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Diminishing Probable Cause and Minimalist Searches Kit Kinports Penn State Law Penn State Law eLibrary Journal Articles Faculty Works 2009 Diminishing Probable Cause and Minimalist Searches Kit Kinports Penn State Law Follow this and additional works at: http://elibrary.law.psu.edu/fac_works Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, and the Fourth Amendment Commons Recommended Citation Kit Kinports, Diminishing Probable Cause and Minimalist Searches, 6 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 649 (2009). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Works at Penn State Law eLibrary. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Penn State Law eLibrary. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Diminishing Probable Cause and Minimalist Searches Kit Kinports* A quarter of a century has now passed since the Supreme Court redefined probable cause in Illinois v. Gates, adopting a "fluid," "practical, common-sense," totality-of-the-circumstances test that asks whether "there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place."' The Court's definition of the reasonable suspicion necessary to conduct a stop and frisk is likewise a "commonsense" totality-of-the-circumstances test.2 Over the years, the Court has extended the reasonable suspicion standard beyond the stop-and-frisk context, 3 but it has nevertheless maintained a distinction between the concept of probable cause and the "obviously less demanding" requirement of reasonable suspicion.4 Recently, however, phrases like "reasonable belief' and "reason to believe" have crept into Supreme Court opinions analyzing intrusions that generally require proof of probable cause. The Court has not specifically rejected the probable cause requirement or adopted a reasonable suspicion standard in these cases; in fact, it has given no indication that it is altering the required quantum of proof. But by using such language, without further definition or discussion of its relationship to probable cause and reasonable suspicion, the Court risks melding the two standards. At the same time, it sets the stage for lines to be drawn between ordinary criminal law-enforcement searches depending on whether they can be characterized as minimally or highly intrusive. Any such fundamental alterations of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence should be made transparently and not accomplished by means of indirection. I. "REASONABLE BELIEFS" AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT In two opinions issued in 2006, the Supreme Court used the phrase "reason to believe" in discussing the doctrine of exigent circumstances. Exigency has historically been considered a justification for dispensing with a warrant, but not * Professor & Polisher Family Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law. A.B. 1976, Brown University; J.D. 1980, University of Pennsylvania. ' 462 U.S. 213, 232, 238 (1983). 2 See, e.g., United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18 (1981). 3 See United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 121 (2001) (search of probationer's home); Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 394-95 (1997) (no-knock entry); Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334 & n.2 (1990) (protective sweep). 4 United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989). 649 650 OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW [Vol 6:649 an exception to probable cause.5 In neither opinion did the Court cite any support for the phrase, or describe its relationship to probable cause and reasonable suspicion. The language appearing in these decisions thus creates an ambiguity as to whether the Court is adhering to the traditional definition of probable cause, replacing it with a reasonable suspicion requirement, or creating yet a third standard, possibly an amalgam of the other two or something in between. In the first of the two cases, Georgia v. Randolph, the majority thought there was "no question" that police may enter a home to protect a victim of domestic violence "so long as they have good reason to believe such a threat exists." 6 This observation prompted Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia to complain in dissent that the majority was "alter[ing] established Fourth Amendment rules" and "spin[ning] out an entirely new framework for analyzing exigent circumstances," creating a new warrant exception allowing "warrantless entry short of exigency in potential domestic abuse situations." 7 Just two months later, in Brigham City v. Stuart, it was somewhat surprisingly the Chief Justice himself, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, who commented that the police may make a warrantless entry into a home if they have "an objectively reasonable basisfor believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury."8 Although the Court's focus in what Justice Stevens called "an odd flyspeck of a case" 9 was on rejecting the lower court's view that a police officer's subjective motivations are relevant in applying the exigent circumstances exception, the Court did not indicate whether it was requiring the probable cause typically needed to justify a warrantless search based on exigency or some lesser standard of proof. Thus, notwithstanding Justice Stevens' assertion, it is not so clear that the Court's opinion in Stuart merely "restat[ed] well-settled rules of federal law."' 0 These two decisions did not come completely out of the blue; terms like "reasonable belief' and "reason to believe" can be found in earlier Supreme Court opinions as well. Several years before the Gates decision, in the course of holding that the police must obtain a warrant in order to make an in-home arrest, the Court observed in Payton v. New York that an arrest warrant allows entry into the home "when there is reason to believe the suspect is within."" Although some Justices 5 See, e.g., Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 34 (1970). 6 547 U.S. 103, 118 (2006) (emphasis added) (responding to the dissent's concerns about the impact of the Court's holding-that the consent search exception does not apply where one co- occupant is present and objects to the search-on domestic violence victims). 7 Id. at 140, 141 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (emphasis added). ' 547 U.S. 398,400 (2006) (emphasis added). 9 Id. at 407 (Stevens, J., concurring). 10 Id. ' 445 U.S. 573, 602 (1980) (emphasis added). 2009] DIMINISHING PROBABLE CA USE AND MINIMALIST SEARCHES 651 interpreted this language as equivalent to a probable cause requirement,' 2 the Payton majority likely intended to endorse some lesser standard given that it expressly rejected the need for' 3 "a search warrant based on probable cause to believe the suspect is at home."' More recently, in Thornton v. United States, Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Ginsburg, took the position that the warrant exception for searches incident to the arrest of a vehicle's occupants should be restricted to situations where "it is reasonable to believe" the police might discover "evidence relevant to the crime of arrest.' 14 The two Justices did not further clarify this standard, or discuss its relationship to probable cause and reasonable suspicion. Presumably, however, they did not intend to require probable cause, which would independently entitle the police to search the vehicle under the automobile exception. Adding to the confusion created by the appearance of phrases like "reasonable belief' and "reason to believe" untethered to either probable cause or reasonable suspicion, the Court has on other occasions specifically equated these terms both with reasonable suspicion and with probable cause. Linguistically, the phrases seem more closely aligned with reasonable suspicion, and in fact in Terry itself, the Court noted that an officer who has "reason to believe" a suspect is armed and dangerous may conduct a frisk, "regardless of whether he has probable cause to 5 arrest." 1 Likewise, Maryland v. Buie authorized protective sweeps based on reasonable suspicion, specifically requiring the police to have "'a reasonable belief ... that the area swept harbored an individual posing a danger to the officer 16 or others."' By contrast, other Supreme Court opinions have associated terms like "reasonable belief' with probable cause. In Maryland v. Pringle, for example, the Court observed that "'[t]he substance of all the definitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief of guilt.""' 17 Similarly, Illinois v. Gates, in describing the probable cause determination made in Ker v. California, noted that the police ' ' ' 8 had "'a reasonable belief.., that Ker was illegally in possession of marijuana. 12 See id. at 616 n.13 (White, J., dissenting); see also Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 341 n.3 (1990) (Brennan, J., dissenting). " Payton, 445 U.S. at 602. In fact, the lower courts have most often read the Payton standard as a "unique formulation" somewhat lower than probable cause. Matthew A. Edwards, Posner's Pragmatismand Payton Home Arrests, 77 WASH. L. REv. 299, 363 (2002). 14 541 U.S. 615, 632 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment) (emphasis added). The majority declined to express an opinion on this issue because it had not been addressed by the parties. See 541 U.S. at 624 n.4. 15 Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27 (1968). 16 494 U.S. 325, 327 (1990) (quoting Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1049 (1983)). See also United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 880-81 (1975). 17 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003) (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175 (1949)). 18 462 U.S. 213, 233 n.7 (1983) (quoting Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 36 (1963)). See also Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 305, 302 (1999) (refusing to require that police have "positive reason to believe" evidence may be in the possession of a passenger, in rejecting the contention that OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW [Vol 6:649 Finally, the term "reasonable belief' has appeared in several Supreme Court opinions that are sometimes viewed as falling within an "emergency" or "community-caretaking" exception to the warrant requirement.
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