U.S. Supreme Court Limits 4th Amendment's Ban on 'Unreasonable Searches'

Interesting.

At WSJ, "U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Limits Constitutional Protections Against Searches":

WASHINGTON—A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday limited constitutional protections against searches, ruling that evidence gathered after police illegally detain someone could be used in court absent “flagrant” misconduct by law enforcement.

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said a police officer’s possible “negligence” in stopping a pedestrian without reasonable suspicion shouldn’t prevent prosecutors from charging him with a drug offense.

The ruling came in a South Salt Lake City, Utah, case in which a man named Edward Strieff walked out of a house an officer had been watching after getting an anonymous tip about “narcotics activity” happening there.

The officer, Douglas Fackrell, stopped Mr. Strieff, asked what he was doing at the house and ran his identification through a police database. When that produced a traffic warrant, Officer Fackrell arrested Mr. Strieff and searched him, discovering the drugs.

Utah conceded that the police stop was illegal but argued that the discovery of the warrant provided the officer a legitimate reason to arrest Mr. Strieff and search him.

“The warrant was valid, it predated Officer Fackrell’s investigation, and it was entirely unconnected with the stop,” Justice Thomas wrote in the 5-3 ruling. “And once Officer Fackrell discovered the warrant, he had an obligation to arrest Strieff.” That, in turn, authorized the officer to search Mr. Strieff under Supreme Court precedents that allow police to search arrestees to ensure they aren’t carrying concealed weapons.

Justice Thomas was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan filed separate dissents, each joined in part or in whole by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop” and allow prosecution for any evidence he finds...

Also at USA Today, "Supreme Court allows searches based on outstanding arrest warrants":

The decision was controversial because in some cities thousands of people have arrest warrants pending against them, mostly for traffic violations as insignificant as unpaid parking tickets.

There were 16,000 outstanding arrest warrants in Ferguson, Mo., as of 2015 — a figure that amounts to roughly 75% of the city’s population — the Justice Department found during its investigation into the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old African-American man. Cincinnati recently had more than 100,000 warrants pending for failure to appear in court. New York City has 1.2 million outstanding warrants.

The high court case involved a Utah narcotics detective's detention of a man leaving a house that was under observation for possible drug dealing. Based on the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant for a minor traffic infraction, the man was searched and found to have illegal drugs...

San Diego Gangbanger David Riley at Center of Supreme Court's Smartphone Privacy Ruling — #4a

Look, even the bad mofos have rights, although the decision's not likely to help this f-ker Riley.

At the Los Angeles Times, "San Diego gang member's case focus of Supreme Court privacy ruling":

When David Riley, a 19-year-old member of San Diego's Lincoln Park gang, was arrested in August 2009 on suspicion of shooting at a rival gang member, it received little or no public notice.

The same was true when Riley's first trial ended in a hung jury, and when he was convicted at a second trial of attempted murder and other charges, and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

But now Riley's name has assumed national legal prominence as one of two cases that led to Wednesday's U.S. Supreme Court decision that extended privacy rights to cellphones, a sweeping ruling for the digital age when information about a person's entire life can be stored in a mobile device.

"We got everything we wanted," said Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, who was part of the team that argued the case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court ruled 9 to 0 that police acted improperly when they seized Riley's smartphone without a warrant and discovered evidence used at his trial linking him to the gang and the shooting.

The decision does not free Riley from prison, but it could allow his attorneys to seek a new trial on grounds that the original trial was "tainted" because of the phone information, Fisher said.

In upholding Riley's conviction in 2013, a California appeals court said that cellular phone information was akin to things pulled out of a defendant's pocket during a post-arrest search and thus did not merit special protection.

Legal analysts said Wednesday's ruling would clearly apply to defendants whose cases are still pending in the courts, but may not help those, like Riley, whose convictions are already final.

"There probably will be a good deal of litigation over whether this decision can be applied retroactively," said Dennis Riordan, an appellate criminal defense lawyer based in San Francisco.

Charles M. Sevilla, a San Diego appellate criminal defense lawyer, said those defendants whose convictions are final will face "an uphill battle" in trying to persuade courts to reexamine their cases.

But the complications are unlikely to stop lawyers from trying...

PREVIOUSLY: "Supreme Court Rejects Warrantless Cellphone Searches — #4a."

Supreme Court Rejects Warrantless Cellphone Searches — #4a

We watched Damon Root's Reason TV discussion of this case in my classes last semester. I knew the Court would overturn the convictions as violations of the Fourth Amendment.

And now at the New York Times, "Major Ruling Shields Privacy of Cellphones: Supreme Court Says Phones Can’t Be Searched Without a Warrant":

WASHINGTON — In a sweeping victory for privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.

While the decision will offer protection to the 12 million people arrested every year, many for minor crimes, its impact will most likely be much broader. The ruling almost certainly also applies to searches of tablet and laptop computers, and its reasoning may apply to searches of homes and businesses and of information held by third parties like phone companies.

“This is a bold opinion,” said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. “It is the first computer-search case, and it says we are in a new digital age. You can’t apply the old rules anymore.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, was keenly alert to the central role that cellphones play in contemporary life. They are, he said, “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.”

But he added that old principles required that their contents be protected from routine searches. One of the driving forces behind the American Revolution, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, was revulsion against “general warrants,” which “allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.”

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand,” the chief justice wrote, “does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the founders fought.”

More.

Also at SCOTUS Blog, "Get a warrant! Today’s cellphone privacy decision in Plain English," and "Opinion analysis: Broad cloak of privacy for cellphones."

Militarized America: Video Fom Police Raid in Des Moines, Iowa

From Radley Balko, at WaPo, "Scenes from a militarized America: Iowa family ‘terrorized’."