No Need to Shout: Bus Sweeps and the Psychology of Coercion
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JANICE NADLER NO NEED TO SHOUT: BUS SWEEPS AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COERCION In the last two decades,the SupremeCourt repeatedlyhas exam- ined consensualencounters between citizens and police that lead to searches.Law enforcementagencies rely heavilyon the consensual encounter technique to discover evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing,especially narcotics trafficking. But police-citizenen- countersand requeststo searchpose challengesto the boundaries of the FourthAmendment. When is an encounterbetween a citi- zen and a police officer a consensualone, and when does such an encounter rise to the level of a seizure?When a citizen gives a police officerpermission to searchhis or her bags or person,under what circumstancesis such permissionconsidered voluntary, and under what circumstancesis such grant of permissionno longer voluntarybut instead mere acquiescenceto legitimate authority? The police tactic of approachingand requestingto searchin the absenceof individualizedsuspicion is reportedlyan importantlaw enforcement tool,1 and in some localities it is used quite fre- quently.2These encounterstypically take place in one of a few Janice Nadler is Assistant Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, and Re- search Fellow, American Bar Foundation. AUTHOR'sNOTE: I am grateful to the following people for conversations and comments: Ron Allen, Leigh Bienen, Shari Diamond, Adam Galinsky, Jen Hay, Lauren Kanter, Rich- ard McAdams, Tracey Meares, Tom Merrill, Don Moore, Michael Roloff, and Mary Rose. Thanks to Amanda Dykema-Engblade, Cristina Lane, David Hazan, Justin Ruaysamran, and Emily Solberg for research assistance, and to the American Bar Foundation for financial support. Amicus Brief of Washington Legal Foundation and the Allied Educational Foundation as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner, United States v Drayton, 122 S Ct 2105 (2002). 2 For example, one officer testified that he searched more than 3,000 bags over the course of nine months. Florida v Kerwick,512 So2d 347, 349 (1987) (noting that in the Florida ? 2003 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0-226-36319-8/2003/2002-0004$10.00 153 154 THE SUPREMECOURT REVIEW [2002 settings:during the course of a trafficstop, in the waiting rooms of airportsor train stations, or on board intercity (Greyhound) buses. In the last decade the Court has focused its attention twice on the last category, otherwiseknown as "bus sweeps,"in which the police conduct suspicionlesssearches of bus passengers andtheir possessions pursuant to the passengers'consent. Typically, the police board a Greyhoundbus during a scheduledstopover,3 and make known to passengerstheir mission of conducting"drug interdiction."4While on the bus, police approachindividual pas- sengers, sometimesask for informationabout destinationand ask to see identification,and then ask the passengerto identifyhis or her carry-onbaggage. The officersthen sometimesask the passen- ger for consent to search the passenger'sbag or person or both. In bus sweep cases there are commonlytwo FourthAmendment issues. The first is whether the passengerhas been seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.The second is whether the passenger'sconsent to the officers'request to searchwas vol- untary.In the bus sweep situation,these two questionsare often intertwined,as I will discussin more detail below. The Court's most recent pronouncementabout the bounds of seizureand consent came this past term in a bus sweep case, United Statesv Drayton.'Eleven years earlier,in Floridav Bostick6-acase with very similar facts-the Court ruled that police requests to searchbus passengersare not coerciveper se. In Bostick,however, the police had informed passengersof their right to refuse the searchrequest; in Draytonthe police gaveno such warnings.None- theless, Drayton'sholding-that despitethe failureof police to ad- vise passengersof their right to refuse, there was no seizure and county in question, police officers approach every person on board buses and trains ("that time permits") and ask for consent to search luggage). Id. An appellate court in Ohio noted that police requests for consent to search during routine traffic stops had become standard practice in Ohio. Ohio v Retherferd,639 NE2d 498, 503 (Ohio 1994). 3This is typically arranged in advance with the driver or done pursuant to an ongoing agreement. Sometimes, police pay cash to the bus driver in exchange for permitting the search. See Tom Gibb, Bus Stop Drug Searches Getting Mixed Reviews, Pittsburgh Post- Gazette B1 (Apr 19, 2000) (reporting that one officer testified that he had paid the bus driver $50 after a search uncovered illegal drugs). 