence, without regard to reliability, whenever it has been obtained through unnecessarily suggested confrontation procedures. Another approach relies on the totality of the circumstances. It permits the admission of the confrontation evidence if, despite the suggestive aspect, the out-of-court identification possesses certain features of reliability.
The cases reflect that the jury not hear eyewitness testimony unless that evidence has aspects of reliability. The per se rule goes too far since its application automatically and peremptorily, and without consideration of alleviating factors, keeps evidence from the jury that is reliable and relevant. On deterrence, the police will guard against unnecessarily suggestive procedures under the totality rule, as well as the per se one. On the effect on the administration of justice, the per se approach suffers serious drawbacks. Since it denies the trier reliable evidence, it may result in the guilty going free. The per se approach may make error by the trial judge more likely. In cases where the admission of identification evidence is error under the per se approach, reversal is a Draconian sanction.
The indicators of Glover’s ability to make an accurate identification are hardly outweighed. It would have been better had D’Onofrio presented Glover with a photographic array. We are not disposed to view the failure as one of constitutional dimension.
Stevens concurring: the rulemaking function can be performed more effectively by the legislative process than by a somewhat clumsy judicial fiat and the Constitution does not foreclose experimentation by the States in the development of such rules. In evaluating the admissibility it is difficult to put other evidence of guilt entirely to one side.
Marshall dissenting: Where the prosecution sought to use evidence of a questionable pretrial identification, Stovall required its exclusion, because due process had been violated by the confrontation, unless the necessity for the unduly suggestive procedure outweighed its potential for generating an irreparably mistaken identification. The Simmons test was directed to ascertaining due process violations in the introduction of in-court identification testimony that Defendant claimed was tainted by pretrial procedures. The per se rule is not inflexible. Suggestively obtained eyewitness testimony is excluded precisely because of its unreliability and concomitant irrelevance. The adoption of the per se rule would enhance the effective administration of justice. The legal standard of Stovall should govern, but even if it does not, the facts reveal a substantial likelihood of misidentification in violation of due process of law.

The Due Process Clause and Identification – Perry v. New Hampshire
Year: 2012
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The 14th Amendment Due Process Clause does not require a preliminary judicial inquiry into the reliability of an eyewitness identification not procured under unnecessarily suggestive circumstances arranged by law enforcement.
4. Issue: Whether a judge must assess the reliability of an eyewitness identification made under suggestive circumstances not arranged by the police.
5. Procedural History: The trial judge denied the motion. A jury convicted him.
6. Facts: An officer who was responding to a report that “an African-American male was trying to break into cars parked in” an apartment building’s parking lot found Perry in the lot. A man who resided in the building approached the officer and told her that his neighbor had informed him that she had just seen someone break into his car. The man had found a rear window of his car shattered and had discovered that the speakers and amplifiers were missing. The officer met the neighbor in the hallway and the neighbor said the person she saw breaking into the car was standing in the parking lot. Perry was charged and moved to suppress the identification on due process grounds.
8. Reasoning: Perry claimed the rationale of the due process decisions required a reliability assessment any time an identification is made under suggestive circumstances. -> What triggers due process concerns is police use of an unnecessarily suggestive procedure, whether or not they intended the arranged procedure to be suggestive.
The due process check for reliability comes into play only after the Defendant establishes improper police conduct. The contention that improper police action was not essential ignored a key premise of Brathwaite that a primary aim of excluding identification evidence obtained under unnecessarily suggestive circumstances is to deter law enforcement use of improper identification procedures in the first place.
The fallibility of eyewitness evidence does not warrant a due process rule requiring a trial court to screen such evidence for reliability before allowing the jury to assess its creditworthiness. The unwillingness to enlarge the domain of due process rested on a recognition that the jury determines the reliability of evidence.

The Sources of and rationales for the exclusionary rules – Mapp v. Ohio
Year: 1961
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remanded.
3. Holding: All evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court. The exclusionary rule is an essential part of both the 4th and 14th Amendments.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: In 1957, three officers arrived at appellant’s residence pursuant to information that “a person was hiding out in the home, who was wanted for questioning in connection with a recent bombing and there was a large amount of policy paraphernalia being hidden in the home.” Mapp telephoned her attorney and refused to admit the officers without a search warrant. Three hours later, police sought entrance and forcibly opened the door. Mapp demanded to see the search warrant. An officer held up a paper. Mapp grabbed the warrant. A struggle ensued in which the officers recovered the paper and handcuffed her. Officers searched the bedroom and the rest of the second floor. The officers discovered the obscene materials for possession.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The State says that, under Wolf, even if the search were made without authority, or otherwise unreasonably, it is not prevented from using the unconstitutionally seized evidence at trial.
In Weeks v. US, the Court held that in a federal prosecution the 4th Amendment barred the use of evidence secured through an illegal search and seizure. In Wolf v. Colorado, the Court stated it could not brush aside the experience of States which deem the incidence of such conduct by the police too slight to call for a deterrent remedy by overriding the States’ relevant rules of evidence. The failure of the Wolf Court to include the Weeks exclusionary rule could not now be deemed controlling.
The cases have held that as to federal officers the Fourth Amendment included the exclusion of the evidence seized in violation of its provisions. The admission of constitutional right by Wolf could not consistently tolerate denial of the exclusion of the evidence which an accused had been forced to give by reason of the unlawful seizure.

