Searches and Seizures in Society

The article that was posted on the New York Times website was about the ruling of a case through police misconduct. The officer pulled over a gentleman, known as Bradley Harrison, who was driving a rented vehicle with over seventy-seven pounds of cocaine in the back of his vehicle. When the police officer pulled him over due to missing a front-end license plate, which is acceptable within the country of Alberta, where you’re not required to have one in the front, he began to proceed on a search on the vehicle where he found the disturbing evidence. As a result, the court system agreed to the police misconduct but not to suppress the evidence that was found in the back of Harrison’s truck (Liptak, 2008). The article goes on about different countries and their methods of police misconduct and how they don’t suppress evidence due to police misconduct. However, the United States tends to be the only country that suppresses evidence immediately after police misconduct has been found, due to the act of the exclusionary rule. The exclusion of evidence should never occur in any case which evidence is found. If police misconduct is found, even if the people have the right from unlawful searches, the officer should be tried for misconduct where he would receive a hearing to maintain his badge or lose it and be required to some sort of training or punishment for the violation of civil rights. As for the victim, the victim should never be released to police misconduct or a violation of their rights. However a strong, reduced sentence for the violation he or she has committed should be sufficient because of the fact that he was still doing something completely illegal in the country’s eyes. As for the exclusionary rule, it should be set to scale depending on the violation. For example, if the officer who performed the misconduct found a small amount of drugs within your vehicle, it should be easy enough to say that it’s not that big of a deal but suggest that they should really receive some help. However if police misconduct is found and you found a bomb in the vehicle lets say, to exclude such evidence towards the individual would be a little harder than the case of a small amount of drugs.

In April 2007, a law enforcement officer heard that a woman, Charlotte Yvonne Turner, who was on parole for having sold drugs, was selling cocaine. Shortly after, the officer pulled her over for driving without a seatbelt, which he later admitted to being a pretext. His intentions were to find drugs. During the stop, he searched her and found a large sum of cash. The officer and his partner believed it had come from selling drugs, and they decided to search her house. During the search, they found a loaded gun. They charged Turner with being a felon in possession of a handgun (Carey, 2009). The warrantless search described in this case is a combination of two different forms of an automobile search. The officer both searched the driver and performed a pretext stop. “A pretext stop is one in which police officers stop a car because they suspect the driver is involved in a crime such as drug trafficking, but, lacking probable cause, they use a pretext such as a minor traffic violation to stop the car and search its interior” (Siegel, 2009). Officers are allowed to search the driver and the passenger of a car in order to secure their own safety. The officer did not obtain a warrant due to the fact that he had probable cause at the moment to search Turner. The judge ruled that the search in the home was unlawful, and the Court of Criminal Appeals supported his decision. The Supreme Court then overturned the judge’s ruling and ordered the case back to court. On October 15, 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that “people on probation should not expect the same degree of legal privacy enjoyed by private citizens who have not been convicted of a crime” (Carey, 2009). This ruling increased the power of Tennessee law enforcement, regarding warrantless searches.

The purpose of the Miranda warning is to protect people's fifth and fourteenth amendments. The Miranda Warning means that suspects in custody must be told that they have the following rights:
~"They have the right to remain silent.
~If they decide to make a statement, the statement can and will be used against them in a court of law.
~They have the right to have an attorney present at the time of the interrogation, or they will have an opportunity to consult with an attorney.
~If they cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for them by the state (Siegel, 2009).

Example Situations in which a person's illegally obtained statements can still be used against them:
1) If a suspect makes an ambiguous reference to an attorney during their questioning they are not protected under Miranda. This includes saying such as "maybe I should talk to an attorney” (Siegel, 2009).
2) "An attorney's request to see the defendant odes not affect the validity of the defendant's waiver of the right to counsel” (Siegel, 2009). If your friends or family hired an attorney for you for example and you made statements voluntarily even though your family hired an attorney, the statements were made before the attorney arrived and therefore are not affected by Miranda Law.
3) "A suspect can be questioned in the field without a Miranda warning if the information the police seek is needed to protect public safety” (Siegel, 2009). For example in an emergency, if the police ask you where you hid your weapons.

Carey, Clay (2009, October 16). Tennessee police have more power to search without warrants. The Tennessean. Retrieved from http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091016/NEWS03/910160343/-1/RSS05.

Liptak, Adam (2008, July 19). U.S. is alone in rejecting all evidence if police err. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/us/19exclude.html?_r=1.

Siegel, L.J. (2009). Introduction to criminal justice. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

Image retrieved from: http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2005/august2005/august05leb_img_16.jpg