First, he claims that his absence should not matter since he was absent only because the police had taken him away. Second, he maintains that it was sufficient that he objected to the search while he was still present. Such an objection, he says, should remain in effect until the objecting party “no longer wishes to keep the police out of his home.”
Not so, says the Court. Its logic:
In Randolph, the Court suggested in dictum that consent by one occupant might not be sufficient if “there is evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection.” 547 U. S., at 121. We do not believe the statement should be read to suggest that improper motive may invalidate objectively justified removal. Hence, it does not govern here.
The Randolph dictum is best understood not to require an inquiry into the subjective intent of officers who detain or arrest a potential objector but instead to refer to situations in which the removal of the potential objector is no
objectively reasonable....
“Indeed, we have never held, outside limited contexts such as an ‘inventory search or administrative inspection . . . , that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment.’”
The ruling:
We therefore hold that an occupant who is absent due to a lawful detention or arrest stands in the same shoes as an occupant who is absent for any other reason.
How is this not twisted logic? By the Court's analysis, a warrant is never needed to search a home so long as police arrest the person when he opens the door, and after he's whisked away, get the remaining occupant to consent.
If police cause the absence, they should be required to either honor the objection the resident made before being hauled off or get a warrant.
The Court also praises warrantless consent searches because they lessen the burden on cops:
A warrantless consent search is reasonable and thus consistent with the Fourth Amendment irrespective of the availability of a warrant. Even with modern technological advances, the warrant procedure imposes burdens on the officers who wish to search, the magistrate who must review the warrant application, and the party willing to give consent. When a warrantless search is justified, requiring the police to obtain a warrant may “unjustifiably interfer[e] with legitimate law enforcement strategies.”
It also says the rights of the consenting occupant should be honored over the objecting resident's rights.
The lawful occupant of a house or apartment should have the right to invite the police to enter the dwelling and conduct a search. Any other rule would trample on the rights of the occupant who is willing to consent.
Not until the last paragraph does the Court's motive come through: This is a victim's rights case, and the rights of the victim are paramount.
Denying someone in Rojas’ position the right to allow the police to enter her home would also show disrespect for her independence. Having beaten Rojas, petitioner would bar her from controlling access to her own home until such time as he chose to relent. The Fourth Amendment does not give him that power.
Someone should remind the Court that Bill of Rights, including the Fourth Amendment, was designed to protect the rights of those accused of crime, not crime victims.
So, five male justices viewed the case through the lens of a domestic violence victim, while the three women justices held out for the Constitution. (Scalia went his own way in a concurring opinion, talking about property rights). The dissent:
[T]his case has no bearing on the capacity of the police to protect domestic victims. . . . 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 . . . Domestic abuse is indeed “a serious problem in the United States,” ... appropriate policy responses to this scourge may include fostering effective counseling, providing public information about, and ready access to, protective orders, and enforcing such orders diligently. As the Court understood in Randolph, however, the specter of domestic abuse hardly necessitates the diminution of the Fourth Amendment rights at stake here.
The dissent has some good quotes, including this one from a 1948 case, Johnson v. United States:
The warrant requirement, Justice Jackson observed, ranks among the fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police state where they are the law.
A few more dissent quotes:
"[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals. At the Amendment’s ‘very core’ stands ‘the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’”...“[T]he physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which. . . the Fourth Amendment is directed.”
...the Framers saw the neutral magistrate as an essential part of the criminal process shielding all of us, good or bad, saint or sinner, from unchecked police activity.
...the Fourth Amendment, the Court has long recognized, “reflects the view of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the privacy of a person’s home and property may not be totally sacrificed in the name of maximum simplicity in enforcement of the criminal law.”
