Can we do that Law and Order dum-DUM sound
effect? Perfect.
If you’ve ever seen those crime shows, you’ve
noticed how often they emphasize the importance
of a clean arrest – if the cops don’t
follow the rules, the perp can get off on
a technicality. So, for example, if a person
is illegally stopped, can they still be prosecuted
for any crime discovered during that
stop? As of June 20th, yes. The Supreme Court
ruled that evidence found by police officers
after an illegal stop can still be used in court.
There's an important caveat here, this only works if the officers conduct
a search after learning the person has an
outstanding arrest warrant. Here’s what
set it in motion. Once upon a time, way back
in 2006, a Salt Lake City narcotics detective
named Douglas Fackrell was conducting surveillance
on a suspected drug den. When he saw a guy named Edward
Strieff leaving the house, he followed him
to a 7-11 parking lot, stopped and questioned
him. After he called in Strieff’s information
to dispatch, a routine operation, he discovered that Strieff had
an outstanding warrant for a traffic violation.
He arrested and searched Strieff. Strieff
had meth, so he was charged and convicted
for possession. Pretty simple, right? But
– and there’s a big but here: it’s not
as cut and dry as it might seem. First, Fackrell
didn’t see Strieff enter, so he had no idea
how much – or little – time the guy spent
inside, meaning he couldn’t know for certain
Strieff was at the house for a drug deal.
Second, if this was an unlawful search, then
any evidence found (in this case, meth) would
be thrown out due to what’s called the Fourth
Amendment’s exclusionary rule. After all,
if police can benefit from illegal searches,
then they’d presumably have no reason not
to perform them. The court in Utah defended
the illegal search with the “attenuation
doctrine,” which essentially means that
if some intervening circumstance unrelated
or remotely related leads to illegal evidence,
it’s admissible. So because Strieff’s
warrant was for a traffic violation but the
arrest was for meth, the attenuation doctrine,
according to Utah, applies. And the Supreme
Court agreed. But this was a deeply divisive
ruling, with Justice Sotomayor pointing out
that people of color are “disproportionate
victims” of illegal stops. She also noted
that this means the discovery of something
as innocuous as an unpaid parking ticket could
“forgive a police officer’s violation
of your Fourth Amendment.” In a country
with more than 7.8 million outstanding warrants,
most of which are for minor offenses, this
raises troubling implications. For the dissenters, this is a blow to the
Fourth Amendment, one which essentially allows
police to make illegal stops and searches
without any cause or consequence.
Time will tell how this ruling is interpreted
across America’s law enforcement and legal
system. But for now (and this is a smaller
but), what do you think? Is this an erosion
of citizen’s rights, or an important step
in giving the good guys an edge in the war
on crime? Thanks for watching, and
stay tuned for more from HowStuffWorks.com.
