In Utah
v. Strieff the Supreme Court is tasked with determining whether the
exclusionary rule applies to an unlawful stop that leads to a warrant check and
search incident to arrest. In 2006 Salt Lake City police received a tip for
suspicious drug activity occurring at a house, according Jurist.
The police went to the house and saw Edward Strieff leaving
the house to go to a convenience store. Upon leaving the house, officers
stopped Strieff and asked for identification. Upon running Shrieff's
information, the police found an outstanding warrant for Strieff's arrest and
arrested him outside the house. The officer then conducted a search incident to
arrest and found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia on Strieff's person.
The
Utah Supreme Court ruled that
the drug evidence could not be used against Strieff because the initial
police stop was illegal. That is, it was not supported by reasonable,
individual suspicion against Strieff — regardless of the pre-existing
warrant.
Evidence the police discover as a result of violating the
Fourth Amendment is considered “fruit of the poisonous tree” and is suppressed
under what is known as the exclusionary rule. This is a sensible way to deter
the police from breaking the law to get evidence they want. But the court has
created several exceptions to this rule, such as in cases where the evidence
discovered was a result of a search that was based on a clerical error.
According to the New York Times, during the argument before the Supreme Court, lawyers for Utah argued that the
officer’s stop of Strieff was a reasonable, good-faith mistake and that
suppressing the evidence would harm society far more than it would deter other
officers from making similar mistakes.
But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed
out during oral argument, this approach would give far too much latitude to
law enforcement: “What stops us from becoming a police state and just having
the police stand on the corner down here and stop every person, ask them for
identification, put it through, and if a warrant comes up, searching them?”
Justice Elena Kagan added that the threat of this behavior
is especially serious in lower-income communities where a majority of residents
have outstanding warrants for minor infractions. “If you’re policing a
community where there is some significant percentage of people who have arrest
warrants out on them, it really does increase your incentive to make that
stop,” she said.
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