The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police can enter a person’s home or other dwelling without his/her consent, representing the worrying trend of the erosion of civil liberties and the Constitution of the United States.
The recent ruling in Fernandez v California has established that police my enter a home or other dwelling even without the consent of the occupant, so long as at least one other occupant has given permission. This ruling creates a very dangerous precedent, further undermining the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects against unlawful search and seizures.
Fernandez v California was a case involving a suspect in a street robbery who, when police came to his door, refused them entry, citing their lack of a warrant as required by the 4th Amendment. However, despite having refused the police entry to the apartment, he was arrested and taken away.
Once Fernandez was removed, police returned to the apartment. They claim that the suspect’s girlfriend consented to their entering without a warrant. Inside, police seized a shotgun and gang-related material.
While many, myself included, want to believe that such a search is reasonable because it resulted in supporting evidence, it is a precedent that shouldn’t be allowed to continue. The simple reason being that not everyone will have committed a crime and innocent people will have their privacy and civil liberties violated.
Court decision and its impact
The 6-3 ruling from the US Supreme Court upheld the narrowly defined and interpreted previous court decision (Georgia v Randolph), which held that police had no constitutional right to search a house when one resident consents and another objects. In Fernandez, the court establishes the point that, given that the objecting party (Mr. Fernandez) was not present due to his arrest an hour earlier, police had the right to search the home with the consent of its other occupant, Fernandez’s girlfriend Roxanne Rojas.
In articulating the majority decision, Justice Alito wrote:
“A warrantless consent search is reasonable and thus consistent with the 4th Amendment irrespective of the availability of a warrant…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…Denying someone in Rojas’ position the right to allow the police to enter her home would also show disrespect for her independence.”
Essentially, Alito is arguing that the constitutionally-required process of seeking a warrant is cumbersome and infringes on the ‘independence’ of the other occupant. Naturally, one should ask to what extent it is within the purview of a Supreme Court justice, or a typical police officer, to make such a determination given that the 4th Amendment is quite clear and is intended to protect the rights of citizens, rather than hinder their independence.
However, in writing the dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out perhaps the key point of all. She noted, “Instead of adhering to the warrant requirement, today’s decision tells the police they may dodge it.” Here, Ginsburg cuts to the very heart of the matter, that Fernandez v California now establishes the precedent that the police merely need to remove a suspect from the his/her home, thereby removing their ‘presence’, in order for police to justify, through whatever means available, a search that previously would have been deemed illegal. Of course, this opens the door to any number of abuses.
One must also consider how this decision might lead to further abuses of power by the police or other agencies of the local, state or federal government. There are undoubtedly instances where the co-occupant will be threatened, intimidated or lied to by police in order to pressure him/her into consenting to an unwanted search. It is easy to imagine an immigrant, or even a citizen, lacking language skills being deliberately misled by authorities in order to intimidate them into consenting to a search. None of this would be anything new for police forces throughout the US.
It would not be beyond the scope of possibility to imagine a citizen who does not consent to a search being removed from the premises for questioning at a police station, or in the case of Fernandez, being placed under arrest. Once removed, a new opportunity would then present itself to officers in convincing a remaining occupant to submit to a search. A second bite at the apple, so to speak.
Consenting to a police search, without a warrant, also allows law enforcement to search the premises without restrictions to what they are searching for, or what may be searched, which is often stipulated in a warrant issued by the courts.
It does not take a legal scholar to understand that police can often abuse the letter of the law in order to justify nearly any action they take. As Project Censored and many other outlets have reported, police have been known to plant drugs, falsify reports, exaggerate claims, and simply lie in court in order to craft any sort of narrative most expedient to them.
Disclaimer: On January 4, 2016, the owner of WestEastonPA.com began serving on the West Easton Council following an election. Postings and all content found on this website are the opinions of Matthew A. Dees and may not necessarily represent the opinion of the governing body for The Borough of West Easton.
