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Court Opinions ›› Ohio v. Robinette (1996)
OHIO, PETITIONER v. ROBERT D. ROBINETTE
No. 95-891. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 519 U.S. 33; 117 S. Ct. 417; 136 L. Ed. 2d 347; 1996 U.S. LEXIS 6971; 65 U.S.L.W. 4013; 148 A.L.R. Fed. 739; 96 Cal. Daily Op. Service 8278; 96 Daily Journal DAR 13761; 10 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 200 October 8, 1996, Argued November 18, 1996, Decided PRIOR HISTORY: ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO. After an Ohio deputy sheriff stopped respondent Robinette for speeding, gave him a verbal warning, and returned his driver's license, the deputy asked whether he was carrying illegal contraband, weapons, or drugs in his car. Robinette answered "no" and consented to a search of the car, which revealed a small amount of marijuana and a pill. He was arrested and later charged with knowing possession of a controlled substance when the pill turned out to be methylenedioxy-methamphetamine. Following denial of his pretrial suppression motion, he was found guilty, but the Ohio Court of Appeals reversed on the ground that the search resulted from an unlawful detention. The State Supreme Court affirmed, establishing as a bright-line prerequisite for consensual interrogation under these circumstances the requirement that an officer clearly state when a citizen validly detained for a traffic offense is "legally free to go."
The Fourth Amendment does not require that a lawfully seized defendant be advised that he is "free to go" before his consent to search will be recognized as voluntary.
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).
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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.
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...[O]ur holding in Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 114 L. Ed. 2d 297, 111 S. Ct. 1801 (1991), allowing police to open closed containers in the context of an automobile consent search where the "consent would reasonably be understood to extend to a particular container," [...] ensures that many motorists will wind up "consenting" to a far broader search than they might have imagined. See 500 U.S. at 254-255 ("only objection that the police could have to" a rule requiring police to seek consent to search containers as well as the automobile itself "is that it would prevent them from exploiting the ignorance of a citizen who simply did not anticipate that his consent to search the car would be understood to authorize the police to rummage through his packages") (Marshall, J., dissenting).
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