4 Police make their mission known to passengers either by way of a general announcement or during the course of conversation with individual passengers. s 122 S Ct 2105 (2002). 6 501 US 429 (1991). 4] NO NEEDTO SHOUT 155 that the searchin questionwas reasonable-is not particularlysur- prising, given Bostickand the Court's prior consent search deci- sions. What is remarkable,however, is the ever-wideninggap between FourthAmendment consent jurisprudence,on the one hand, and scientificfindings about the psychologyof complianceand consent on the other. Ever since the Court first applied the "totality of the circumstances"standard to consent searchissues in Schneckloth v Bustamonte7in 1973, it has held in case after case, with only a few exceptions,that a reasonableperson in the situationin ques- tion either would feel free to terminatethe encounterwith police, or would feel free to refuse the police requestto search.By con- trast, empiricalstudies over the last severaldecades on the social psychologyof compliance,conformity, social influence,and polite- ness have all convergedon a single conclusion:the extent to which people feel free to refuse to comply is extremelylimited under situationallyinduced pressures.These situationalpressures often are imperceptibleto a personexperiencing them; at the same time, they can be so overwhelmingthat attemptsto reduce them with prophylacticwarnings are insufficient. The questionof whethera citizenfeels free to terminatea police encounter depends cruciallyon certain empiricalclaims, as does the question of whether a citizen's grant of permissionto search is voluntary.These questionscannot reliablybe answeredsolely from the comfortof one's armchair,while reflectingonly on one's own experience.An examinationof the existingempirical evidence on the psychology of coercion suggests that in many situations where citizensfind themselvesin an encounterwith the police, the encounteris not consensualbecause a reasonableperson would not feel free to terminatethe encounter.Furthermore, such evidence suggeststhat often the subsequentsearch is not in fact voluntary, because a reasonableperson would not be, under the totality of the circumstances,in a positionto makea voluntarydecision about consent.This is especiallytrue in the bus sweep situation,as I will demonstratein detail. Even worse, the existing empiricalevidence also suggests that observersoutside of the situation systematicallyoverestimate the 7412 US 218 (1973). 156 THE SUPREMECOURT REVIEW [2002 extent to which citizens in police encounters feel free to refuse. Members of the Court are themselves such outside observers, and this partly explains why the Court repeatedly has held that police- citizen encounters are consensual and that consent to search was freely given. In fact, the Court's focus in Drayton on the desirabil- ity of Miranda-type warnings in situations potentially implicating the Fourth Amendment is misplaced, because it is likely that citi- zens attach virtually no meaning whatever to these warnings. In light of mounting empirical evidence, it is remarkable that the "totality of the circumstances" standard has nearly always led the Court to the conclusion that a reasonable person would feel free to refuse the police request to search. Fourth Amendment consent jurisprudence is now at a point where the Court's reason- ing must struggle against scientific findings about compliance. The majority opinion in Drayton is filled with assertions that are im- plausible in light of research on social influence (e.g., "the presence of a holstered firearm thus is unlikely to contribute to the coercive- ness of the encounter absent active brandishing of the weapon").8 Thus, the Court's Fourth Amendment consent jurisprudence is ei- ther based on serious errors about human behavior and judgment, or else has devolved into a fiction of the crudest sort-a mere device for attaining the desired legal consequence. The direction the Court has taken in this area is likely to lead to several unwelcome consequences. First, the fiction of consent in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has led to suspicionless searches of many thousands of innocent citizens who "consent" to searches under coercive circumstances. Perhaps the systematic suspicionless searching of innocent citizens is a worthwhile price to pay in exchange for effective law enforcement, but the Court has not engaged in this analysis in any of its Fourth Amendment consent search or seizure cases. Second, the Court's repeated insis- tence that citizens feel free to refuse law enforcement officers' re- quests to search creates a confusing standard for lower courts, be- cause it is unclear in new cases how to weigh the "totality of the circumstances" if the "correct" result is virtually always that the encounter and search were consensual. Incorporation of empirical findings on compliance and social influence