DrugPolicyCases.com | |||
|
Searches and Seizures: Roads and Vehicles What's a reasonable expectation of privacy of a person traveling in a car? Can a law enforcement agent pull over any vehicle he or she wants for any reason? Can a police officer search a car without a warrant? What about personal belongings found in the car, such as a purse or a locked briefcase? Excerpts in this category try to shed light on these and other issues relating to searches of cars, buses and other vehicles roaming the roads. Pages: ‹1› ‹2› ‹3› ‹4› ‹5› ‹6›
...[T]he testimony at the suppression hearing suggests that the officer used the need to "inventory" as an excuse to search for drugs.
[...]
Today, instead of adhering to the settled distinction between drivers and passengers, the Court fashions a new rule that is based on a distinction between property contained in clothing worn by a passenger and property contained in a passenger's briefcase or purse.
[...]
...[W]e held that the authority to conduct a full field search as incident to an arrest was a "bright-line rule," which was based on the concern for officer safety and destruction or loss of evidence, but which did not depend in every case upon the existence of either concern. Here we are asked to extend that "bright-line rule" to a situation where the concern for officer safety is not present to the same extent and the concern for destruction or loss of evidence is not present at all. We decline to do so.
[...]
From their unique vantage point, Ohio's courts observed that traffic stops in the State were regularly giving way to contraband searches, characterized as consensual, even when officers had no reason to suspect illegal activity. One Ohio appellate court noted: "Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of Ohio citizens are being routinely delayed in their travels and asked to relinquish to uniformed police officers their right to privacy in their automobiles and luggage, sometimes for no better reason than to provide an officer the opportunity to 'practice' his drug interdiction technique." 93 Ohio App. 3d at 594, 639 N.E.2d at 503 (footnote omitted).
[...]
The fact that this particular officer successfully used a similar method [involving asking for consent to search a car] of obtaining consent to search roughly 786 times in one year, State v. Retherford, 93 Ohio App. 3d 586, 591-592, 639 N.E.2d 498, 502, dism'd, 69 Ohio St. 3d 1488, 635 N.E.2d 43 (1994), indicates that motorists generally respond in a manner that is contrary to their self-interest. Repeated decisions by ordinary citizens to surrender that interest cannot satisfactorily be explained on any hypothesis other than an assumption that they believed they had a legal duty to do so.
[...]
|
|