Justice Sotomayor: Stop Bending the Constitution to Favor Cops

[davidn3600]

Has the Supreme Court given law enforcement more leeway that the Constitution permits? Justice Sonia Sotomayor seems to think so. At oral argument in Rodriguez v. United States, a case involving the use of drug-sniffing dogs during traffic stops, Justice Sotomayor vigorously resisted the government's arguments and expressed a broad concern about the Court's deference to law enforcement in Fourth Amendment cases. Those who share her belief that neither the Fourth Amendment nor any other part of the Constitution ought to be reduced to "a useless piece of paper" should insist that the Court consistently hold those who enforce the law fully accountable to it.

The facts of the case: On March 27, 2012, Nebraska police officer Morgan Struble stopped Dennys Rodriguez for swerving once towards the shoulder of the road. After questioning Rodriguez and issuing him a written warning, Struble asked permission to walk his drug-sniffing dog around the outside of Rodriguez's vehicle. When Rodriguez refused, Struble made him exit the vehicle and wait for backup to arrive. Roughly eight minutes later, a second officer showed up, and Struble led his dog around the car. The dog gave an "alert" for illegal drugs, and a subsequent search turned up a bag of methamphetamine.

The Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Caballes (2005) that the use of drug-snuffing dogs during routine traffic stops does not violate the Fourth Amendment if the stop is not "prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete that mission." But in Rodriguez's case, the "mission" was completed-- the officer had let Rodriguez off with a warning. The question is whether an officer may detain someone and force them to wait for a canine sniff without reasonable suspicion or other lawful justification.

At oral argument, Justice Department lawyer Ginger Anders contended that there was no constitutionally significant distinction between trotting out a drug-sniffing dog during a stop and making someone wait for the dog after a completed stop, so long as the whole affair "falls within the amount of time it usually takes to do a routine traffic stop." On this reasoning, the fact that the initial mission (writing Rodriguez up for crossing the white line) was complete would not preclude the officer from embarking on another mission, with the aid of a drug-sniffing dog. Anders added, "[F]rom the officer's perspective, I think there's an interest in officers having some leeway to sequence the stop."

Several of the Justices appeared troubled by this reasoning. "The dog sniff is something else altogether," Chief Justice Roberts stated, and Justice Breyer agreed, saying, "Once [the traffic stop is] over, it's over, done, finished." Justice Kagan, for her part, suggested that Anders' arguments lacked any limiting principle: "You really are saying because we have a reason to pull you over for a traffic stop, that gives us some extra time to start questioning you about other law enforcement­-related things and to do other law enforcement-­related business."

But Justice Sotomayor's forceful response stood out. Not only did she point out that signing off on dog sniffs that are extraneous to the mission of a given stop would create "an entitlement to search for drugs by using dogs, whenever anybody's stopped," but, responding to Anders' plea for leeway, she made a more profound point: "We can't keep bending the Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement." Sotomayor may have been an alluding to Heien v. North Carolina, a 2014 case in which the Court (over Justice Sotomayor's strong dissent) held that a traffic stop based on a police officer's mistaken view of the law did not violate the Fourth Amendment because that mistake was "reasonable."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-bernick/justice-sotomayor_b_6534970.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. K and R

[99th_Monkey]

2. K&R nt

[Geoff R. Casavant]

3. Very interesting here:

"Sotomayor may have been an alluding to Heien v. North Carolina, a 2014 case in which the Court (over Justice Sotomayor's strong dissent) held that a traffic stop based on a police officer's mistaken view of the law did not violate the Fourth Amendment because that mistake was 'reasonable.'"

Weren't there some threads on DU not too long ago, describing several people who had been denied employment with police departments because they had scored too high on intelligence tests?

Seems to me the two go together. If you want to ignore the law, you can't have officers that are smart enough to know better.

[Vattel]

4. Sotomayor is proving herself to be very strong on fourth amendment law.

I think we will win this case!

[AzDar]

5. A little glimmer of hope that there may not be a complete slide into Authoritarianism here...

[DallasNE]

6. Bogus Stops

If the truth be known, my guess is that Rodriguez never really wandered over the white line as the officer said.

I was recently pulled over in Omaha for making a "wide turn". I was in a single left turn lane and when my arrow turned green I turned onto a divided 4-lane street where I pulled into the lane I needed to be in, which was the right lane because in a few blocks I would need to make a right turn. The stop took roughly 15 minutes after which I was allowed to proceed with just a warning ticket. If I made an illegal turn I deserved a ticket just as I would get for running a red light. If my turn was legal I should not have been pulled over. I tried to Google "wide turn Nebraska" and came up empty. I did see that 10 States have laws against these "wide turns" while another handful of States specifically allow such turns and for most States, including Nebraska, there is no language saying anything either way.

In my case it was around 1AM so my thinking is they were looking for either open container or DUI. When they couldn't even find an overdue parking ticket I was let go.

[DeSwiss]

7. "a useless piece of paper"

[JDPriestly]

8. Thank you, Justice Sotomayor.

Without a pretty strict interpretation and application of the Fourth Amendment, we are not free.

Go back and read about the details of the events that lead to the Declaration of Independence and our Revolution. The Fourth Amendment was not an afterthought. It was and is at the core of everything our country stands for.

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to property are meaningless unless the Fourth Amendment is interpreted to protect our privacy. The right to property includes the right to exclude others from your property. And others includes the government as long as there is no probable cause for a warrant to search your property.

I'm saying it awkwardly but I think DUers will understand what I mean.