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Tag: search and seizure
Charnesia Corley And An Assault On The Fourth Amendment

Charnesia Corley And An Assault On The Fourth Amendment

Here is a challenge for you. Reconcile the following:

In 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified, including the Fourth Amendment, guaranteeing “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In 2015, a 21-year-old woman named Charnesia Corley says she underwent a public body-cavity search for drugs at a gas station in Texas.

Explain, if you can, how the former and the latter can be simultaneously true.

According to Corley, a sheriff’s deputy in Harris County — Houston is the county seat — pulled her over for a traffic violation in June. Claiming he smelled marijuana, he searched the car, then called a female deputy to search Corley. She says the woman told her to pull her pants down. Corley, who was handcuffed, says she told the deputy she couldn’t and protested that she was wearing no panties. Whereupon, according to Corley, the deputy pulled the pants down herself and began her search.

Corley told CNN she “popped up” when she felt the woman’s fingers inside her and protested. Corley says the deputy replied: “I can do what I want to do, because this is a narcotics search.” Another female deputy was summoned. Corley found herself on the ground with, she says, both women on top of her. And if you were looking for the textbook definition of an “unreasonable” search, surely you could not find a better one than a bare-bottomed woman held down on the pavement in full public view while her vagina is forcibly probed for drugs.

The Harris County Sheriff has declined comment, citing an “ongoing internal affairs investigation” — and a possible civil suit. According to at least some reports, deputies did find marijuana — 0.02 ounces — though it is unclear where. The Associated Press reports that charges against Corley — drug possession and resisting arrest –were dropped last week.

Apparently, none of this is unique. The Washington Post tells us there have been similar cases in Oakland, Chicago, Atlanta, and in Citrus County and Coral Springs, Florida. The victims have been both male and female.

And so, we reap the fruit of our own short-sightedness. In their hysteria over drugs and sanguine surety that only guilty people need worry about their rights, too many of us have watched with acquiescence the steady erosion of the freedoms that stand between us and a police state. The government arrogates unto itself the power to seize a person’s money without even bringing charges, the Supreme Court gives police unfettered power to stop cars on any pretext in order to hunt for drugs, police stop and frisk — and cuff and beat — without probable cause, and some of us shrug and say, so what?

Well, this is what: Charnesia Corley ends up humiliated and sexually assaulted, spread-eagle on the ground with our collective fingers up her individual private parts. Apparently, some of us find that less terrifying than 0.02 ounces of pot.

It is past time those somnambulant people woke up to what is happening here, to what is being stolen. Drugs are a danger, yes. But in response to that danger, we have accorded police too much deference, leeway and power. That observation is not about disrespecting them, but requiring that they respect us, the people they work for.

There is, not to put too fine a point on it, zero respect in a sheriff’s deputy publicly poking her fingers into another woman’s vagina — on suspicion, mind you, of marijuana possession. How can you reconcile that with the Fourth Amendment? You can’t.

“I can do what I want to do.” So the deputy reportedly told Corley. And that should scare you.

Because it wasn’t just arrogant. It was also, apparently, correct.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL, 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Thomas Hawk

U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Police Searches Of Cellphones

U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Police Searches Of Cellphones

Washington (AFP) – The U.S. Supreme Court takes up two cases Tuesday about whether police need warrants to search detainees’ mobile phones, which have become vast repositories of personal data.

The cases could potentially have a major impact on law enforcement in the United States, where about 12 million people are arrested every year and 90 percent of the population owns a cellphone.

More than half of those devices are smartphones, which can store vast amounts of personal information, including emails, photographs and videos.

The new iPhones with the smallest data capacity can hold the equivalent of 16 pickup trucks of paper, thousands of photographs or hours of video.

In a dramatic example of justice systems adapting to increasingly pervasive new technologies, the top court will have to decide how to apply the 18th century US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” to today’s highly advanced data troves known as smartphones.

The government argues that smartphones, like other personal items such as wallets or purses, may be searched during an arrest.

The first case before the high court emerged from the arrest of David Riley, a Californian student pulled over in 2009. His car registration was found to have expired.

Police found loaded guns in his car and, after scouring his smartphone, entries related to a local gang and an earlier shooting.

His sentence of 15 years to life was upheld on appeal.

In the other case, Boston police in 2007 searched the call log of Brima Wurie’s flip phone, which led them to an apartment where they found drugs, money and weapons.

An appeals court threw out the evidence found on Wurie’s phone, saying it had been obtained unconstitutionally.

The New York Times was among several news organizations that filed a brief supporting Riley and Wurie, saying mobile phone searches threatened news-gathering.

“Mobile phones aren’t weapons and pose no physical threat,” the Times said in an editorial on the eve of the Supreme Court arguments.

“For better or worse, mobile phones have become repositories of our daily lives, and will become only more powerful over time. As a rule, the police should have to get a warrant to search them.”

Government lawyers, meanwhile, contend that “cellphones are particularly likely to contain evidence of unlawful activity and to help law-enforcement officers identify suspects they have apprehended.”

