4th Amendment Challenged at SCOTUS

SCOTUS TO TAKE UP 4TH AMENDMENT ISSUES

THIS TUESDAY 

While "We The People" have been quietly kept unaware by media on both sides of the isle, two very important issues have been slowly making their way through the American Judicial System. Both hinge on the 4th Amendment and specifically, the people's rights to feel safe from the Government in their possessions against unwarranted searches and seizures and to maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy.

 

According to the article published over the weekend,  "President Barack Obama's administration and prosecutors from states across the country have lobbied for police officers to be able to search arrestees' gadgets—at or about the time of arrest—without a warrant." 

 

As stated in the article, in both cases, the individuals had been lawfully detained.  Both suspects were then arrested. In both cases, the government (police) searched the contents of the suspects electronic devices without warrants or any obvious probable cause.  Lower courts in both cases have held that the searches were violations of the suspects rights and classified them as unlawful searches and seizures. 

 

If the government had reason to believe that evidence of the crimes for which either party had been detained was present on either of the devices in question, the law is clear that they should have moved for a warrant to search those devices for additional evidence. 

 

In one case, the evidence located in the search subject to arrest had nothing to do with the original crime and it seems that a reasonably prudent individual could not have assumed that evidence of the crimes in question could be secreted on the devices.  In the second case, the suspect was arrested for selling drugs from his car.  One could make an obvious argument that drug dealers routinely use their cell phones to set up both sales and purchases of illegal substances however, the "Plain View Doctrine" should not apply to the contents of the phone and certainly nothing on the phone's surface could be directly connected to the sale or distribution of control dangerous substances. 

 

More importantly in the case of the drug dealer, there were no exigent circumstances which would tend to show that if the arresting officers did not immediately search the suspect's phone, would have led to the loss or destruction of evidence in the matter.  Quite the opposite is true, the phone was safely taken into police custody as was the suspect.  It could have been properly safeguarded until a warrant based upon probable cause was presented to a Judge who might have issued a legitimate search warrant for the contents of the phone and the officers would have found the suspect's home and thus the additional drugs.

 

In that case, it is important to note that "Fruit of the Poison Tree" doctrine should be applied and any and all evidence obtained following the unwarranted search of the suspect's chattels should have been excluded from the trial. 

 

The other case is a bit more complex as to the issue of the suspects vehicle being searched and the police then locating illegal firearms inside the engine compartment.  The suspect was lawfully stopped and found to be driving a vehicle with expired tags and with an expired license.  In California, there is a great deal of history of the Police impounding vehicles under these exact circumstances.  It is routine to inventory a vehicle prior to impounding it so there is a strong possibility that the firearms would have been located whoever, there is a strong argument that under normal inventory procedures, the engine compartment may not have been gone through as this was an inventory not a search.  The discussion about the officers going through the electronic device of the suspect holds the same arguments as previously stated with the exception that the suspect may have been cited and released and therefore his property would have been released as well. 

 

The issue remains that these both appear to be unlawful searches and invasions of a person's reasonable expectation of privacy.  Remember that neither suspect had been tried in a Court of Law and should therefore have been presumed innocent until proven guilty.  They still maintain their Constitutional Rights and those rights appear to have been impinged by the Government.