High Court Allows Disputed Home Search

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police may search a home without a warrant when two occupants disagree about allowing officers to enter, and the resident who refuses access is then arrested.

The justices declined to extend an earlier ruling denying entry to police when the occupants disagree and both are present.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court's 6-3 decision holding that an occupant may not object to a search when he is not at home.

OK, not all agreed searches are reasonable. But most are.

To me 4A has two purposes:

It prohibits unreasonable searches.

It prescribes rules for the issuing of warrants, under which one group of reasonable searches occurs.

But I think it cannot be stretched to mean any and all searches without warrant are unconstitutional. Searches with warrants are one sub-group of reasonable searches.

You can consider anything you want. (As can I, and any other citizen.)

The courts have from the earliest days of the Republic defined what searches are unreasonable. Your opinion or mine is perhaps interesting, but neither of us is designated by the Constitution to settle points of its interpretation.

The Founders could very easily have just deleted the first clause of 4a, and just prohibited any and all searches without a warrant. They chose to include the “unreasonable” language for a reason.

The Constitution says “unreasonable” searches are prohibited. Determining the boundary between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” searches is exactly the type of thing the Founders intended the Courts to do.

The Founders could very easily have just deleted the first clause of 4a, and just prohibited any and all searches without a warrant. They chose to include the “unreasonable” language for a reason.

If they could trust the courts to accurately define reasonable/unreasonable, then why would they have any warrant requirement?

From Vigilantes with a Badge: The War Against the American People:

As journalist Herman Schwartz observed, “The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official.”

I'm with you. I agree with the Court in this very narrow ruling where there are reasonable grounds to remove the petitioner from the premises. These include probable cause for the robbery he had just committed as well as the domestic violence which he had just committed. The petitioner did not even contest probable cause in his arrest. If the police have motive to remove you or I from our homes with an unreasonable arrest with the intent to get consent for a warrantless search from our housemate, then we'll be winners in court as was Randolph in Georgia v. Randolph.

More from the ruling:

"We first consider the argument that the presence of the objecting occupant is not necessary when the police are responsible for his absence. In Randolph, the Court suggested in dictum that consent by one occupant might not be sufficient if "there is evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection." 547

U. S., at 121. We do not believe the statement should be read to suggest that improper motive may invalidate objectively justified removal. Hence, it does not govern here.

The Randolph dictum is best understood not to require an inquiry into the subjective intent of officers who detain or arrest a potential objector but instead to refer to situations in which the removal of the potential objector is not objectively reasonable. As petitioner acknowledges, see Brief for Petitioner 25, our Fourth Amendment cases "have repeatedly rejected" a subjective approach. Brigham City, 547 U. S., at 404 (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). "Indeed, we have never held, outside limited contexts such as an ‘inventory search or administrative inspection . . . , that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment.’" King, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10).

Petitioner does not claim that the Randolph Court meant to break from this consistent practice, and we do not think that it did. And once it is recognized that the test is one of objective reasonableness, petitioner’s argument collapses. He does not contest the fact that the police had reasonable grounds for removing him from the apartment so that they could speak with Rojas, an apparent victim of domestic violence, outside of petitioner’s potentially intimidating presence. In fact, he does not even contest the existence of probable cause to place him under arrest. We therefore hold that 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."

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