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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?"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Dutchster on Friday February 28 2014, @07:21PM
The person has to have the apparent authority to consent to a search. Apparent authority != actual authority. So for instance the police come to a house with a plumbing truck in the driveway. The plumber answers the door and when asked if the police can search says "I'm just here to fix the toilet." He does not have the apparent authority to give consent to search the bedroom. On the other hand the cops show up and a middle aged woman answers the door and says "yes, please come in." If it later turns out that she no longer lives in the house well then that's too bad for the homeowner; he shouldn't let his guests answer the door and invite people in.
There is no bright line in this analysis because it's going to come down to what a reasonable person would have believed at the time consent was given based on the totality of the circumstances.
I'm a volunteer police officer and this sort of thing comes up from time to time. Usually it has to do with underaged drinking parties. We knock on the door and some drunk dude opens the door acting like he owns the place. We see clearly underaged individuals drinking on the premises (perhaps even the guy answering the door) and go from there. Invariably some lawyer will try to argue that the kid who answered the door didn't have the authority to let us in. That confuses the issue with the fact that all he did was open the door and allow anybody on the street to plainly see illegal activity going on inside.