Colorado Supreme Court Condon v. People 24554

Decided October 26, 1971.

   Mr. Chance, a landlord, went to his rental property and decided to water the lawn.  He went into the backyard to turn on the water, and noticed the smell of a dead body coming from a basement window.  He called the police.

   Three separate officers also noted the smell of a decomposing body coming from the basement window.  They tried to enter the house using Mr. Chance's key, but it didn't work.  They eventually broke into the house through the back door and searched for the dead body (they began their search on the top floor, then moved down to the main floor, including cupboards and cabinets and finding drugs and paraphernalia along the way.  Eventually, they made their way to the basement.  The court didn't seem to like the way the search was conducted).  No body was ever found, but there were chemicals found which produced a similar smell and were used in the manufacture of mescaline.  For some reason, now that all of this had been found, the police applied for a search warrant to search for the stuff they'd already found.  A day late and a dollar short.

   Mr. Chance's tenants were arrested a few days later.

   The defendants moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the search was illegal.  The people argued that the search was justified either as an administrative search in response to an emergency (the dead body), or alternately justified by Mr. Chance's consent.

   The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the smell of a decomposing body does not, by itself, justify warrantless entry.  If the body is decomposing, then any emergency has obviously passed.  It's too late to render aid, and they won't be any more dead in an hour or two.  The court noted that there is some health risk to the community, but this isn't the kind of pressing emergency that justifies warrantless entry.  The court noted that there was certainly probable cause in this case, but that there was plenty of time for the officers to go get a warrant to search for a dead body.

   The People's consent argument wasn't going anywhere, either.  The court pointed out that it was the defendants' Constitutional rights at stake, not Mr. Chance's, and therefore any waiver of those Constitutional rights had to come from the defendants and not Mr. Chance.  A landlord may not consent to a warrantless search of his tenant's residence.

   Finally, obtaining a warrant after the fact did nothing whatsoever to mitigate the fact that the whole search had been illegal.  The evidence obtained from this search was suppressed.

 

US Supreme Court Whiteley v. Warden 136

3-29-71

   This case establishes what has become known as the fellow officer rule (that an officer may rely on probable cause developed by a different officer when making an arrest).

   It's an interesting case because, although it was good for law enforcement in general, it was decided against law enforcement in this particular case.  Basically, some sheriff in Wyoming issued a bulletin stating that there was a warrant for Whiteley's arrest (and there was, although the complaint that the warrant was based on didn't actually contain enough information to establish PC).  An officer in Laramie arrested Whitelely , acting on the aforementioned BOLO.  

   The Supreme Court held that although the officers who actually arrested Whiteley were entitled to rely on information form other officers that he was subject to arrest, the arrest itself was still invalid because the sheriff who claimed to have PC didn't.

US Supreme Court Chimel v. California 770

Decided June 23, 1969

   Officers went to Chimel's home with a warrant to arrest him for burglary.  Chimel's wife allowed them into the house, where they waited for him to arrive.  When he did, they arrested him and asked if they could look around.  He objected, but they searched the entire house anyway, incident to his arrest.  No search warrant was obtained.  Evidence from the search was introduced at trial, and Chimel was convicted.

   The Supreme Court overturned some of its own various precedents regarding search incident to arrest in this case holding that:

When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer's safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee's person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested. There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee's person and the area "within his immediate control"—construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.

There is no comparable justification, however, for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs—or, for that matter, for searching through all the desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself. Such searches, in the absence of well-recognized exceptions, may be made only under the authority of a search warrant. The "adherence to judicial processes" mandated by the Fourth Amendment requires no less.

   The evidence was suppressed, and Chimel's conviction overturned.

US Supreme Court Terry v. Ohio

6-10-68

   Every cop knows Terry v. Ohio... Officer McFadden stopped Terry & Co. after watching him case a store, apparently preparing for a robbery.  Fearing that they were armed, he searched them for weapons.  They were armed, and charged with CCW.

   The defendants filed a motion to suppress the guns as the fruit of an illegal search.  The Court held that the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, and it is reasonable for an officer to detain a suspect based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and search that suspect's outer clothing for weapons when there is reason to believe the suspect might be armed and dangerous.

   Interestingly, there was a dissenting opinion.  Justice Douglas would have held that the stop and search were unreasonable because they were not based on probable cause.  Can you imagine how much more difficult law enforcement would be if the court's decision had gone that way?

US Supreme Court Gardner v Broderick 392

Decided June 10, 1968

   The facts of this case occurred before Garrity, but the case was decided after Garrity.

   Gardner was a police officer in New York, who was being investigated by a grand jury for bribery, corruption, and illegal gambling.  He was advised of his right against self incrimination, but asked to sign a waiver of that right.  He refused.

   At the time, New York had a policy in their charter which said that any city employee would be fired if they pled the fifth to work-related questions in court.  Gardner was fired for his refusal to waive his rights, and he sued the city for reinstatement and back pay.  He lost, but he appealed.

   The US Supreme Court held that if Gardner could have legally been fired if he had refused to answer questions about the discharge of his duties without being asked to waive his rights.  But that's not what happened; Gardner wasn't fired for not telling his boss what he did, Gardner was fired for not waiving his rights in a pending criminal prosecution.  The lower courts' decision was reversed.

   And so now, whenever we go to IA, we are informed that we will be fired if we refuse to answer questions, but that our answers can not be used against us in a criminal case- they're just used to determine what our future employment status will be.

US Supreme Court Katz v. US

Decision here.
12-18-67

   This is the case which gave us the term "reasonable expectation of privacy."

   Katz was convicted of violation of gambling laws based on recordings of phone calls that he made from a public phone booth.  FBI agents had recorded these conversations using a device that attached to the outside of the booth (no intrusion into the booth = no search = Fourth Amendment not implicated, no warrant required.  According to the reasoning of the day, anyway).

   This decision spelled out that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not just places against unreasonable search and seizure.  In a concurring opinion, this decision describes that for invoking the Fourth Amendment "there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.'"

US Supreme Court Warden v. Hayden 480

Decided May 29, 1967

   I looked this case up because it kept coming up in my research on hot pursuit.

   Hayden committed an armed robbery at a taxi company, and two taxi drivers followed him home.  They relayed his address to their dispatcher, who relayed it to the police, who showed up at Hayden's home within five minutes of him getting there.  They knocked, Hayden's wife answered the door, and she offered no objection when the police made entry to search for a robber.  They found Hayden pretending to be asleep in an upstairs bedroom.  They also found a gun in a nearby toilet tank, and in a washing machine they found the clothes the robber was wearing.

   The Supreme Court upheld the warrantless search, because "the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative... The Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to delay in the course of an investigation if to do so would gravely endanger their lives or the lives of others. Speed here was essential, and only a thorough search of the house for persons and weapons could have insured that Hayden was the only man present and that the police had control of all weapons which could be used against them or to effect an escape."

   So there's that.  The interesting thing is that this was only a minor part of the decision.  Most of the decision has to do with establishing the government's right to seize evidence that only has evidentiary value, rather than also being contraband or the instrumentality of a crime.  Apparently, we couldn't always do that.