SCOTUS: automobile exception

[bernorange 8368]

Quote

...

The Fourth Amendment normally requires police to have a warrant to conduct a search. But one exception to that general rule, known as the “automobile exception,” was at the heart of this case: It allows police to search a car without a warrant if the car is “readily mobile” and they have probable cause to believe that it contains evidence of a crime. But the justices today ruled that the exception does not justify an intrusion on the “curtilage” of a home – the area immediately surrounding the house, where residents expect privacy.

In a near-unanimous decision authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court began by making clear that the driveway where Collins’ motorcycle was parked was part of the curtilage protected by the Fourth Amendment. The court then explained that the justification for the automobile exception doesn’t consider a resident’s privacy interest in his home and its curtilage at all; rather, the rationale rests on the twin ideas that cars can easily be moved and are subject to regulation simply by virtue of being on the roads. None of the Supreme Court’s cases, the court continued, indicates that the automobile exception allows a police officer to enter the home or its curtilage without a warrant to search a vehicle – if anything, the court has emphasized the need to treat “automobiles differently from houses.” “Given the centrality of the Fourth Amendment interest in the home and its curtilage and the disconnect between that interest and the justifications behind the automobile exception,” the court concluded, “we decline Virginia’s invitation to extend the automobile exception to permit a warrantless intrusion on a home or its curtilage.”

...

http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/05/opinion-analysis-justices-decline-to-extend-fourth-amendments-automobile-exception/

It's interesting how the courts/law rule/consider an automobile as separate from a house for warrantless search purposes, but consider it an extension of the house for purposes of castle doctrines or, in some cases, firearm handling.

I wonder how they rule on this when the auto is an RV - when the auto IS the home.

[phdhorn 6224]

Majority opinion by Sotomayor, worth a good read, has a lot of interesting points.  Here's a copy:
 

Spoiler

 

[Dahobbs 17769]

Wait:

Quote

 

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion in which he agreed with the majority’s resolution of the Fourth Amendment question. But Thomas stressed that the case was before the justices because, if Collins is correct and his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, the state courts would have to apply the exclusionary rule, which prohibits the government from using evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution, and “potentially suppress the incriminating evidence against him.” Thomas expressed “serious doubts” about the Supreme Court’s authority to require states to follow the exclusionary rule, which is “not rooted in the Constitution or a federal statute,” and he urged the court to take up that question.

I need to read this. Does he really want to overturn Mapp? That is terrifying. 

Edited June 1, 2018 by Dahobbs

[TwiceHorn 31669]

It's somewhat reassuring that this was an 8-1 decision.

 

And this differs from "castle doctrine," because it is Fourth Amendment constitutional law, not statutory law, as is most of what you refer to.  So that means this can't be modified by a legislature.

[jimmyjazz 46411]

So the police can't search your car without a warrant if it's on your property, but otherwise still can?

[TwiceHorn 31669]

3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

So the police can't search your car without a warrant if it's on your property, but otherwise still can?

Generally yeah, but the popo still has to articulate probable cause, just no warrant for a car on the road.

[woohorn 1131]

Not exactly. Doesn't sound like it would apply if parked at your unimproved deer lease.

[jimmyjazz 46411]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Generally yeah, but the popo still has to articulate probable cause, just no warrant for a car on the road.

What constitutes "articulating probable cause"?  "I saw you smoking what I suspect is a marijuana cigarette while driving, so I will be searching your car"???

(Sorry for the slight threadjack, I've just always wondered what the limits are.)

[Anastasis 23490]

Justice Samuel Alito was the court’s lone dissenter. He emphasized that if the motorcycle had been parked at the curb instead of in the driveway, the officer would not have needed a warrant. So why should the officer need one, Alito queried, to “walk 30 feet or so up the driveway”? “An ordinary person of common sense,” Alito suggested, “would react to the Court’s decision the way” a Charles Dickens character “famously responded when told about a legal rule that did not comport with the reality of everyday life. If that is the law, he exclaimed, ‘the law is a ass—a idiot.’” Moreover, Alito added, the only real question in the case is whether the officer’s search of the motorcycle was reasonable – which, in his opinion, it was.

[JBJ 3676]

I'd argue that a car parked at the curb deserves the same privacy as one in the driveway.

[Huckleberry 33267]

lulz Alito. "So if he can look at it when it's on public property and not the citizen's private property, why is it any different for the officer to enter the citizen's private property?"

Gee, that's a tough one. It's like the fact that both the road and driveway are paved just blows his mind. Nobody tell him that most houses are build on top of a concrete slab and that many times it's a continuous surface from the driveway to an attached garage's floor to the foundation below the bedroom.

[TwiceHorn 31669]

8 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

What constitutes "articulating probable cause"?  "I saw you smoking what I suspect is a marijuana cigarette while driving, so I will be searching your car"???

(Sorry for the slight threadjack, I've just always wondered what the limits are.)

Yes.  Warrantless searches/arrests are common.  If there's a question as to the validity of the probable cause, there can be a hearing to determine if the search/arrest was valid, at which point the arresting/searching officer would have to state or articulate the probable cause, which is another instance where fabrication and dissembling by cops, aided by prosecutors, works against the people.

 

One of the problems here is that the automobile exception makes a certain amount of sense in the context of a traffic stop or observation of a moving vehicle, or one with a driver in immediate proximity.  But the exception had started to creep to stationary vehicles, with no immediate threat of leaving the vicinity.  If you accept the latter, then Alito's dissent makes a certain amount of sense.  But the majority opinion basically implicitly disapproves of the exception creep.

