Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jun 2016
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2016 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Adam Liptak

RULING ON ILLEGAL STOPS DRAWS SCATHING DISSENT

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that evidence found by 
police officers after illegal stops may be used in court if the 
officers conducted their searches after learning that the defendants 
had outstanding arrest warrants.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority in the 5-to-3 
decision, said such searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment when 
the warrant is valid and unconnected to the conduct that prompted the stop.

Justice Thomas's opinion drew a fiery dissent from Justice Sonia 
Sotomayor, who said that "it is no secret that people of color are 
disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny."

"This case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that 
an officer can verify your legal status at any time," she wrote. "It 
says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the 
violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a 
democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged."

The case, Utah v. Strieff, No. 14-1373, arose from police 
surveillance of a house in South Salt Lake based on an anonymous tip 
of "narcotics activity" there. A police officer, Douglas Fackrell, 
stopped Edward Strieff after he had left the house based on what the 
state later conceded were insufficient grounds, making the stop unlawful.

Officer Fackrell then ran a check and discovered a warrant for a 
minor traffic violation. He arrested Mr. Strieff, searched him and 
found a baggie containing methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia. 
The question for the justices was whether the drugs must be 
suppressed given the unlawful stop or whether they could be used as 
evidence given the arrest warrant.

"Officer Fackrell was at most negligent," Justice Thomas wrote, 
adding that "there is no evidence that Officer Fackrell's illegal 
stop reflected flagrantly unlawful police misconduct."

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, 
Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion.

In a dissent that cited W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi 
Coates, Justice Sotomayor said the court had vastly expanded police power.

"The court today holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid 
parking ticket will forgive a police officer's violation of your 
Fourth Amendment rights," she wrote. "Do not be soothed by the 
opinion's technical language: This case allows the police to stop you 
on the street, demand your identification and check it for 
outstanding traffic warrants - even if you are doing nothing wrong.

"If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay," 
she continued, "courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will 
admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you 
after arresting you on the warrant."

Justice Sotomayor added that many people were at risk. Federal and 
state databases show more than 7.8 million outstanding warrants, she 
wrote, "the vast majority of which appear to be for minor offenses." 
There are, she added, 180,000 misdemeanor warrants in Utah. And 
according to the Justice Department, about 16,000 of the 21,000 
residents of Ferguson, Mo., are subject to arrest warrants.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined most of Justice Sotomayor's 
dissent, along with all of a separate dissent from Justice Elena 
Kagan. But Justice Sotomayor reserved her most personal reflection 
for a part of her dissent in which she wrote only for herself, 
setting out in detail the dangers and indignities that often 
accompany police stops.

"For generations," she wrote, "black and brown parents have given 
their children 'the talk' - instructing them never to run down the 
street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even 
think of talking back to a stranger - all out of fear of how an 
officer with a gun will react to them."

"We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely 
targeted by police are 'isolated,'" she wrote. "They are the canaries 
in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one 
can breathe in this atmosphere. They are the ones who recognize that 
unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten 
all our lives. Until their voices matter, too, our justice system 
will continue to be anything but."

Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said 
Justice Sotomayor's dissent was remarkable. It is, he said, "the 
strongest indication we have yet that the Black Lives Matter movement 
has made a difference at the Supreme Court - at least with one justice."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom