Posted on 04/23/2008 10:25:33 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.
The unanimous decision comes in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense.
David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for police to issue a court summons and let the driver go.
Instead, city detectives arrested Moore and prosecutors say that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search can be used against him as evidence.
"We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect in order to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety.
Moore was convicted on a drug charge and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that police should have released Moore and could not lawfully conduct a search.
State law, said the Virginia Supreme Court, restricted officers to issuing a ticket in exchange for a promise to appear later in court. Virginia courts dismissed the indictment against Moore.
Moore argued that the Fourth Amendment permits a search only following a lawful state arrest.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she finds more support for Moore's position in previous court cases than the rest of the court does. But she said she agrees that the arrest and search of Moore was constitutional, even though it violated Virginia law.
The Bush administration and attorneys general from 18 states lined up in support of Virginia prosecutors.
The federal government said Moore's case had the potential to greatly increase the class of unconstitutional arrests, resulting in evidence seized during searches being excluded with increasing frequency.
Looking to state laws to provide the basis for searches would introduce uncertainty into the legal system, the 18 states said in court papers.
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On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
Can the Police also ask Immigration status??
We are quickly becoming a fascist state. The tree of liberty is beginning to thirst
Nothing really all that new here. How did this make it to the Supremes?
This is good news for those police who raided the FLDS group looking for a man who wasn't there by a complaint phoned in by an adult posing as a teen half her age...
Unanimous decision?..............I’M shocked........or TASERED.......
Interesting comment.
Can you give us the names of some of the people you are thinking of killing?
Yep. Not sure if I like the decision, but it is what it is and I have great respect for Scalia. Pretty much shuts the door on any 4th amendment arguments from me on the FLDS raids.
I don’t like this at all. If a LEO wants to search a person who has done nothing, just arrest them first. It doesn’t matter what you arrest them for or if you even should have arrested them. Once they’re arrested, search them in hopes of finding something to really charge them with. Not good....
Yep. Why did the Virginia court overturn?
One of my favorite Jefferson quotes. Here is the full context...wonderful writing.
What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
If the police served a search warrant, signed by a judge, in which they were to enter a house that allegedly contained stolen goods and they found no stolen goods at all, but a large pool of blood in the kitchen, what should they do?
Say: "Thanks for letting us look around, we didn't find the stolen DVD players we were looking for, so you have a nice day, sir!"
Because the Supreme Court of Virginia held that the search was illegal, and SCOTUS wanted to slap them down.
The heck that the Virginia Supreme Court exhonerated the man because his rights were being violated, (getting arrested for a non-arrestable offense). Who needs States' rights anymore, now we have Bush, the Bushbots, the McCane liberals and the Communist liberals like Obama to tell us how it's gonna be. If paper could barf, the Constitution would be throwing up right now.
“Can the Police also ask Immigration status??”
Well, now you’re just being silly......
A good question, but there strikes me of some bad lawyering here, or at least a missed opportunity by the Virginia Supreme Court. Why didn't the suspect argue that the Virginia constitution prevents the search? Given the Virginia Supreme Court's ruling, that might have well prevented US Supreme Court review.
Without going into the oxymoronic nature of the phrase "states' rights", what violation of "states' rights" is in evidence here?
Basically, it’s being caught during the commission of a crime.
. "Nothing really all that new here. How did this make it to the Supremes?".
I'll tell you how. The Virginia police violated their own State law that mandates the 'perp's' traffic violation to be a non-arrestable offense. According to the law, the police were supposed to only issue the man a ticket and let him go. But they decided to arrest him for a non-arrestable offense, then seize and search his vehicle. Yet again, States' rights get trampled and we continue to lose our freedoms.
Bush Administration supported the appeal to the Supremes. But I wonder if Bush would have been on the prosecutor's side of the deal if his driving under the influence arrest was supposed to be only a ticket by State law, but they decided to arrest him anyway and search his car.
Anyone who thinks this is a good thing just doesn't have the capacity to look deeper into its ramifications now that a clear precedent has been set by the Supremes. Now, a back-door way to seize and search a person's car is to simply make a false arrest, and it will be completely legal. There is also the States' rights ramification, where the Virginia Supreme Court was overturned by the feds.
The headline suggests that, doesn’t it? I am very concerned about that but I believe the key phrase is “when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime.” I would hope the Court, when presented with a case where the probable cause was lacking or obviously deficient, would make the opposite decision. Otherwise, we’ve just flushed the Forth down the crapper.
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