Warrantless Searches and Seizures

Per Se Unreasonable - Payton v. NY

A basic principle of 4th Amendment law, that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable before agents of the government may invade the sanctity of the home, the burden is on the government to demonstrate exigent circumstances that overcome the presumption of unreasonableness that attaches to all warrantless home entries. An important factor to be considered when determining whether any exigency exists is the gravity of the underlying offense for which the arrest is being made.

What Constitutes a Legal Arrest?

A custodial arrest occurs when the police take a suspect into custody in order to bring charges.

Frisk and Plain Touch

A frisk which revels no weapons or the object of the contraband is not immediately apparent to the officer - needs to manipulate it = invalid

Home of a Third Party

A law enforcement officer may not search for a person who is subject of an arrest warrant in the home of a third party without first obtaining a search warrant.

Limitations of an Automobile Exception Search

A search pursuant to the AE is limited only with reference to the object of the search and the places or containers, within the car in which there is probable causes to believe that it may be found.

Third Party Authority

A third party who has common authority of the area, then the police may search the common authority in which consent is given.

Arrests in a Person's Home

Absent exigent circumstances, an arrest warrant is required to arrest a person in her own home. Entry into the D's home without a lawful arrest warrant under such circumstances makes any seized evidence inadmissible.

Booking Exception

After police arrest and book a suspect, and before they place the suspect in jail, the police usually conduct a booking search. It is reasonable for police to search the personal effects of a person under a lawful arrest as part of the routine administrative procedure at a police station house incident to booking and jailing the suspect.

After Arrestee is Detained - SILA of a Car

An automatic search incident to an arrest of the passenger compartment after the defendant is arrested, handcuffed and secured in a patrol car is unreasonable. A reasonable search mat extend to items found in containers within the passenger compartment.

Limitations on Inventory Searches

An inventory search is justified by the need to protect an owner's property while it is in the custody of the police, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and to guard the police from danger. Inventory searches should be conducted pursuant to regulations so that the discretion of individual police officers is minimized.

Inventory Searches

An inventory search is not a search for evidence, it is an administrative procedure, comparable to booking at the police station, which permits police to inventory the contents of a vehicle in order to protect the owner's property and to insulate police from false claims of loss. Authorization to conduct an inventory rests upon a lawful impoundment. If the car is impounded, police may conduct an inventory of its contents and the contents of closed containers provided it is part of a standardized procedure.

Consent

Any Constitutional right can be waived by an individual, including the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches, however the state must prove that the consent was, in fact freely and voluntarily given.

Objective Standard for Apparent Authority

Applying an objective standard means the court will determine whether the facts available to the officer at the moment would warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that the officers reasonably believed that the person had authority over the premises to provide valid consent to search.

Warrantless Arrest and Probable Cause Rule

Before a police officer makes a warrantless search or arrest, the officer must have probable cause. For there to be probable cause to arrest a person, it must be reasonably likely that a violation of the law has been committed and the person to be arrested committed the violation.

What is Common Authority

Common Authority rests on: mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched.

Improper Claim of Authority

Consent that is apparently given may be vitiated by police assertions of authority and right. A consent may be invalid if a suspect acquiesced to an improper claim of lawful authority

Pretextual Encounters

Even if an arrest supported by PC is a pretext to allow the police to search, the police may arrest the suspect. The officer's subjective intentions play no role in ordinary, PC analysis.

Emergency in Assisting Injured Person

Exigent circumstances exception includes a need to enter to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury . Thus, when the officer has an objectively reasonable basis for believing both that the injured adult might need help and that the violence in the area was just the beginning, the 4th does not require the police to delay until someone is unconscious, semi, or in an even worse condition before entering.

SILA of a Car

For purposes of safety or evidentiary concerns, police my search a passenger compartment of a vehicle incident to a recent occupants arrest only if the arrestee is within reach 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. The search incident extends to items found in containers within passenger compartments.

Voluntary Consent - Burden of Proof Standard

In determining whether consent was voluntarily or coerced, a totality of the circumstances test is applied, using a variety of factors peculiar of the suspect and factors that suggest coercion The burden to prove that consent was freely and voluntarily given cannot be discharged by showing no more than acquiescence to a claim of lawful authority

Governmental Interests in Justifying a Booking Search

Jail Officials: prevent personal items from being stolen while the arrestee is in jail protect against false claims of theft prevent the arrestee from introducing contraband, weapons into the jail ascertain a suspect's identity

SILA

Once a legal arrest occurs, the police may conduct a search incident to arrest. A search incident to a legal arrest is reasonable because the arrestee might have: a weapon that can be used to harm or escape evidence in her possession that she may try to destroy

One Consents and One Refuses

One's consent to search does not validate the search in the dace of the other's objections. They must have shared authority over the area in which the police are asking for consent to - when one refuses, may not search that common area.

Justification for Automobile Exceptions

Owners or drivers have less protection than when they are at home because of the ready mobility of automobiles - the mobility creates exigent circumstances to justify warrantless searches. A car is subject to less rigorous warrant requirements because the expectation of privacy with respect to one's car is significantly less than that relating to one's home or office due to the pervasive regulation of cars on the highway.

Fernandez v. California - Domestic Violence Case

Police are permitted to enter a home without a search warrant after arresting and removing a physically present and objecting tenant from the entrance if a co-tenant subsequently consents. An occupant who is absent due to a lawful detention or arrest stands in the same shoes as an occupant who is absent for any other reason.

Arizona v. Hicks - Invalid PV

Police validly entered the premises to search for evidence relating to a shooting, observed expensive stereos, moved it to see the serial numbers. Moving it = SEARCH - the incriminating character was not immediately apparent before the police moved it.

Factors to be Deemed an Automobile

Readily Mobile Licensed to operate on public streets serviced in public places was subject to extensive regulation and inspection RP would believe it was used for a car not a home

Strip Searches and Booking Procedures

SC has upheld routine, suspicionless strip searches of all arrestees who end up in the general jail population, regardless of the seriousness of crimes charged.

No Need to Inform Suspect The Right of Refusal to Consent

SC refused to require police to inform a suspect of her right to refuse consent. While lack of knowledge of the right to refuse consent is a factor to be considered, police do not have a duty to warn a person that she has the right to refuse.

Mobile Homes = Cars

SC treated a mobile home like an automobile, concluding that its mobility is similar to an automobile and therefore is subject to the diminished expectation of privacy associated with automobiles.

Exceptions

SILA PLAIN VIEW CONSENT STOP AND FRISK AUTOMOBILE EXCEPTION EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES

Exception to the Warrant Requirement Rule

The Fourth Amendment provides that "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized. Consequently, a literal reading of the 4th Amendment, a warrant might never be constitutionally required, only that if a warrant is issued, it must be issued in accordance with the 4th's standard.

Police Expect other Evidence

The PV exception applies even if the discovery of contraband was not accidental or inadvertent. The fact that an officer is interested in an item of evidence and fully expects to find it in the course of a search does not invalidate its seizure if the search is confined in area and duration by the terms of a warrant or a valid exception to the warrant requirement

Application of Plain View

The contraband's incriminating character must be immediately apparent. if the police see the defendant carrying what looks like a cigarette, it must be immediately apparent that the cigarette contains MJ rather than ordinary tobacco - based on their training and experience before seizing it.

Mobility of Cars

The existence of PC justifies an immediate warrantless search of an automobile before the vehicle and its occupants become unavailable. Does not matter whether the car is being driven at the time of the stop and the subsequent search = if its capable of moving and therefore has ready mobility

Exigent Circumstances

The police can conduct a warrantless search when exigent circumstances exist.

Scope of SILA in a Home

The scope of a SILA is limited to the arrestee's person and the area within the arrestee's immediate control.

Justification to Search Beyond the Limit of a SILA

To search further beyond those spaces, there must be 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.

Automobile Exception

Under the AE exception, where police have probable cause to believe that a car is being used to transport contraband, and they stop it, they may conduct a warrantless search of the car and anything in the car that they may reasonably contain the item for which they had probable cause to search.

Hierarchy of Giving Consent

Unless there is some recognized hierarchy within a household, 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. A child to give authority to consent depends on the circumstances.

DNA Samples in Booking Procedures

Warrantless, routine collection by police of DNA samples from individuals arrested and taken into custody for specified serious crimes is a legitimate booking procedure and is reasonable under the 4th. Balance legitimate governmental interests against the intrusion upon an individual against the intrusion upon an individual's privacy

No Issuance of an Arrest Warrant - Public Places - US v. Watson

When a government official has probable cause or a misdemeanor and/or felony is committed in the presence of the officer, then the officer is permitted to arrest a person without a warrant. US v. Watson noted that any arrest which is executed must be supported by: PC, a warrant, EC, or an act of Congress. RULE: A police may arrest a person in a public place without a warrant, provided they have probable cause to believe that the arrestee committed a felony.

Third Party Consent

When a third party consents to a search of property, a court must decide not only whether the consent was voluntary but whether the person had the authority to consent the search.

Scope of Consent

When an officer receives consent to search a car, the consent extends to closed containers in the car when the suspect does not place any explicit limitation on the scope of the search. The general consent to search a suspect's care included consent to search containers within that car which might bear drugs.

Plain View Exception

When police are in a place where they have the right to be, as when they are conducting a lawful search, either pursuant to a warrant or pursuant to an exception to the warrant requirement, the exception allows them to seize items that they find in plain view.

Authority Must be Reasonably Apparent

When the consenting party has apparent authority to consent to a search, using an objective test, the search is proper. Despite lacking common authority and not having joint access or control for most purposes, the SC found that if there is apparent authority to consent, the search is valid.

Objecting Person Removed from Premises

When the objecting person is removed by police for objectively reasonable reasons, a consenting co-occupant then may provide sufficient authority to search Police officers may search jointly occupied premises without a warrant if one of the occupants consent. Thus, police are only limited in situations in which the objecting occupant is present.

SILA and Protective Sweeps

When the police execute a warrant or make an arrest, they find others present on the scene, or fear the presence of others. Thus the SC held that incident to an arrest, the police can automatically look in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched. The protective sweep is a cursory inspection for persons, and should last 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.

NO PC Requirement for Inventory Searches

When the police impound vehicles, they may routinely inventory the contents without PC or a warrant. The vehicle must have been legally impounded according to local standards - police may then search the entire car however, may not be conducted solely for criminal investigative motives.

Factors for Exigency

consider the existence of PC, the limited intrusion undertaken incident to the station house detention, the ready destructibility of the evidence. If it shocked the conscience - INVALID and UNREASONABLE Pumping of stomach to retrieve pills. BAC after being lawfully arrested - OK Argue there is an emergency which would have led to the destruction of evidence Blood TEST: 1. highly effective in determining whether D is intoxicated 2. commonly used in routine physical examinations 3. extracted a minimum amount of blood 4. involves virtually no risk, trauma, or pain 5. was performed in a reasonable manner by a physician in a hospital environment according to accepted medical practices.

Factors of Police Coercion

guns were drawn demanded the search tone of voice number of police officers

What are Exigent Circumstances

insufficient time to obtain a warrant destruction of evidence hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect danger to others or police Probable cause that an emergency situation exists will justify entry into private premises and an ensuing search may last only as long as the exigency exists. The exigency for entry into the premises determines the scope of subsequent search

Police Creating Exigent Circumstance

law enforcement officers may rely on the EC exception even when they had a role in creating it, as long as they did not engage in, or threaten to engage in, conduct that violates the 4th.

Factors of a Suspect Being Able to Consent

vulnerable due to: age origin - understand the language schooling