Court limits search power
on Mar 22, 2006 at 10:02 am
The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 on Wednesday that it is unconstitutional for police without a warrant to search a home, if two occupants are present at the time and one consents but the other objects. The search may not go forward in the face of that objection, but the occupant must be present to have the objection count, the Court said in a decision written by Justice David H. Souter. The ruling in Georgia v. Randolph (04-1067) was the only decision of the day in an argued case.
“We have to admit we are drawing a fine line,” Souter wrote, but added “we think the formalism is justified” and that it will be easier to enforce in practice. Thus, the Court held, If the individual who may be at legal risk of prosecution and thus does not want the police to enter “is in fact at the door and objects,” the other occupant’s consent to search will not suffice. But, Souter added, if the objector is nearby, and not at the door, an objection by him will not block the search. The Court stressed, though, that police may not take a potentialy objecting tenant away from the home in order to be able to make the search with the other occupant’s consent.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in his first written dissenting opinion, said the majority fashioned a rule that “does not implement the high office of the Fourth Amendment, but instead provides protection on a random and happenstance basis, protecting, for example, a co-occupant who happens to be at the front door when the other occupant consents to a search, but not one napping or watching television in the next room….The cost of affording such random protection is great, as demonstrated by the recurring cases in which abused spouses seek to authorize police entry into a home they share with a non-consenting abuser.”
Much of Roberts’ dissenting opinion was aimed at undercutting the majority’s reliance on “social expectations” about privacy that justified the distinction drawn by the ruling. When property is shared by two or more people, privacy is shared and expectations of what privacy will be protected depends upon the discretion of the other individual, Roberts said.
Joining Souter’s majority opinion were Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens. Stevens and Breyer wrote concurring opinions.
Roberts’ dissenting opinion was joined by Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas each wrote a separate dissenting opinion.
The separate opinions by Stevens and Scalia engaged in a minor spat over the concept of constitutional interpretation according to “original understanding” of meaning.
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., did not join in the ruling. The case was argued in November; he joined the Court in February.
A key issue in the case was the fate of a 1974 precedent of the Court, U.S. v. Matlock, in which one occupant was allowed to consent to police entry even though a co-occupant was being held in a squad car not far away, but was not asked for consent to search a jointly used room in the house. The majority left that decision intact, saying that the difference in the new case was that the objecting individual was actually at the door to encounter the police. A majority of lower courts had interpreted the Matlock decision to mean that police could search without a warrant with one occupant’s consent even if the other was present and objected — a view the Supreme Court rejected Wednesday.
Similarly, the Court did not disturb another precedent, the 1990 decision in Illinois v. Rodriguez, in which the Court allowed a search with consent of one occupant while the individual who would object to the police entry was asleep in the apartment. That separation from the initial encounter with police made the difference, Souter wrote.
Souter used unusually strong language for him in answering the Chief Justice’s dissent. He accused Roberts of “a deliberate intent to devalue the importance of the privacy of a dwelling place. The same attitude that privacy of a dwellinig is not special underlies the dissent’s easy assumption that privacy shared with another individual is privacy waived for all purposes including warrantless searches by the police.”
To Roberts’ argument that the ruling will affect police ability to deal with cases of domestic violence, Souter answered: “…this case has no bearing on the capacity of the police to protect domestic victims…No question has been raised, or reasonably could be, about the authority of the police to enter a dwelling to protect a resident from domestic violence; so long as they have good reason to believe such a threat exists, it would be silly to suggest that the police would commit a tort by entering, say, to give a complaining tenant the opportunity to collect belongings and get out safely, or to determine whether violence (or threat of violence) has just occurred or is about to (or soon will) occur, however much a spouse or other co-tenant objected.”
The case involved a warrantless police search in July 2001 of a home in Americus, Ga. It was the home of Scott Fitz Randolph. He and his wife had been having marital problems, and they were separated. He continued to live in the home. On the day of the incident, the wife had returned and was staying, at least temporarily, in the home. She called police about a domestic disturbance
When the officeres arrived, they found the wife to be upset, saying that her husband had taken the child and left. She also accused her husband of using cocaine, causing financial problems for the family. Randolph soon returned, without the child. The child had been taken to a neighbor’s house. One officer asked Randolph about his wife’s statements about cocaine use, and asked for permission to search. Randolph refused, but his wife consented. The officers found a straw apparently containing cocaine residue, in an upstairs bedroom.
That piece of evidence was taken in, and formed the basis for a search warrant application. The police returned and made a search, finding various drug-related items. Randolph moved to suppress the evidence that had led to a charge of illegal drug possession. The motion was rejected by the trial court, but Randolph appealed and won in higher state courts. The state of Georgia then took the case on to the Supreme Court.