The Standing Limitation – Rakas v. Illinois
Year: 1978
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: It was unnecessary to decide whether the search of the car might have violated the rights secured to someone else by the 4th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution. It did not violate any rights of these petitioners.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: A police officer on a patrol received a radio call notifying him of a robbery of a clothing store and describing the getaway car. The officer followed and stopped what might be the getaway car. The officer ordered the occupants out and searched the vehicle, finding a box of rifle shells and a rifle. The officer arrested petitioners. Petitioners moved to suppress on the ground that the search violated the 4th and 14th amendments. They conceded they did not own the automobile and were passengers, and did not own the weapons.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Petitioners urge to relax or broaden the rule of standing in Jones v. United States, so that any criminal defendant at whom a search was directed would have standing. Petitioners argue alternatively that they have standing to object under Jones because they were legitimately on the premises at the time of the search. -> decline.
The concept of standing in Jones focuses on whether the person was himself the victim of the search or seizure. We shall consider petitioners' target theory, the necessity for continued adherence to the notion of standing discussed in Jones as a concept that is theoretically distinct from the merits of a defendant's Fourth Amendment claim, and, finally, the proper disposition of petitioners' ultimate claim in this case.
The issue of standing involves two inquiries: whether the proponent of a particular legal right has alleged injury in fact, and whether the proponent is asserting his own legal rights and interests rather than basing his claim for relief upon the rights of third parties.
The question is whether the challenged search or seizure violated the 4th Amendment rights of a criminal defendant wo seeks to exclude the evidence. We recognize this aspect belongs more to substantive 4th Amendment than standing.
The phrase “legitimately on premises” creates too broad a gauge for measurement of 4th Amendment rights. Jones stands for that a person can have a legally sufficient interest in a place other than his own home so the 4th Amendment protects him.
Petitioner’s claims must fail. They made no showing that they had any legitimate expectation of privacy in the glove compartment or area under the seat of the car in which they were merely passengers.

The Standing limitation – Minnesota v. Olson
Year: 1990
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: An overnight guest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s home.
4. Issue: Whether a suspect’s 4th Amendment rights had been violated when the police made a warrantless nonconsensual entry into a house where he was an overnight guest and arrested him.
8. Reasoning: The State contends an overnight guest can only have a legitimate expectation of privacy when his host is away and he has a key with which he can come and go and admit and exclude others. -> reject.
Because society recognizes that a houseguest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s home, such overnight guests are entitled to a legitimate expectation of privacy despite the fact that they have no legal interest in the premises and do not have the legal authority to determine who may or may not enter the household.

The Standing limitation – Rawlings v. Kentucky
Year: 1980
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The ownership of the property seized as a result of a search does not by itself entitle an individual to challenge the search.
5. Procedural History: The KY Supreme Court held the defendant could not challenge the legality of the search of the purse because he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the purse.
6. Facts: The police discovered a considerable amount of illegal narcotics in a purse belonging to the Defendant’s acquaintance.
8. Reasoning: Defendant contended that because he claimed ownership of the drugs in the purse, he should be entitled to challenge the search regardless of his expectation of privacy. -> reject.
To contest the legality of the search, the individual must demonstrate that his or her legitimate expectation of privacy was violated by the search. Ownership is one factor. Defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse.

The Standing limitation – Byrd v. United States
Year: 2018
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The mere fact that a driver in lawful possession or control of a rental car is not listed on the rental agreement will not defeat his or her otherwise reasonable expectation of privacy.
4. Issue: Whether a driver of a rental car has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the car when he or she is not listed as an authorized driver on the rental agreement.
8. Reasoning: The government contended that drivers who are not listed on rental agreements always lack an expectation of privacy in the automobile based on the lack of authorization alone. -> reject. Too restrictive.
The petitioner contended that the sole occupant of a rental car always has an expectation of privacy in it based on mere possession and control. -> reject. Too broad.
The government contended the petitioner should have no greater expectation of privacy than a car thief because he intentionally used a third party as a strawman in a calculated plan to mislead the rental company. -> remand.

Jones v. United States (1960): defendants who are legitimately on premises when a search occurs have standing to challenge the search. Defendant who is charged with the criminal possession of an item at the time of an allegedly illegal search and seizure would have automatic standing.
Defendant confront dilemma: they had to either admit possession for standing purposes and risk use of that admission to prove guilt, or give up the opportunity to challenge an illegal search and seizure in order to avoid making inculpatory admissions regarding possession. The government should not be permitted to deny possession to defeat a standing claim, but to claim possession in order to prove guilt.

United States v. Salvucci (1980): the Court abolished the “automatic standing” rule. The dilemma in Jones was eliminated by Simmons v. United States. Simmons held that a Defendant’s admissions at a suppression hearing could not be used as substantive proof of guilt at trial. It concluded that standing law does not necessitate any unseemly self-contradiction by the government.