Edited June 1, 2018 by TwiceHorn

[JBJ 3676]

2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

lulz Alito. "So if he can look at it when it's on public property and not the citizen's private property, why is it any different for the officer to enter the citizen's private property?"

Gee, that's a tough one. It's like the fact that both the road and driveway are paved just blows his mind. Nobody tell him that most houses are build on top of a concrete slab and that many times it's a continuous surface from the driveway to an attached garage's floor to the foundation below the bedroom.

Could the officer detect a crime from the public road?  That's the relevant question. 

If he had to walk up and open compartments in the motorcycle, that an unreasonable search.  If there was a pound of cocaine strapped on top of the rear fender in a clear bag then entering the property to get a closer look seems reasonable

[David Dennison 19047]

Whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, consent to a search of your automobile.

[Chooky 13321]

Ah, The Fourth Amendment.  I remember that.  I was pretty young, but I remember it.

[softlynow 1847]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Generally yeah, but the popo still has to articulate probable cause, just no warrant for a car on the road.

“I smelled an odor, which I know from my training and experience to be that of burnt marijuana.” Done.

The only thing that really stops cops from searching every car they want is hiring intelligence caps. 

[JBJ 3676]

When two Virginia police officers searched for the motorcyclist who had eluded them by driving away at speeds of up to 140 miles per hour, they probably would not have imagined that the case would end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s exactly what happened, and today the justices ruled that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment when they went to the motorcyclist’s home and found the distinctive orange-and-black Suzuki motorcycle that they’d been looking for under a tarp in the driveway.

The motorcycle was the evidence.  The illegal search was looking under a tarp in the driveway.  I was under the impression they searched the vehicle.

[Gil Bang 26089]

Interesting:  Just today, news broke that the "Golden State Killer" (arrested a few weeks back) had DNA taken from the door handle of his car in the parking lot of a shopping center.  That DNA matched jizz left on a victim. 

[LongestHorn 759]

How do you leave your DNA on your car door handle?  EDIT

Touch DNA test work by collected the few skins cell left when you touch anything.

Edited June 2, 2018 by LongestHorn
Because your mother is a whore

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

5 minutes ago, LongestHorn said:

How do you leave your DNA on your car door handle?  

Jacking off on your car door handle would probably do it.

[Gil Bang 26089]

 

[jimmyjazz 46411]

19 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Jacking off on your car door handle would probably do it.

[TwiceHorn 31669]

1 hour ago, JBJ said:

 

 

The motorcycle was the evidence.  The illegal search was looking under a tarp in the driveway.  I was under the impression they searched the vehicle.

Goddammit.  Yeah this was a terrible stretch of the automobile exception. The search was of the home/curtilage and therefore required a warrant.  Period.  Reading is fundamental.

I cut more or less straight to the meat of the opinion and it uses the language "search the motorcycle," which is so erroneous.  It was a search of the home/curtilage FOR the motorcycle, which was the evidence or instrumentality of the crime, not the premises searched.

Edited June 2, 2018 by TwiceHorn

[DanRydell 799]

Wait:

 
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion in which he agreed with the majority’s resolution of the Fourth Amendment question. But Thomas stressed that the case was before the justices because, if Collins is correct and his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, the state courts would have to apply the exclusionary rule, which prohibits the government from using evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution, and “potentially suppress the incriminating evidence against him.” Thomas expressed “serious doubts” about the Supreme Court’s authority to require states to follow the exclusionary rule, which is “not rooted in the Constitution or a federal statute,” and he urged the court to take up that question.

I need to read this. Does he really want to overturn Mapp? That is terrifying. 


He’s been an outspoken opponent of the exclusionary rule for a long time.

[TwiceHorn 31669]

3 minutes ago, DanRydell said:

I need to read this. Does he really want to overturn Mapp? That is terrifying. 


He’s been an outspoken opponent of the exclusionary rule for a long time.

Yeah, he's not the only one.  There is a surprising amount of support for the notion that violation of the 4th doesn't require exclusion of evidence.

 

I suspect it's very common among those who have never been on either side of a criminal case.  Or only the government's side.

Edited June 2, 2018 by TwiceHorn

[DanRydell 799]

1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, he's not the only one.  There is a surprising amount of support for the notion that violation of the 4th doesn't require exclusion of evidence.

 

I suspect it's very common among those who have never been on either side of a criminal case.  Or only the government's side.

I can't recall him opining on the rule in a non-Fourth Amendment case so I'm curious if he feels the same way about other exclusionary rule issues. Like, if the cops beat and torture a guy to get a confession, does he believe the confession should be admissible and the person's only remedy is a civil action against the state?

Of course, Thomas would toss such a civil action on the basis of qualified immunity if suing the cops individually or under Monell if suing the governmental entity. See, e.g., Connick v. Thompson.

[SubliminalHorn 6817]

Wait...did the SC actually rule in favor of the 4th Amendment and citizen’s rights?

[Viper 12112]

Hopefully we see a lot more with Sotomayor and Gorsuch on the bench

[bernorange 8368]

14 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

... It was a search of the home/curtilage FOR the motorcycle, which was the evidence or instrumentality of the crime, not the premises searched.

Yeah, I had misunderstood that too.  The referenced source was not terribly clear about it.