Supreme Court Limits Searches...

This is really old news. But I didn't have time to comment until now.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police without a warrant cannot search a
home when one resident says to come in but another tells them to go away, and
the court's new leader complained that the ruling could hamper investigations of
domestic abuse.
Justices, in a 5-3 decision, said that police did not have
the authority to enter and search the home of a small town Georgia lawyer even
though the man's wife invited them in.

The officers, who did not have a
search warrant, found evidence of illegal drugs.
The Supreme Court has never
ruled on whether the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches covers a
scenario when one home occupant wants to allow a search and another occupant
does not.

The ruling by Justice David H. Souter stopped short of fully
answering that question - saying only that in the Georgia case it was clear that
Scott Fitz Randolph was at the door and objected to the officers entry.
In
his first written dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said that "the end result
is a complete lack of practical guidance for the police in the field, let alone
for the lower courts."
The case fractured a court that has shown surprising
unanimity in the five months since Roberts became chief justice. Justices
swapped barbs in their writings, with Souter calling Roberts' view a "red
herring."
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas filed separate
dissents, and Justice John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer wrote their own
opinions to explain their votes in favor of the man whose home was searched.
Stevens said that "assuming that both spouses are competent, neither one is
a master possessing the power to override the other's constitutional right to
deny entry to their castle."
Georgia had asked the court to allow it to use
evidence obtained in the 2001 search in Americus, Ga., that followed a police
domestic dispute call.
Randolph and his wife, Janet, were having marital
troubles. She led officers to evidence later used to charge her husband with
cocaine possession. That charge was on hold while the courts considered whether
the search was constitutional.
Georgia's Supreme Court ruled for Scott
Randolph, and the high court agreed.
"This case has no bearing on the
capacity of the police to protect domestic victims," Souter wrote. "No question
has been raised, or reasonably could be, about the authority of the police to
enter a dwelling to protect a resident from domestic violence; so long as they
have good reason to believe such a threat exists."
Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy was the swing voter, joining the court's four more liberal members.
Roberts' dissent was unusually long - almost as long as the main opinion. He
predicted "severe" consequences for women who invite police in only to be
overruled by their husbands.
Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in the
case, because he was not on the court when it was argued.
The case is
Georgia v. Randolph, 04-1067.

I think it was a good choice. The domest violence thing can cause a problem because if the wife ask to come in and the man says no after she had been beaten it can cause a few problems. But I definitly see Souter's side stating that one person cannot toss out the civil rights of another when one says yes and another says no. If she wanted her husband arrested all she had to do was drag out the drugs in view of the police.