Landmark Cases | Doctrines
A brief and incomplete survey:
Boyd v. United States (1886) – unreasonable search and seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment
Bram v. United States (1897) – involuntary confessions inadmissible as evidence
Weeks v. United States (1914) – established 2 legal doctrines: 1) the “exclusionary rule” – excluding evidence seized in violation of Fourth Amendment provisions from federal prosecutions 2) the “silver platter” doctrine, which permitted evidence that was seized in violation of Fourth Amendment provisions by state officers
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States (1920) – established the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine, an extension of the exclusionary rule holding that evidence that is derivative of evidence that was obtained in violation of the provisions of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible.
Mapp v. Ohio (1961) – Applied the “exclusionary rule of evidence” to all states through the Fourteenth Amendment
Utah v. Streiff (2016) – Held that a pre-existing arrest warrant discovered during the course of an unlawful investigatory detention precluded the exclusion of drugs that were recovered from the defendant’s person following his arrest on the warrant. This was a significant departure from the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine.
In part IV of Sotomayor's dissent, "writing only for [herself]," she wrote that "it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny...For generations, 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." She cited Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me. Sotomayor wrote that the case "implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged" and that unlawful stops "corrode all our civil liberties". Her dissent was called "ringing", citing "a canon for modern critiques of mass incarceration". Another writer characterized the dissent as "gripping". In a retrospective report on Ginsberg's legacy, her decision to not concur in Part IV was considered a mark on her legacy.
Justice Elena Kagan also wrote a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Ginsburg joined in full. Kagan argued that the majority's ruling "creates unfortunate incentives for the police". She explained: "So long as the target is one of the many millions of people in this country with an outstanding arrest warrant, anything the officer finds in a search is fair game for use in a criminal prosecution. The officer’s incentive to violate the Constitution thus increases: From here on, he sees potential advantage in stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion—exactly the temptation the exclusionary rule is supposed to remove. Because the majority thus places Fourth Amendment protections at risk, I respectfully dissent"
Carroll v. United States (1925) – Established the automobile exception to warrantless searches
Brady v. Maryland (1963) – Established prosecutorial obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence to defendant
The People of the State of New York v. Charles Huntley (1965) – Ruling on the admissibility of confessions (defendant statements) "a proper determination of voluntariness be made prior to the admission of the confession to the jury which is adjudicating guilt or innocence"
Miranda v. Arizona (1966) – Obligatory notice of rights to remain silent and to counsel
United States v. Wade (1967) – Established Sixth Amendment right of defendant to have counsel present during post-indictment lineup.
Terry v. Ohio (1968) – Established police right to stop, question, frisk. The principles it propounded include:
It is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs "seizures" of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the stationhouse and prosecution for crime -- "arrests" in traditional terminology. It must be recognized that, whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has "seized" that person.
. . . it is nothing less than sheer torture of the English language to suggest that a careful exploration of the outer surfaces of a person's clothing all over his or her body in an attempt to find weapons is not a "search."
. . . it is simply fantastic to urge that such a procedure performed in public by a policeman while the citizen stands helpless, perhaps facing a wall with his hands raised, is a "petty indignity." It is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment, and it is not to be undertaken lightly
In 1967, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice [The Katzenbach Commission] found that "[i]n many communities, field interrogations are a major source of friction between the police and minority groups." In its report, “The Challenge of Crime In A Free Society,” the Commission concluded that friction caused by“[m]isuse of field interrogations” increases “as more police departments adopt ‘aggressive patrol,’ in which officers are encouraged routinely to stop and question persons on the street who are unknown to them, who are suspicious, or whose purpose for being abroad is not really evident.”
Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York - the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a local government is not a "person" subject to suit under Section 1983 of Title 42 of the United States Code: (Civil action for deprivation of rights) holding that §1983 claims against municipal entities must be based on implementation of a policy or custom.
What Is the Monell Doctrine? - Taylor & Ring (taylorring.com)
Dunaway v. New York (1979) – Confessions resulting from unlawful arrests are inadmissible notwithstanding any waiver of Miranda warnings by defendant
Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) – Established the modern test for “qualified immunity”
A significant amount of criticism contends that qualified immunity allows police brutality to go unpunished. Legal researchers Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark, for instance, have argued that "qualified immunity permits law enforcement and other government officials to violate people's constitutional rights with virtual impunity". Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has noted a "disturbing trend" of siding with police officers using excessive force with qualified immunity, describing it as "sanctioning a 'shoot first, think later' approach to policing". She stated:
We have not hesitated to summarily reverse courts for wrongly denying officers the protection of qualified immunity in cases involving the use of force...But we rarely intervene where courts wrongly afford officers the benefit of qualified immunity in these same cases.
A 2020 Reuters report concurred with Sotomayor, concluding that "the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police". The report reviewed over 200 cases involving excess force by police since 2007, and found since the 2009 Pearson change from mandatory sequencing to discretionary sequencing, plaintiffs have had a more difficult time moving their case past the qualified immunity stage.
Tennessee v. Garner (1985) – Limits law enforcement use of deadly physical force to prevent escape
Whren v. United States (1996) – Reasonable suspicion that a traffic violation occurred, rather than officer motivation, legitimates traffic stop. Pretextual traffic stops legitimate.
Daniels v. City of New York (2003) – Adjudicated by settlement prohibiting racial profiling, mandating audits of stop & frisks, disbanding of NYPD’s Street Crime Unit.
Floyd v. City of New York (2013) – NYPD Stop & Frisk policy violated Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. Frisks must be based on articulable individualized and particularized reasonable suspicion. Notably, the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York held:
The Supreme Court has recognized that “the degree of community resentment aroused by particular practices is clearly relevant to an assessment of the quality of the intrusion upon reasonable expectations of personal security.” In light of the very active and public debate on the issues addressed in this Opinion — and the passionate positions taken by both sides — it is important to recognize the human toll of unconstitutional stops. While it is true that any one stop is a limited intrusion in duration and deprivation of liberty, each stop is also a demeaning and humiliating experience [emphases added]. No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life . . . Targeting young black and Hispanic men for stops based on the alleged criminal conduct of other young black and Hispanic men violates the bedrock principles of equality.
Valid Searches and Seizures Without Warrants – A Primer
Noteworthy judicial determinations:
Whether you stand still or move, drive above, below, or at the speed limit, you will be described by the police as acting suspiciously should they wish to stop or arrest you. Such subjective, promiscuous appeals to an ineffable intuition should not be credited.
- United States v. Bloomfield . . . (7th Cir. 2005)
“Although much of the evidence concerns the disproportionate burden police action imposes on African-American males who are young and poor, there is substantial evidence that the experience of being stopped by police is also common both for older African-Americans and for those who are professionals — lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and academics . . . These encounters are humiliating, damaging to detainee’s self-esteem, and reinforce the reality that racism and intolerance are for many African-Americans a regular part of their daily lives.”
– Washington v. Lambert . . . (9th Cir. 1996)