Supreme Court Expands Fourth Amendment Protections

Written by: Phillip E. Friduss, Esq. 

Getting hit by a bullet but still escaping in the getaway car implicates the Fourth Amendment after all sayeth Chief Justice Roberts in a heated 5-3 Opinion along ideological lines.  Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the case, which was argued in October before she took her seat.

Below you will find links to both the Majority and Dissenting Opinions, as well as a fine article covering the case by William & Mary Law School’s Prof. Jefferey Bellin.  Below is a healthy blurb from that article, followed by the mentioned links.

In a 5-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the majority reversed, concluding that the officers seized Torres even though she subsequently fled. The outcome fits neatly into the closest precedent, the 1991 case California v. Hodari D. In that case, the court explained that “[t]he word ‘seizure’ readily bears the meaning of a laying on of hands or application of physical force to restrain movement, even when it is ultimately unsuccessful.” (Emphasis added.) Pointing to this and other language in that case, the chief justice notes in the Torres opinion that “[w]e largely covered this ground in California v. Hodari D.”

Roberts takes pains, however, to set the opinion on its own feet. Over a strident dissent, he explains that whether or not the court is bound by stare decisis (the justices’ on-again-off-again efforts to follow precedent), the justices “independently reach the same conclusions” here. The majority opinion does so on two primary grounds: history and text.

History often comes up short in Fourth Amendment cases because policing as we know it was almost non-existent in the 18th century. The majority insists, however, that this time, the “cases and commentary speak with virtual unanimity on the question before us today.” But the majority’s certainty rings hollow when it identifies “the closest decision” as the 1605 Countess of Rutland’s Case. In that case, the “serjeants-at-mace” were executing a debt-collection judgment against Isabel Holcroft, an English noblewoman. The sergeants touched Holcroft with (you guessed it) a mace, while exclaiming “we arrest you, madam.” The majority explains that since an arrest is undoubtedly a “seizure” and getting touched with a mace is like getting hit with a bullet, this history points the way toward today’s holding.

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https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-292_21p3.pdf

Divided court issues bright-line ruling on Fourth Amendment seizures