Police Can Lie to Search Your Home Rules Fed Court of Appeals

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By Kody Fairfield

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that law enforcement officials may lie to gain consent to search private property.

The Washington Examiner reports that the split decision from a three-judge panel had its decision written by Judge William Pryor, a name on the short list for Trump Supreme Court nominees, in which he stated:

“Not all deception by law enforcement invalidates voluntary consent” to a search, Pryor wrote in affirming the lower courts’ rulings in U.S.v. Eric Jermaine Spivey, Chenequa Austin.

“Austin and Spivey deride the ‘shocking’ nature of the ‘misconduct’ in this case, but we are ‘not empowered to forbid law enforcement practices simply because [we] consider them distasteful,'” Pryor wrote. “The district court did not clearly err in determining that the ‘ruse’ did not coerce Austin into giving her consent involuntarily.”

Austin and Spivey, with whom the original case spurred from, lived in the same home and shared a love for credit card fraud and had been robbed twice at the home. However, when police apprehended the burglar, they told the authorities that the residence had evidence of credit-card fraud in it, explained the Washington Examiner.

“Two officers, one posing as a crime-scene technician, came to their house on the pretense of following up on the burglaries, but mainly, unbeknownst to them, to investigate them for suspected fraud,” the court’s opinion noted. “After the officers saw a card-embossing machine, stacks of cards and a lot of high-end merchandise in plain view, they informed Spivey that they investigated credit-card fraud. Spivey then consented to a full search that turned up a weapon, drugs and additional evidence of fraud.”

Austin and Spivey, according to the Washington Examiner, then attempted to suppress the evidence collected, but a district court “denied the motion because it said that consent had been received from both tenants.

Therefore, the 11th Court, because voluntary consent had been received, said that no 4th Amendment violation had occurred, reported the Washington Examiner.

Judge Beverly Martin, the one dissenting opinion on the panel, wrote that she thought it was “clear” that Austin did not “voluntarily” give the officers consent to search the residence, explained the Washington Examiner.

“This litigation could have easily been avoided. Instead of planning their ruse, the officers could have gotten a warrant,” Martin wrote. “There is no exception that fits this case. I am concerned that the majority opinion blesses the deliberate circumvention of constitutional protections, and in this way undermines the public trust in police.”

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1 comment

เช็คบัญชีมิจฉาชีพ March 27, 2024 at 7:54 pm

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