The Standing limitation – Brendlin v. California
Year: 2007
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: A typical reasonable passenger in a vehicle stopped by the police is seized within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.
8. Reasoning: A passenger is entitled to object to the stop of the vehicle. If the stop is unreasonable, it violates the passenger’s rights.
If either the stopping of a car, the length of a passenger’s detention thereafter, or a passenger’s removal from it are unreasonable, then the passenger has standing to object to those constitutional violations and to have suppressed any evidence found in the car which is their fruit.

The Standing limitation – United States v. Payner
Year: 1980
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: The supervisory power does not authorize a federal court to suppress otherwise admissible evidence on the ground that it was seized unlawfully from a third party not before the court. The 4th Amendment decisions established that the interest in deterring illegal searches does not justify the exclusion of tainted evidence at the instance of a party who was not the victim of the challenged practices. The same difficulty attended the 5th Amendment.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial judge decided that 5th Amendment and the inherent supervisory power of the federal courts mandated the exclusion of the evidence tainted by the government’s knowing and purposeful bad faith hostility.
6. Facts: The IRS had affirmatively counseled agents to disregard 4th Amendment commands. They deliberately and illegally searched a banker’s briefcase for the specific purpose of discovering information about the financial dealings of bank customers. The agents were aware that the customer would be criminally charged and would not have standing to challenge the search and the banker who would have standing would not be charged.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning:

The Standing limitation – Minnesota v. Carter
Year: 1998
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: Officer’s viewing did not violate the 4th Amendment. The purely commercial nature of the transaction, the relatively short period of time on the premises, and the lack of any previous connection lead to conclusion that respondents’ situation is closer to that of one simply permitted on the premises. Any search which may have occurred did not violate their 4th Amendment rights.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The MN trial court held that respondents were not overnight social guests but temporary visitors, and they were not entitled to claim the protection of the 4th Amendment. It held Thielen’s observation was not a search. The MN Court of Appeals upheld. The Supreme Court of MN reversed and held the respondents had standing because they had a legitimate expectation of privacy and the officer’s viewing was a search which violated 4th Amendment.
6. Facts: Respondents and lessee were bagging cocaine and an officer observed through a drawn window blind.
Thielen, an officer, went to an apartment to investigate a tip from a confidential informant. The informant stated he had walked by the window and saw people putting a white powder into bags. The officer looked into the same window and observed the bagging operation. When two men left the building, the police stopped the car. The police observed a black zippered pouch and a handgun on the vehicle’s floor, respondents were arrested, and the vehicle search the next day revealed pagers, a scale, and cocaine. The police searched the apartment and found cocaine residue and baggies. Respondents had come from Chicago to the apartment for packaging the cocaine. Respondents moved to suppress all evidence and incriminating statements.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The MN courts analyzed whether respondents had a legitimate expectation of privacy under the rubric of standing doctrine, an analysis which the Court rejected in Rakas. An overnight guest in a home may claim the protection of the 4th Amendment, but one who is merely present with the consent of the householder may not.
Respondents were obviously not overnight guests, but were essentially present for a business transaction and were only in the home a matter of hours. It was for these respondents simply a place to do business. An expectation of privacy in commercial premises is less than a similar expectation in an individual’s home.
Scalia concurring: People call a house their home so long as they actually live there. It is entirely impossible to characterize as “temporary” residence to an apartment that he uses to package cocaine. Respondents were not searched in their house. The questions are left to the judgment of state and federal legislators.
Kennedy concurring: The respondents have no independent privacy right, the violation of which results in exclusion of evidence against them, unless they can establish a meaningful connection to the apartment. The requisite connection is an expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable. In this case respondents have established nothing more than a fleeting and insubstantial connection with the home.
Ginsburg dissenting: The Court’s decision undermines the security of short-term guests and that of the resident. The home is uniquely important. People have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes because they have the prerogative to exclude others. The decision will tempt police to pry into private dwellings without warrant to find evidence incriminating guests. Both host and guest have exhibited an actual expectation of privacy and the expectation is one the society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.

The Independent Source and Inevitable Discovery doctrines – Murray v. United States
Year: 1988
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Vacate and remand.
3. Holding: The District Court should determine whether the warrant-authorized search of the warehouse was an independent source of the challenged evidence.
4. Issue: Whether again assuming evidence obtained pursuant to an independently obtained search warrant, the portion of such evidence that had been observed in plain view at the time of a prior illegal entry must be suppressed.
5. Procedural History: The district court denied the motion, rejecting petitioners’ arguments that the warrant was invalid because the agents did not inform about the prior entry. The First Circuit affirmed.
6. Facts: Based on information received from informants, the agents had been surveilling Murray and his co-conspirators. They observed Murray and Carter drive to a warehouse. Agents saw inside the warehouse and observed two people and a tractor trailer carrying a long, dark container. The agents followed the two departing vehicles, stopped the vehicles, and discovered marijuana inside. Agents forced entry into the warehouse and observed bales and left. The agents received the warrant, reentered the warehouse, and seized marijuana and notebooks. Petitioners moved to suppress.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Petitioners contend that the doctrine of independent source applies only to evidence obtained for the first time during an independent lawful search. The Government argues that it applies also to evidence initially discovered during an unlawful search, but later obtained independently from activities untainted by the initial illegality. -> Government’s view has better support.
Where an unlawful entry has given investigators knowledge of facts x and y, but fact z has been learned by other means, fact z can be said to be admissible because derived from an independent source.
Knowledge that the marijuana was in the warehouse was assuredly acquired at the time of the unlawful entry, but it was also acquired at the time of entry pursuant to the warrant; there is no reason why the independent source doctrine should not apply. So long as a later, lawful seizure is genuinely independent of an earlier, tainted one, there is no reason why the independent source doctrine should not apply.
The ultimate question is whether the search pursuant to warrant was in fact a genuinely independent source of the information and tangible evidence at issue here.

