US Supreme Court Miranda v. Arizona 759

Decided June 13, 1966

   Holy hell, this is a long one!  Part of that is because this decision is actually made up of four separate cases revolving around the same issue, but mostly I think the court was just being long winded.  Or maybe the court was providing a service to insomniacs everywhere.  Either way, clear your calendar if you're going to read this decision.

   Fortunately, it begins with a summary:

Our holding will be spelled out with some specificity in the pages which follow but briefly stated it is this: the prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination. By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. As for the procedural safeguards to be employed, unless other fully effective means are devised to inform accused persons of their right of silence and to assure a continuous opportunity to exercise it, the following measures are required. Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed. The defendant may waive effectuation of these rights, provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently. If, however, he indicates in any manner and at any stage of the process that he wishes to consult with an attorney before speaking there can be no questioning. Likewise, if the individual is alone and indicates in any manner that he does not wish to be interrogated, the police may not question him. The mere fact that he may have answered some questions or volunteered some statements on his own does not deprive him of the right to refrain from answering any further inquiries until he has consulted with an attorney and thereafter consents to be questioned.

   If you want to save yourself a lot of time, just go off of that.  If you'd rather read the whole thing yourself, make a pot of coffee.

US Supreme Court Preston v. US 163

Decided March 23, 1964

   Preston (and some other guys) were arrested for vagrancy when they were contacted by police at 3 am for loitering in a car in a business district since 10 pm.  They were searched and transported to the station, and the car (which hadn't been searched) was driven to the station and then towed.  Later, the car was searched which uncovered evidence that was later used to convict Preston & Co. of conspiracy to rob a bank.  The government sought to justify the search of the car as being incident to arrest, but the Supreme Court overturned the conviction because the search was not contemporaneous (either in time or place) with the arrest.

US Supreme Court Mapp v. Ohio 236

Decided June 19, 1961.

   Included here for historical interest.

   Ms. Mapp was convicted of possession of pornography (gasp!) after the police made a warrantless search of her home based on a tip that there was a bad person inside (they had a piece of paper that they pretended was a warrant, and she was handcuffed because she wouldn't give it back to them).  At the time, the state courts were not bound by the federal constitution, so the exclusionary rule did not apply (although most states had their own version of the exclusionary rule, apparently Ohio wasn't so forward-thinking).

   The court held that the 4th Amendment (and therefore the exclusionary rule) was enforceable in state courts by way of the authority of the 14th Amendment.  It's very strange the way that the Court explained this decision... as far as I can tell, earlier decisions had already held that the 4th Amendment prohibited unreasonable search and seizure by state agents just as much as they did by federal agents, but had declined to tell state courts what to do about it (so evidence illegally obtained by state agents would not be admissible in federal court, but state courts were free to make their own rules about the admissibility of such evidence).  This decision doesn't really emphasize the reasoning of using the 14th Amendment to apply other constitutional guarantees to the states (it alludes to Wolf v. Colorado and Elkins v. US for that).  Instead, this decision takes a few pages to say "we've let the state courts do it their way and it hasn't worked, so now they'll have to do it our way for reasons we've already explained."

   Anyway, the evidence (four pamphlets, two photographs, and "a little pencil doodle") was suppressed.

US Supreme Court Carroll v. United States 15

Decided March 2, 1925

   I looked this case up because I've been taught about the "Carroll doctrine" in a couple of different police academies (interesting that they would mention it in NM, because the NM courts have held that it doesn't apply there), and the doctrine certainly gets put to a lot of use in the streets.  So I thought that as long as I'm making an effort to really improve my understanding of case law, I should probably familiarize myself with this one.  The trouble is that older court opinions can be a little more difficult to get through sometimes, and this one sets the bar really high!

   Anyway, there's a lengthy, dry recitation of prohibition laws, some previous search and seizure cases, and English common law.  Then there's more of that.  Then that goes on for a while longer.  Eventually, the court briefly summarizes the facts of this case.  The "Carroll boys" were known bootleggers, and government agents had some sort of unspecified evidence that they were currently doing their criminal thing.  So the agents were following them from Grand Rapids to Detroit (apparently a hotbed of liquor smuggling activity), but the Carroll boys got away.  A couple months later, the officers found the same suspects driving the opposite direction, so they believed that they were now carrying a liquor from Detroit to Grand Rapids to be sold.  I don't get how that's PC, but maybe someone who is into drug interdiction can explain the reasoning to me.  In any event, the court of the 1920's seemed to like it.*  The officers stopped the Carroll boys, searched their cars, and discovered alcohol.

   The findings of the court in this case (which are sort of spread out through the whole boring discussion of prohibition/common law/etc) were about what I had been taught before.  In it's uniquely wordy style, the court held that "On reason and authority the true rule is that if the search and seizure without a warrant are made upon probable cause...that an automobile or other vehicle contains that which by law is subject to seizure and destruction, the search and seizure are valid."  The court explains that the fourth amendment doesn't prohibit searches, it prohibits unreasonable searches, and that while officers applied for a warrant to search a car the car could leave their jurisdiction.  The opinion also includes a discussion of the definition of probable cause ("If the facts and circumstances before the officer are such as to warrant a man of prudence and caution in believing that the offense has been committed, it is sufficient").

*Although there was a dissenting opinion, which would have held that there was no reason to stop the car and so the evidence in this case should have been suppressed.  The dissenting opinion is much easier to understand... I think we may have got the automobile exception from the court's effort to pretend for a moment that the end justifies the means.  Maybe that exception would have come about through a different case if this one had gone the other way, but that's not what did happen.

US Supreme Court Weeks v. US 461

Decided February 24, 1914.

   Weeks was arrested while he was at work (I'm not really sure what for, this decision kinda starts in the middle of the story).  After he arrest, some other cops went to his house.  A neighbor showed them where the key was, and so they went in and searched it.  They found some incriminating papers, and brought all this to the attention of a US marshal.  The marshal returned to Weeks' house and searched it again, and found more incriminating paperwork.

   Weeks objected to the seizure of his property and petitioned the court for its return.  The court ordered that any seized property which wasn't going to be used as evidence must be returned to him, and some of his stuff was given back.  At his trial, Weeks again objected to the seizure of his property, arguing that it was taken in violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments.  The trial court declined to return the rest of the papers to him, and they were admitted as evidence.  Weeks was convicted of using the mail to transport gambling materials.

   He appealed.  The Supreme Court observed that if evidence could be seized in violation of the 4th Amendment and admitted in trial, then there really wasn't much point to having a 4th Amendment.  The court ruled that the evidence should have been returned to Weeks and not admitted at trial, and the exclusionary rule was born (although that phrase doesn't appear anywhere in the decision).  The court only applied this reasoning to the actions taken by the marshal, declining to explore what remedies Weeks may have had against state officials (that sort of reasoning went away 50 years later with Mapp v. Ohio).

US Supreme Court Michigan Dept of State Police et al v. Sitz et al 88-1897

Decided June 14, 1990

   The Michigan State Police were administrating a DUI checkpoint program, to which Sitz & Co objected on constitutional grounds (as far as I can tell from the decision, Sitz wasn't stopped in or otherwise involved in the checkpoint.  The suit was filed on the theoretical grounds that he and the other plaintiffs, who were licensed drivers in Michigan, might be unlawfully detained in future checkpoints).  Due to the pending litigation, at the time of this decision there had only been one such checkpoint pursuant to this program.

   During that particular operation, all vehicles passing through the checkpoint were to be stopped, and an officer would contact the driver to see if he noticed signs of intoxication.  If he did, the driver would be directed to a secondary area of the checkpoint where further investigation would occur, possibly culminating in arrest.  If not, the driver would be allowed on their way immediately.  126 vehicles were stopped over the course of 75 minutes, for an average of 25 seconds, only two drivers were detained for FSTs, only one of those was arrested, and a third driver was arrested for DUI after blowing through the checkpoint.

   The US Supreme Court held that the States have an important interest in apprehending drunk drivers, with references to both anecdotal and statistical evidence of "alcohol-related death and mutilation on the Nation's roads."  On the other hand, the Court held that the motorists' interest in not being briefly delayed at a roadblock was slight.  Balancing the two against each other, the Court held that such checkpoints are reasonable.  The Court relied on its reasoning from US v. Martinez-Fuerte, which held similar checkpoints reasonable for the purpose of detecting illegal aliens.

   The Court did point out that the DUI checkpoint program minimized the discretion of officers on the scene (as compared to making random stops with roving patrols, which is what happened in Delaware v. Prouse), and also pointed out that this decision was about the initial brief detention of all the vehicles passing through the checkpoint.  Further detention (at the secondary area) would require individualized reasonable suspicion.