Or if one occupant has dementia and says “okay” when the other occupant refuses to let the officer in without a warrant....
Be careful what you justify in the name of catching criminals. Be really, really careful.
Your liberty is at stake.
One would need to have the mental capacity to give consent.
A person with dementia would not have the legal authority to grant consent.
In general this wasn’t a hard argument, and I am surprised it was not 9-0.
The idea that one occupant could object to an entry, and then after he is arrested, the police would never ever be allowed to enter the house, is absurd. At some point the remaining occupant of a house has to have the right to invite police into the house.
Realize also that the police could clearly tell the occupant of the house what they were looking for, and the occupant could have legally brought the items out of the house.
It is silly and really unworkable to claim that a legal occupant of a house can never invite law enforcement into a house if some other occupant has ever said no.
The issue in this case was narrower — what if the person isn’t in the house anymore because they were arrested? Clearly the justices did not want the police to have the ability to simply detain the person objecting in order to get a search.