The Independent Source and Inevitable Discovery doctrines – Nix v. Williams
Year: 1984
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: The volunteer search teams would have resumed the search and the body inevitably would have been found.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The trial court concluded that the State had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that, if the search had not been suspended and Williams had not led the police, her body would have been discovered within a short time in essentially the same condition. The Supreme Court of IA affirmed. The Court concluded that the State had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that, even if Williams had not guided police, it would inevitably have been found by lawful activity of the search party before its condition had materially changed. The USDC for the SD of IA denied Williams’ petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reversed. The court assumed that there is an inevitable discovery exception to the Exclusionary Rule but the State has not met the first requirement.
6. Facts: At Williams’ second trial, the prosecution did not offer Williams’ statements into evidence nor did it seek to show that Williams had directed the police. Evidence of the condition of her body as it was found, articles and photographs of her clothing, and the results of post mortem medical and chemical tests on the body were admitted.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Williams contends that evidence of the body’s location and condition is fruit of the poisonous tree. He contends admitting the challenged evidence violated the 6th Amendment whether it would have been inevitably discovered or not. He contends, if the inevitable discovery doctrine is constitutionally permissible, it must include a threshold showing of police good faith.
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States held that the Exclusionary Rule applies not only to the illegally obtained evidence itself, but also to other incriminating evidence derived from the primary evidence. The core rationale is that the admittedly drastic and socially costly course is needed to deter police from violations of constitutional and statutory protections. To ensure such protections, we exclude evidence seized as a result of such violations.
The independent source doctrine allows admission of evidence that has been discovered by means wholly independent of any constitutional violation. The doctrine teaches that the interest of society in deterring unlawful police conduct and the public interest in having juries receive all probative evidence are properly balanced by putting the police in the same position than they would have been in if no police error or misconduct had occurred.
If the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means, then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received.
If an absence-of-bad-faith requirement were not imposed, the temptation to risk deliberate violations of the 6th Amendment would be too great, and the deterrent effect of the Exclusionary Rule reduced too far. -> reject.
Williams argues that because he did not waive his right to the assistance of counsel, the Court may not balance competing values in deciding whether the evidence was properly admitted. The 6th Amendment Exclusionary Rule is designed to protect the right to a fair trial and the integrity of the factfinding process. When those interests are at stake, the societal costs of excluding evidence obtained from responses presumed involuntary are irrelevant in determining whether such evidence should be excluded. -> disagree. Suppression of the evidence would operate to undermine the adversary system by putting the State in a worse position than it would have occupied without any police misconduct.
Stevens concurring: admission of the victim’s body, if it would have been discovered anyway, means that the trial in this case was not the product of an inquisitorial process; that process was untainted by illegality. If the trial process was not tainted as a result of his conduct, the Defendant received the type of trial that the 6th Amendment envisions. The relevant cost is that imposed on society by police officers who decide to take procedural shortcuts.
Brennan dissenting: in the inevitable discovery exception, the evidence sought to be introduced at trial has not actually been obtained from an independent source, but rather would have been discovered as a matter of course if independent investigations were allowed to proceed. The government should satisfy a heightened burden of proof before it is allowed to use such evidence.

