As reported in today's News Scan, the California Supreme Court has handed down its decision in People v. Brendlin. Yesterday's decision adopted a rule "that discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant prior to a search incident to arrest constitutes an intervening circumstance that may - and, in the absence of purposeful or flagrant police misconduct, will - attenuate the taint of the antecedent unlawful traffic stop." In other words, the drug paraphernalia found on Brendlin should be admitted as evidence even though the warrant for his arrest would not have been discovered "[b]ut for the unlawful vehicle stop." The lesson: if you have violated parole, and have a warrant out for your arrest, don't drive around in a car with containers that are used to make methamphetamine.
This was not the first time the California Supreme Court had heard Brendlin's case. In 2006, the court held that a passenger in a vehicle subject to a traffic stop is not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment unless the passenger can show he was the subject of the officer's investigation and did not feel free to leave. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected this holding last April.
Recently in Search and Seizure Category
The transcript in Pearson v. Callahan is available here. The case involves a civil suit against police who entered a house to make a drug arrest under the "consent once removed" exception. This problematic theory posits that once the drug dealer invites an undercover officer, or perhaps a police informant, into the house for the sale, he has consented to police entry or no longer has a reasonable expectation of privacy.
"But there is not a Barney Fife defense to violation of the Fourth Amendment, either." Pamela Karlan, for the defendant, got off that good line in yesterday's oral argument in Herring v. United States, No. 07-513. On the whole though, she had a pretty rough time of it. Orin Kerr at VC thinks it's "a pretty clear win for the government."
The Question Presented is, "Whether the Fourth Amendment requires evidence found during a search incident to an arrest to be suppressed when the arresting officer conducted the arrest and search in sole reliance upon facially credible but erroneous information negligently provided by another law enforcement agent."
