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Must government officials always obtain a warrant before conducting a search or a seizure?
No, there are several exceptions to the warrant requirement. Some of these include: searches of public school students, exigent circumstances, hot pursuit, plain view, plain feel, consent searches (where an individual has given consent to a government official to search), search incident to arrest, automobile exception, border-search exception, open fields, and stop and frisk.
LegalSpeak: Redding v. Sanford Unified School District (2009)
Justice David Souter (majority): “Savana’s subjective expectation of privacy against such a search is inherent in her account of it as embarrassing, frightening, and humiliating. The reasonableness of her expectation (required by the Fourth Amendment standard) is indicated by the consistent experiences of other young people similarly searched, whose adolescent vulnerability intensifies the patent intrusiveness of the exposure…. In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear. We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”
Justice John Paul Stevens (concurring in part, dissenting in part): “I disagree with its decision to extend qualified immunity to the school official who authorized this unconstitutional search.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (concurring in part, dissenting in part): “The Court’s opinion in T.L.O. plainly stated the controlling Fourth Amendment law: A search ordered by a school official, even if ‘justified at its inception,’ crosses the constitutional boundary if it becomes ‘excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.’”
Justice Clarence Thomas (concurring in part, dissenting in part): “Unlike the majority, however, I would hold that the search of Savana Redding did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The majority imposes a vague and amorphous standard on school administrators. It also grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge. This deep intrusion into the administration of public schools exemplifies why the Court should return to the common-law doctrine of in loco parentis under which ‘the judiciary was reluctant to interfere in the routine business of school administration, allowing schools and teachers to set and enforce rules and to maintain order.’”
Must school officials have probable cause before searching a student in a public school?
No, the U.S. Supreme Court in New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985) ruled that the probable-cause requirement in public schools was too stringent and would hamper the maintenance of order and discipline in the schools. Instead, the Court articulated a “reasonableness standard,” finding that the search must be justified at its inception and that it must be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the search in the first place.
When is it okay to conduct a search of private property? Do the police always need a search warrant? (iStock)
New Jersey v. T.L.O. involved a search by an assistant school principal of a student’s purse. The assistant principal originally suspected the juvenile girl of smoking in the bathroom, but later discovered that the girl may be involved in dealing marijuana after searching her entire purse.
Do school officials have unfettered authority to conduct strip searches?
No, strip searches are more invasive and there is a presumption that many strip searches would not pass the reasonableness inquiry under New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985). In Safford Unified School District v. Redding (2009; see LegalSpeak, p. 59), the Court ruled that a strip search of a student for alleging possessing prescription drug pills was not reasonable under the specific facts of the case. The Court emphasized the intrusive nature of strip searches and the fact that there was little evidence that the student Savana Redding was carrying such pills.
However, the Court granted qualified immunity to the assistant school principal in part because the case law was so divided on the constitutionality of strip searches. Qualified immunity is a doctrine that shields government officials from liability unless they violate clearly established constitutional or statutory law.
What is plain view?
The plain view doctrine provides that if a law enforcement official comes across incriminating evidence that is in his or her plain view, the officer can conduct a search without having to first obtain a warrant. The Supreme Court has reasoned that the object or material must be in plain view of the officer and that the incriminating character of the material must be “immediately apparent.” Also, the law enforcement official must lawfully be in the position from which he or she spots the incriminating material. It used to be the law that the plain view doctrine required that the officer’s discovery of the incriminating material be inadvertent. However, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that requirement in Horton v. California (1990).
The U.S. Supreme Court has expanded the plain view doctrine to also include the plain feel or plain touch exception to the Fourth Amendment.
How does a court determine if someone’s Fourth Amendment rights have been violated?
Sometimes the Court will ask whether someone had a reasonable expectation of privacy to determine if there was a Fourth Amendment violation. Under this test, a person subjectively must exhibit an expectation of privacy. Also, the person’s expectation must be one that society regards as objectively reasonable.
What is the exclusionary rule?
The exclusionary rule is a Fourth Amendment-based principle that provides that evidence seized as a result of a Fourth Amendment violation cannot be used as evidence. The classic phrase associated with this rule is that of Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who wrote when he was on the New York Court of Appeals, “the criminal goes free because the constable has blundered.”
In what decision did the Court extend the exclusionary rule requirement to the states?
In Mapp v. Ohio (1961; see LegalSpeak, p. 63), the Court ruled 6 to 3 that the Fourth Amendment-based exclusionary rule, which holds that evidence illegally seized by law enforcement officials must be excluded from trial, applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment due-process clause. In 1949, the Court had ruled Wolf v. Colorado that in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure. The Court overruled that aspect of its Wolf decision 12 years later in Mapp. Justice Tom C. Clark, a former prosecutor, wrote: “We hold that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court.”
Who was Dollree Mapp?
The defendant in Mapp v. Ohio (1961; see LegalSpeak, p. 63) was Dollree Mapp. The case began when at least seven Cleveland police officers searched for gambling paraphernalia in the home of Dollree Mapp. Instead, the officers