The Attenuation Doctrine – Brown v. Illinois
Year: 1975
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: The State failed to sustain the burden of showing that the evidence in question was admissible under Wong Sun. The IL courts were in error in assuming that the Miranda warnings, by themselves, under Wong Sun always purge the taint of an illegal arrest.
4. Issue: Whether the statements were to be excluded as the fruit of the illegal arrest, or were admissible because the giving of the Miranda warnings sufficiently attenuated the taint of the arrest.
5. Procedural History: Brown moved to suppress and the motion was denied. The jury found petitioner guilty of murder. The Supreme Court of IL affirmed the conviction. The Court refused to accept that Brown’s arrest was lawful. The Court found that giving of the Miranda warnings broke the causal connection between the illegal arrest and the giving of the statements and the statements were an act of free will.
6. Facts: Petitioner was arrested without probable cause and a warrant. He was give the Miranda warnings. While in custody, he made two inculpatory statements.
Detectives Nolan and Lenz broke into Brown’s apartment, searched it, and then arrested Brown, without probable cause and without a warrant. They were investigating the murder of Corpus and obtained petitioner’s name from Corpus’ brother as an acquaintance. Officers held him at gunpoint, searched him, and asked his name. He denied being Brown. The officers took him to the interrogation room and informed him about the incidents. Lenz asked Brown whether he wanted to talk about the Corpus homicide and petitioner answered that he did. The questioning produced a statement in which Brown stated he and Claggett murdered Corpus. The detectives arrested Claggett. At the interrogation room, Brown gave a second statement to Crilly. Brown and Claggett were jointly indicted.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The IL courts refrained from resolving the question of whether Brown’s statements were obtained by exploitation of the illegality of his arrest.
The exclusionary rule, when utilized to effectuate the 4th Amendment, serves interests and policies that are distinct from those it serves under the 5th. It is directed at all unlawful searches and seizures, not merely those that happen to produce incriminating material or testimony as fruits. Miranda warnings, and the exclusion of a confession made without them, do not alone sufficiently deter a 4th Amendment violation.
In order for the causal chain, between the illegal arrest and the statements made subsequent thereto, to be broken, the statement must meet the 5th Amendment standard and be sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint. Any incentive to avoid 4th Amendment violations would be eviscerated by making the warnings a “cure-all.”
State argues that persons arrested illegally frequently may decide to confess, as an act of free will unaffected by the initial illegality. -> the Miranda warnings, alone and per se, cannot always make the act a product of free will.
The question whether a confession is the product of a free will must be answered on the facts of each case. The temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct are all relevant. The voluntariness is a threshold requirement. The burden of showing admissibility rests on the prosecution.
The illegality had a quality of purposefulness. The arrest, both in design and in execution, was investigatory.
Powell concurring: The incompleteness of the record leaves me uncertain that it compels the exclusion of petitioner’s statements. This case concerns statements more removed than that of Toy from the time and circumstances of the illegal arrest. The point at which the taint can be said to have dissipated should be related, in the absence of other controlling circumstances, to the nature of that taint.
Significantly different judicial responses are called for the flagrantly abusive violation of the 4th Amendment and technical violations. I would require the clearest indication of attenuation in cases in which official conduct was flagrantly abusive. In would require some demonstrably effective break in the chain of events leading from the illegal arrest to the statement. In technical violations, I would not require more than proof that effective Miranda warnings were given and that the ensuing statement was voluntary in the 5th Amendment sense.
The trial court made no determination as to whether probable cause existed for petitioner’s arrest. The IL Supreme Court did not consider whether the officers might reasonably have thought that probable cause existed.

The Attenuation Doctrine – Utah v. Strieff
Year: 2016
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: The attenuation exception dictated the admission of evidence found after an officer illegally detained a man who had left a house under surveillance for suspected drug activity.
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.
4. Issue: Whether the discovery of a valid arrest warrant was a sufficient intervening event to break the causal chain between the unlawful stop and the discovery of drug-related evidence on Strieff’s person.
6. Facts: After stopping the man, obtaining his name, and running a warrant check, the officer discovered an outstanding arrest warrant. He arrested the man and searched his person incident to arrest, finding contraband.
8. Reasoning: The Court relied on both the intervention of the outstanding arrest warrant and the merely negligent character of the illegality.
The evidence was found only minutes after the illegal stop and there was a close connection between the violation and discovery of the evidence that weighed against an attenuation. The officer discovered a valid arrest warrant and had authorization to arrest Strieff that favored a conclusion that the causal connection was attenuated. The officer’s transgression involved an isolated instance of negligence in connection with a bona fide investigation of a suspected drug house and favored attenuation.
The prevalence of outstanding arrest warrants could induce the police to engage in dragnet searches -> such conduct would expose police to civil liability and evidence of a dragnet search could yield a different assessment of the purpose and flagrancy factor. The existence of an outstanding warrant alone is not an adequate basis for admitting evidence under the attenuation exception.

The Attenuation Doctrine – Hudson v. Michigan
Year: 2006
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding:
4. Issue: Whether the evidence found had to be excluded.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: The officers had announced their presence while executing a warrant, but they had failed to wait a reasonable time before entering Hudson’s home.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The mere fact that a constitutional violation was a but-for cause of obtaining evidence does not mean that the evidence must be excluded. But-for causality is only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for suppression.
The first reason that the evidence in Hudson did not have to be excluded was that the illegal manner of entry was not a but-for cause of obtaining the evidence inside the home. Whether that misstep had occurred or not, the police would have executed the warrant.
The second reason was that even if there had been a but-for causal connection between the knock-and-announce violation and the discovery of the evidence, the evidence would have been admissible based on the attenuation doctrine. The traditional exception applies when the causal connection between a constitutional violation and evidence is remote. A second type of attenuation exception can be applicable despite a direct causal connection between a violation and the acquisition of evidence. This type dictates the admission of illegally acquired evidence if the interest protected by the constitutional guarantee violated would not be served by suppression of the evidence obtained.
The interests furthered by the knock-and-announce requirement do not include the shielding of potential evidence from the government’s eyes. Because the rule has never protected the interest in preventing the government from seeing or taking evidence and because the interests that are violated have nothing to do with the seizure of evidence, the exclusionary rule is inapplicable to evidence that is obtained by means of knock-and-announce rule violations.
The third reason was that even if there had been unattenuated causation between the violation and the evidence, exclusion would not be warranted because the substantial social costs of excluding evidence obtained would not be warranted because the substantial social costs of excluding always outweigh the benefits.
The value of deterrence depends upon the strength of the incentive to commit the forbidden act. The deterrence of knock-and-announce violations is not worth a lot. The social costs of applying the exclusionary rule to knock-and-announce violations are considerable; the incentive to such violations is minimal, and the extant deterrences are substantial. Suppressing evidence is unjustified.
Kennedy concurring: violations of the rule are not trivial or beyond the law’s concern. The continued operation of the exclusionary rule is not in doubt.
Breyer dissenting: the Court destroyed the strongest legal incentive to comply with the rule. The exclusionary rule should apply to the violations and the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule argued strongly for suppression. The substantial social costs argument was an argument against the exclusionary rule itself.

