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posted by Dopefish on Friday February 28 2014, @06:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the freedom-is-not-free dept.

GungnirSniper writes "By a six to three vote, the US Supreme Court has ruled police may enter a home if one occupant allows it even after another previously did not consent.

In the decision on Tuesday in Fernandez v. California, the Court determined since the suspect, Walter Fernandez, was removed from the home and arrested, his live-in girlfriend's consent to search was enough. The Court had addressed a similar case in 2006 in Georgia v. Randolph, but found that since the suspect was still in the home and against the search, it should have kept authorities from entering.

RT.com notes "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in the minority by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, marking a gender divide among the Justices in the case wrote the dissenting opinion, calling the decision a blow to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits 'unreasonable searches and seizures.'"

Could this lead to police arresting people objecting to searches to remove the need for warrants?"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Friday February 28 2014, @06:25PM

    by Angry Jesus (182) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:25PM (#8663)

    The gender divide comment is of interest because the case at hand involved a battered woman. Her husband/boyfriend did not want the house searched, so the police hauled him off and convinced her to let them in. She did and as a result the guy went to prison and she was 'rescued' from her abuser.

    Stereotypically you would expect the women on the court to side with a ruling that protects an abused woman. That they did not (a) shows that there is more complexity to the case and (b) stereotyping isn't very accurate.

    FWIW, there is a saying in the legal profession, "bad cases make bad law." I think this is one such case, the results in the specific case were a net good. But the precedent set here is going to be a very big net bad because it just opens the door (pun intended) for police abuse.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Gryle on Friday February 28 2014, @07:56PM

    by Gryle (2777) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:56PM (#8728)

    According to the NPR version of the story, the woman let the police enter the house and the suspect emerged after they had done so shouting the police didn't have the right to enter. The suspect was arrested and then the police later went back to the house and again got permission from the woman to enter. I think the nuance of her allowing them access prior to the arrest is what made the court vote the way it did.

    --
    Ignorance can be remedied. Stupid seems to be a permanent condition.
    • (Score: 1) by rts008 on Friday February 28 2014, @09:17PM

      by rts008 (3001) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:17PM (#8787)

      That was the exact way it was described in TFA.

      Yes, I DID RTFA...what can I say, I'm new here! ;-)

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by davester666 on Saturday March 01 2014, @04:32AM

        by davester666 (155) on Saturday March 01 2014, @04:32AM (#8963)

        Go back to /. We don't like your kind around here!

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Friday February 28 2014, @08:18PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Friday February 28 2014, @08:18PM (#8741) Journal

    I'm sure you'll go to +5 so I'll save my mod points. You are absolutely right, though the way I heard the saying was "bad facts make bad law."

    Case in point: Smith v. Maryland. This is the case upon which Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is predicated, and is the substance behind NSA shills saying that the programs are "legal." It was one of those bad facts/bad law cases -- Smith was a real creep. He robbed a woman and then stalked her. Everyone wanted to see him go to jail. The issue there was whether the police should have gotten a warrant to put a pen register on Smith's phone. They definitely could have gotten a warrant, but instead did not and just asked AT&T to do it. The Supreme Court dusted off the Third Party Doctrine (share info with a third party and you have no reasonable expectation of privacy), refused to exclude the evidence, and made sure Smith did his time.

    Three decades later, this is the basis for all of the NSA masspionage we see today. Note that Smith involved a specific person, undergoing a specific investigation, where probable cause to search him or his records certainly existed. That factual matrix however, has been utterly divorced from the Third Party Doctrine so that today, that case is seen as the legal basis for searching the general population, in the absence of any specific investigation, in circumstances in which there is no probable cause at all.

    Given the pattern Constitutional abuse engaged by our government entities, I fully expect that this case will be divorced from its particular ugly facts, and turned into a principal where police can go occupant shopping to avoid the warrant requirement.