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Court Opinions ›› Florida v. White (1999)
FLORIDA, PETITIONER v. TYVESSEL TYVORUS WHITE
No. 98-223 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 526 U.S. 559; 119 S. Ct. 1555; 143 L. Ed. 2d 748; 1999 U.S. LEXIS 3172; 67 U.S.L.W. 4311; 99 Cal. Daily Op. Service 3563; 99 Daily Journal DAR 4545; 1999 Colo. J. C.A.R. 2780; 12 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 236 March 23, 1999, Argued May 17, 1999, Decided PRIOR HISTORY: ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA. Two months after officers observed respondent using his car to deliver cocaine, he was arrested at his workplace on unrelated charges. At that time, the arresting officers seized his car without securing a warrant because they believed that it was subject to forfeiture under the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act (Act). During a subsequent inventory search, the police discovered cocaine in the car. Respondent was then charged with a state drug violation. At his trial on the drug charge, he moved to suppress the evidence discovered during the search, arguing that the car's warrantless seizure violated the Fourth Amendment, thereby making the cocaine the "fruit of the poisonous tree." After the jury returned a guilty verdict, the court denied the motion, and the Florida First District Court of Appeal affirmed. It also certified to the Florida Supreme Court the question whether, absent exigent circumstances, a warrantless seizure of an automobile under the Act violated the Fourth Amendment. The latter court answered the question in the affirmative, quashed the lower court opinion, and remanded.
The Fourth Amendment does not require the police to obtain a warrant before seizing an automobile from a public place when they have probable cause to believe that it is forfeitable contraband.
I join the Court's opinion subject to a qualification against reading our holding as a general endorsement of warrantless seizures of anything a State chooses to call "contraband," whether or not the property happens to be in public when seized. The Fourth Amendment does not concede any talismanic significance to use of the term "contraband" whenever a legislature may resort to a novel forfeiture sanction in the interest of law enforcement, as legislatures are evincing increasing ingenuity in doing...
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...[T]he particularly troubling aspect of this case is not that the State provides a weak excuse for failing to obtain a warrant either before or after White's arrest, but that it offers us no reason at all. The justification cannot be that the authorities feared their narcotics investigation would be exposed and hindered if a warrant had been obtained. Ex parte warrant applications provide neutral review of police determinations of probable cause, but such procedures are by no means public. And the officers had months to take advantage of them. On this record, one must assume that the officers who seized White's car simply preferred to avoid the hassle of seeking approval from a judicial officer. I would not permit bare convenience to overcome our established preference for the warrant process as a check against arbitrary intrusions by law enforcement agencies "engaged in the often competitive" -- and, here, potentially lucrative -- "enterprise of ferreting out crime." Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14-15, 92 L. Ed. 436, 68 S. Ct. 367 (1948).
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