The Good Faith Exceptions – United States v. Leon
Year: 1984
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: the marginal or nonexistent benefits produced by suppressing evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant cannot justify the substantial costs of exclusion.
The officers’ reliance on the magistrate’s determination of probable cause was objectively reasonable, and application of the extreme sanction of exclusion is inappropriate.
4. Issue: Whether the 4th Amendment exclusionary rule should be modified so as not to bar the use in the prosecution’s case-in-chief of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause.
5. Procedural History: The District Court granted the motions to suppress in part. It concluded that the affidavit was insufficient to establish probable cause, but none of the respondents had standing to challenge al searches. It made clear that Officer had acted in good faith. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.
6. Facts: In 1981, a confidential informant of unproven reliability informed an officer that two persons known to him were welling large quantities of drugs. Police initiated an extensive investigation focusing on three residences. Officers observed an automobile belonging to Del Castillo arrive, carry a small paper sack, and drive away. A check of Del Castillo’s probation records led to Leon. Officer Rombach prepared an application for a warrant to search three places and automobiles. A facially valid search warrant was issued in 1981 by a state superior court judge. The searches produced drugs. Respondents were indicted and filed motions to suppress the evidence.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: The rule operates as a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard 4th Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect. The question before us is whether the exclusionary sanction is appropriately imposed in a particular case. Particularly when law enforcement officers have acted in objective good faith or their transgressions have been minor, the magnitude of the benefit conferred on the guilty defendants offends basic concepts of the criminal justice system. The application of the rule has been restricted to those areas where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served. Our evaluation of the costs and benefits of suppressing reliable physical evidence seized by officers reasonably relying on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate leads to the conclusion that such evidence should be admissible in the prosecution’s case-in-chief.
(1) Deference accorded to a magistrate’s finding of probable cause does not preclude inquiry into the knowing or reckless falsity of the affidavit on which that determination was based. (2) The Courts must also insist that the magistrate purport to perform his neutral and detached function. (3) Courts will not defer to a warrant based on an affidavit that does not provide the magistrate with a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause. Only in (1) the Court has set forth a rationale for suppressing evidence.
Judges and magistrates have no stake in the outcome of prosecutions. The sanction will not reduce judicial officers’ incentives to comply. If exclusion is to have deterrent effect, it must alter the behavior of officers or departments. Where the officer’s conduct is objectively reasonable, excluding the evidence will not further the ends of the exclusionary rule in any appreciable way. Penalizing the officer for the magistrate’s error cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of the 4th Amendment violations.
Suppression remains an appropriate remedy if the magistrate of judge in issuing a warrant was misled by information in an affidavit that the affiant knew was false or would have known was false. The exception will not apply in cases where the issuing magistrate wholly abandoned his judicial role. A warrant may be so facially deficient that the officers cannot presume it to be valid.
In the absence of an allegation that the magistrate abandoned his role, suppression is appropriate only if the officers were dishonest or reckless in preparing their affidavit or could not have harbored an objectively reasonable belief in the existence of probable cause. Officer Rombach’s application was supported by much more than bare bones.

The Good Faith Exceptions – Illinois v. Krull
Year: 1987
Court: US Supreme Court
3. Holding: Even though a statutorily authorized search was constitutionally unreasonable, the evidence obtained as a result of that search was admissible because the officers conducting the search had acted in objectively reasonable reliance upon the statute authorizing the search.
8. Reasoning: The error is that of legislators, who do not need to be and are not likely to be deterred by the exclusion of evidence. When officers have acted in reasonable reliance upon a statute, there is no police error to deter. The deterrent premises of the exclusionary rule do not support suppression.

The Good Faith Exceptions – Arizona v. Evans
Year: 1995
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: If an officer arrests an individual based on a computer record that erroneously indicates the existence of an outstanding arrest warrant, evidence found as a result of that unreasonable arrest is admissible if the officer acted in objectively reasonable reliance on the erroneous computer record.
8. Reasoning: The exclusionary rule is not designed to affect the behavior of court employees and there is no reason to attempt to deter objectively reasonable behavior by officers. Leon supports a categorical exception to the exclusionary rule for clerical errors of court employees.

