Fourth Amendment & Privacy Rights Survive... This Time

This decision actually takes a stand for Fourth Amendament and privacy rights. It is not surprising that Roberts, Thomas and Scalia were opposed to us citizens having such protections and that law enforcement officers would be required to actually have complete consent or a warrant in order to enter a dwelling, ESPECIALLY in light of competing rights. I have no doubt that this would have been a 5-4 decision had Alito been allowed to participate. Methinks we will see a number of close decisions in the near future... and a lot more that go against our basic rights.

High Court Trims Police Power to Search Homes

The Supreme Court narrowed police search powers yesterday, ruling that officers must have a warrant to look for evidence in a couple's home unless both partners present agree to let them in.

The 5 to 3 decision sparked a sharp exchange among the justices. The majority portrayed the decision as striking a blow for privacy rights and gender equality; dissenters said it could undermine police efforts against domestic violence, the victims of which are often women.

The ruling upholds a 2004 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court but still makes a significant change in the law nationwide, because most other lower federal and state courts had previously said that police could search with the consent of one of two adults living together.

Now, officers must first ask a judicial officer for a warrant in such cases. Quarrels between husbands and wives, or boyfriends and girlfriends, keep police busy around the country; in the District, almost half of the 39,000 violent crime calls officers answered in 2000 involved alleged domestic violence.

Justice David H. Souter's majority opinion said that the consent of one partner is not enough, because of "widely shared social expectations" that adults living together each have veto power over who can come into their shared living space. That makes a warrantless search based on only one partner's consent "unreasonable" and, therefore, unconstitutional.

"[T]here is no common understanding that one co-tenant generally has a right or authority to prevail over the express wishes of another, whether the issue is the color of the curtains or invitations to outsiders," Souter wrote.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing his first dissent since joining the court in October, said the ruling's "cost" would be "great," especially in domestic dispute situations.

Roberts Dissent Reveals Strain Beneath Court's Placid Surface

A Supreme Court decision on Wednesday in an uncelebrated criminal case did more than resolve a dispute over whether the police can search a home without a warrant when one occupant gives consent but another objects.

More than any other case so far, the decision, which answered that question in the negative by a vote of 5 to 3, drew back the curtain to reveal the strains behind the surface placidity and collegiality of the young Roberts court.

It was not only that this case, out of 32 decided since the term began in October, provoked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to write his first dissenting opinion. He had cast two earlier dissenting votes, and had to write a dissenting opinion eventually. And although there has been much commentary on the court's unusually high proportion of unanimous opinions, 22 so far compared with only 27 in all of the last term, few people expected that rate to continue as the court disposed of its easiest cases and moved into the heart of the term.

Rather, what was striking about the decision in Georgia v. Randolph, No. 04-1067, was the pointed, personal and acerbic tone in which the justices expressed their disagreement over whether the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches was violated when the police in Americus, Ga., arriving at a house to investigate a domestic dispute, accepted the wife's invitation to look for evidence of her husband's cocaine use.