The state of California, in its Supreme Court brief, made no distinction between mobile phones and wallets, address books, personal documents and other items that have long been subject to search.

“Allowing the police to search the contents of a cellphone without obtaining a warrant would be an affront to America’s long history of individual privacy rights,” National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers executive director Norman Reimer said.

“It is akin to granting the police the right to search the most intimately personal details of our lives.”

In the era of smartphones, such searches “would likely reveal an individual’s medical history, religious beliefs, political affiliations, network of friends, colleagues, intimate associates and acquaintances,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in its brief.

The Supreme Court has already acknowledged the need to adapt to new technologies, ruling in 2012 that authorities would violate the Fourth Amendment if they attached a GPS tracking device to a private car.

A final decision on the cellphone cases is expected by late June.

Police Can Stop Vehicles Based On Anonymous 911 Tips, Justices Rule

Police Can Stop Vehicles Based On Anonymous 911 Tips, Justices Rule

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has upheld the authority of police officers to stop cars and question their drivers based on an anonymous tip to a hot line.

In a 5-4 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the justices ruled that such stops do not amount to an unreasonable search or seizure, even if the arresting officer did not observe the vehicle speeding or swaying while driving down the highway.

The decision affirmed a ruling of the California courts.

In August 2008, a 911 dispatch team in Mendocino County received a report that a pickup truck had run another vehicle off the road. The caller did not identify himself, but the report included a detailed description of the truck, including its license plate number.

Responding to the call, an officer saw a truck which fit the description. After stopping it, he found 30 pounds of marijuana in the truck bed. Two men, Lorenzo and Jose Navarette, were arrested and later convicted of trafficking marijuana.

They appealed and argued the stop and subsequent search had violated their rights under the 4th Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures.

In the past, the court had said police officers may not rely on an anonymous tip to stop and search a pedestrian. In that case, the justices had worried that anonymous callers could unfairly target people for embarrassing searches.

But in Tuesday’s decision in Navarette v. California, the court majority agreed that police have “reasonable suspicion” to stop a vehicle if they receive a report that it was speeding, swerving, or, as in this case, forcing another car off the road.

The case split the court along the usual ideological lines, but with two significant switches. Justice Stephen Breyer, usually part of the court’s liberal minority, joined Thomas’ majority. Justice Antonin Scalia, who sides with Thomas in the vast majority of cases, dissented.

That same lineup in summer 2013 decided an important case about DNA testing of arrestees, with Breyer in the majority and Scalia in dissent.

Photo: Matt H. Wade via Wikimedia Commons

Supreme Court Sides With LAPD In Warrantless House Search

Supreme Court Sides With LAPD In Warrantless House Search

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police officers may enter and search a home without a warrant as long as one occupant consents, even if another resident has previously objected.

The ruling — based on a case involving a Los Angeles Police Department search — gives the police more leeway to search homes without obtaining a warrant, even in situations where there is no emergency.

The case began with a lawsuit filed by Walter Fernandez, a Los Angeles man who was arrested in 2009 as a suspect in a street robbery and taken from his home to the police station. During the arrest, he refused to allow police to search his home.

“You don’t have any right to come in here. I know my rights,” he shouted from inside an apartment in South Los Angeles, according to court records. Officers had knocked at the door and spoken to Roxanne Rojas, a woman he was living with.

After his arrest, police returned an hour later and searched his apartment, this time with the consent of Rojas. They found a shotgun and gang-related material.

In a 6-3 decision Tuesday, the high court said Fernandez did not have a right to prevent the search of his apartment once Rojas had consented.

In the past, the court had described the protection against home searches as the “very core” of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. To search a home, an officer usually needs a warrant from a judge.

But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the court, said home searches were legal whenever the officers can obtain consent from an occupant.

“A warrantless consent search is reasonable and thus consistent with the Fourth Amendment irrespective of the availability of a warrant,” he said in Fernandez v. California. “Even with modern technological advances, the warrant procedure imposes burdens on the officers who wish to search (and) the magistrate who must review the warrant application.”

He also said Rojas, who appeared to have been beaten, should have the right of her own to consent to a search. “Denying someone in Rojas’ position the right to allow the police to enter her home would also show disrespect for her independence,” Alito wrote.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented and faulted the court for weakening the requirement to obtain a search warrant.

“Instead of adhering to the warrant requirement, today’s decision tells the police they may dodge it,” Ginsburg said.

She noted that in 2006 the court had ruled in a Georgia case that a husband standing in the doorway could block the police from searching his home, even if his estranged wife consented. In the new opinion, the majority said that rule applied only when the co-owner was “physically present” to object.

The arrest came after a man was assaulted and robbed next to an ATM along Vermont Avenue in South L.A. LAPD officers pursued a suspect to a nearby apartment, where they found Fernandez.
He was later convicted for his role in the street robbery and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Photo: OZinOH via Flickr