The Good Faith Exceptions – Herring v. United States
Year: 2009
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Affirmed.
3. Holding: When the error was the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest, the jury should not be barred from considering all the evidence. When police mistakes are the result of negligence such as that described here, any marginal deterrence does not pay its way and the criminal should not go free because the constable has blundered.
4. Issue:
5. Procedural History: The Magistrate Judge recommended denying the motion because the officers had acted in good-faith. The DC adopted it, and the 11th Circuit affirmed, stating the officers were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing or carelessness.
6. Facts: Anderson learned that Herring drove to Coffee County Sheriff’s Department to retrieve something from his impounded truck. Anderson asked Pope to check for any outstanding warrants for Herring’s arrest and found none. Anderson asked Pope to check with Morgan for Dale County’s database. Morgan replied there was an active arrest warrant. Anderson followed Herring, arrested him, and found meth and a pistol during a search incident to the arrest. When Morgan went to retrieve the actual warrant, she was unable to find it. She learned that the warrant had been recalled five months earlier. The information about the recall did not appear in the database. Morgan called Pope and Pope called Anderson. Herring was indicted and moved to suppress because the warrant had been rescinded.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Somebody in Dale County should have updated. This error was negligent but not reckless or deliberate. This error is not enough by itself to require the extreme sanction of exclusion.
The exclusionary rule is not an individual right and applies only where it resulted in appreciable deterrence. The benefits of deterrence must outweigh the costs. Evans left unresolved whether the evidence should be suppressed if police personnel were responsible.
The exclusionary rule serves to deter deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systemic negligence. The error in this case does not rise to that level. The pertinent analysis of deterrence and culpability is objective, not an inquiry into the subjective awareness of arresting officers. Our good-faith inquiry is confined to the objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal in light of all of the circumstances.
In this case, the conduct was not so objectively culpable as to require exclusion. There is no evidence that errors in the system are routine or widespread.

The Miranda Exclusion Doctrine – Oregon v. Elstad
Year: 1985
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reverse and remanded.
3. Holding: A suspect who has once responded to unwarned yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings.
4. Issue: Whether an initial failure of law enforcement officers to administer the warnings required by Miranda taints subsequent admissions made after a suspect has been fully advised of and has waived his Miranda rights.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: In 1981, the home of Gross was burglarized. A witness contacted Sheriff’s office, implicating Elstad, an 18-year-old neighbor and friend of Gross’s son. Officers went to the home of Elstad, with a warrant for his arrest. Elstad’s mother answered the door. Officer McAllister explained to the mother in the kitchen and Officer burke remained with Elstad in the living room. When Burke told Elstad about the robbery at Gross’s home and he felt Elstad was involved, Elstad states “yes I was there.” The Officers transported Elstad to the headquarters and the McAllister read Elstad the Miranda rights. Elstad gave a full statement, explaining how he knew Grosses were out and was paid to show how to gain entry. Respondent was charged and found guilty of burglary.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Respondent’s contention that his confession was tainted by the earlier failure of the police to provide Miranda warnings and must be excluded as fruit of the poisonous tree assumes the existence of a constitutional violation.
A procedural Miranda violation differs in significant respects from violations of the 4th Amendment. A finding of voluntariness for the purposes of the 5th Amendment is merely a threshold requirement in determining whether the confession may be admitted in evidence. Unwarned statements that are otherwise voluntary within the meaning of the 5th Amendment must be excluded from evidence under Miranda. Miranda presumption does not require that the statements and their fruits be discarded as inherently tainted.
Michigan v. Tucker: the Court was asked to suppress the testimony of a witness for the prosecution whose identity was discovered as the result of a statement taken from the accused without Miranda warnings. There was no actual infringement of the suspect’s constitutional rights, the case was not controlled by the fruits doctrine. This applies with equal force when the alleged fruit of a noncoercive Miranda violation is neither a witness nor an article of evidence but the accused’s own voluntary testimony.
It is an unwarranted extension of Miranda to hold that a simple failure to administer the warnings, unaccompanied by any actual coercion or other circumstances calculated to undermine the suspect’s ability to exercise his free will, so taints the investigatory process that a subsequent voluntary and informed waiver is ineffective for some indeterminate period.
The Oregon court believed the prior answer impaired respondent’s ability to give a valid waiver and that only lapse in time and change of place could dissipate what it termed the coercive impact of the inadmissible statement.
A suspect’s confession may be traced to factors as disparate as an intervening event such as the exchange of words respondent had with his father. Absent deliberately coercive or improper tactics in obtaining the initial statement, the mere fact that a suspect has made an unwarned admission does not warrant a presumption of compulsion. A subsequent administration of Miranda warnings to a suspect who has given a voluntary but unwarned statement ordinarily should suffice to remove the conditions that precluded admission of the earlier statement.
Whatever the reason for Burke’s oversight, the incident had none of the earmarks of coercion.
Respondent suggests McAllister should have added an additional warning. -> such a requirement is neither practicable nor constitutionally necessary.
There is no warrant for presuming coercive effect where the suspect’s initial inculpatory statement, though technically in violation of Miranda, was voluntary. The relevant inquiry is whether the second statement was also made voluntarily.

The Miranda Exclusion Doctrine – Missouri v. Seibert
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition:
3. Holding: in certain, quite limited circumstances, a successive confession is barred by Miranda.
4. Issue: Whether the circumstances are such that a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes would not have understood the warnings to convey a message that she retained a choice about talking.
5. Procedural History:
6. Facts: An officer arrested a woman after a fire in her mobile home killed a mentally ill teenager who lived with her family. The officer took her to the police station where he questioned her for 30 to 40 minutes. The officer deliberately refrained from reciting Miranda warnings. After the woman made incriminating admissions, the officer issued full warnings, secured a signed waiver, and resumed the questioning. The woman made incriminating statements. The officer stated he employed “question first, then give the warnings, and then repeat the questions” technique. Seibert’s initial admissions were excluded but the post-warning statements were introduced.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Miranda and the question-first technique have conflicting objects. The object of Miranda is to adequately and effectively advise suspects of the choice the Constitutional guarantees, while the object of question-first is to render Miranda warnings ineffective by waiting for a particularly opportune time to give them.
Successive confessions are not subject to exclusion because they are the fruit of the initial Miranda transgression. Instead, a successive confession is inadmissible because officers did not comply with Miranda’s demand for effective warnings before securing that confession. The second confession is the product of unwarned custodial interrogation.
Plurality: circumstances to justify a conclusion that warnings were ineffective involves a multifactor, objective approach that took into account a number of criteria, including: “the completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the first round of interrogation, the overlapping content of the two statements, the timing and setting of the first and the second, the continuity of police personnel, and the degree to which the interrogator’s questions treated the second round as continuous with the first.”
Kennedy: the plurality’s objective inquiry cuts too broadly because it applies to both intentional and unintentional two-state interrogation and the approach could undermine the clarity goal. Prescribe a narrower approach applicable when the two-step interrogation was used in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning. Warnings should be deemed effective unless the deliberate two-step strategy has been employed. If the deliberate strategy has been used, postwarning statements related to the substance of the prewarning statements must be excluded unless curative measures are taken before the post-warning statement is made.
O’Connor dissent: warnings should never be deemed ineffective in successive confession situations. A confession should be barred if an initial statement is shown to have been involuntary and there is no showing that the taint has dissipated through the passing of time or a change in circumstances. Second statement should be suppressed if a suspect shows that it is involuntary despite the Miranda warnings.

The Miranda Exclusion Doctrine – United States v. Patane
Year: 2004
Court: US Supreme Court
2. Disposition: Reversed and remanded.
3. Holding: Statements taken without sufficient Miranda warnings are presumed to have been coerced only for certain purposes and then only when necessary to protect the privilege against self-incrimination.
4. Issue: Whether a failure to give a suspect the warnings prescribed by Miranda requires suppression of the physical fruits of the suspect’s unwarned but voluntary statements. -> negative.
5. Procedural History: The District Court granted respondent’s motion to suppress the firearm, reasoning that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest for violating the order. The Court of Appeals reversed with respect to probable cause but affirmed suppression.
6. Facts: In 2001, Patane was arrested for harassing O’Donnell. He was released subject to a temporary restraining order. Respondent violated the order by attempting to telephone O’Donnell. Fox began to investigate the matter and an officer informed ATF that respondent, a convicted felon, illegally possessed a pistol. ATF informed Benner and Benner and Fox went to respondent’s residence. Fox arrested respondent for violating the order and Benner attempted to advice respondent of his Miranda rights but got no further than the right to remain silent as he was interrupted by respondent who said he knew his rights. Benner asked about the pistol and Patane told him the pistol was in his bedroom. Benner seized it. A grand jury indicted Patane for possession of a firearm.
7. Rule:
8. Reasoning: Because these prophylactic rules necessarily sweep beyond the actual protection of the Self-Incrimination Clause, any further extension of these rules must be justified by its necessity for the protection of the actual right against compelled self-incrimination. It is for these reasons that statements taken without Miranda warnings can be used to impeach a defendant’s testimony at trial, though the fruits of actually compelled testimony cannot. The Miranda rule does not require that the statements taken without complying with the rule and their fruits be discarded as inherently tainted.
The Self-Incrimination Clause contains its own exclusionary rule. Nothing in Dickerson calls into question our continued insistence that the closest possible fit be maintained between the Self-Incrimination Clause and any rule designed to protect it.
Police do not violate a suspect’s constitutional rights by negligent or even deliberate failures to provide the suspect with the full panoply of warnings prescribed by Miranda. Potential violations occur only upon the admission of unwarned statements into evidence at trial. Unlike unreasonable searches or actual violations of the Clauses, there is, with respect to mere failures to warn, nothing to deter.
Introduction of the nontestimonial fruit of a voluntary statement, such as the respondent’s pistol, does not implicate the Self-Incrimination Clause. Because police cannot violate the Self-Incrimination Clause by taking unwarned though voluntary statements, an exclusionary rule cannot be justified by reference to a deterrence effect on law enforcement.
The Court of Appeals ascribed significance to the fact that there might be little practical difference between respondent’s confessional statement and the actual physical evidence. -> the word witness in the constitutional text limits the scope of the Self-Incrimination Clause to testimonial evidence.