Repeater
Regular Member
imported post
Analysis
In opinions so spare that the Supreme Court did not labor long to produce them, the Justices on Monday unanimously expanded the control that police can exercise at the scene ofroadside traffic stops, and, again without dissent,pushed up thechain-of-command in prosecutors’ offices total immunity to liabilityfor decisionsmade in preparing criminal cases for trial. The first ruling was an enlargement of “stop and frisk” authority, the second was a reinterpretation of when prosecutors’ supervisors do administrative tasks.
The Court has returned often to the constitutional environment that prevails along the nation’s streets and highways when police officers see a traffic violation in progress, and decide to pull over the offending vehicle. In a series of rulings, dating back nearly four decades, it has slowly built up a complex array of Fourth Amendment concepts, most of which have added to the officers’ authority “to control the scene,” as the Court put it again on Monday in further expanding that power.
That expansion has been based, in large part, on the Court’s concern that there is a considerable risk that any traffic stop could quickly escalate into “a violent encounter,” because more crime may actually be afoot than merely a violation of traffic laws, and driver or passengers may want to prevent its detection. That was the rationale the Court used again in deciding Arizona v. Johnson (07-1122).
With fewer than four full pages of analysis in a nine-page opinion,the Court decidedthat police may order a passenger out of a stopped vehicle, and then conduct a “pat-down search” (a frisk) if they have reason to believe that the rider may be armed and dangerous. (In this particular, it was assumed that the officer involved had such a reason, but that could be tested when the case returns to Arizona state courts.)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ran over the Court’s past precedents dating back to Terry v. Ohio in 1968, and concluded that the “combined thrust” of the past rulings was that officers who conduct routine traffic stops may perform a frisk of a driver and any passenger if they had “reasonable suspicion that they may be armed and dangerous.” The opinion then went on to concluded that the principle would now be made clearcut Fourth Amendment law.
If the traffic stop is not unduly prolonged by search activity following the initial stop, the opinion said, it has not been concluded for Fourth Amendment purposes until the police have completed exercising control of the scene — including a frisk when they believe someone in the vehicle may be armed and dangerous.
Analysis
In opinions so spare that the Supreme Court did not labor long to produce them, the Justices on Monday unanimously expanded the control that police can exercise at the scene ofroadside traffic stops, and, again without dissent,pushed up thechain-of-command in prosecutors’ offices total immunity to liabilityfor decisionsmade in preparing criminal cases for trial. The first ruling was an enlargement of “stop and frisk” authority, the second was a reinterpretation of when prosecutors’ supervisors do administrative tasks.
The Court has returned often to the constitutional environment that prevails along the nation’s streets and highways when police officers see a traffic violation in progress, and decide to pull over the offending vehicle. In a series of rulings, dating back nearly four decades, it has slowly built up a complex array of Fourth Amendment concepts, most of which have added to the officers’ authority “to control the scene,” as the Court put it again on Monday in further expanding that power.
That expansion has been based, in large part, on the Court’s concern that there is a considerable risk that any traffic stop could quickly escalate into “a violent encounter,” because more crime may actually be afoot than merely a violation of traffic laws, and driver or passengers may want to prevent its detection. That was the rationale the Court used again in deciding Arizona v. Johnson (07-1122).
With fewer than four full pages of analysis in a nine-page opinion,the Court decidedthat police may order a passenger out of a stopped vehicle, and then conduct a “pat-down search” (a frisk) if they have reason to believe that the rider may be armed and dangerous. (In this particular, it was assumed that the officer involved had such a reason, but that could be tested when the case returns to Arizona state courts.)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ran over the Court’s past precedents dating back to Terry v. Ohio in 1968, and concluded that the “combined thrust” of the past rulings was that officers who conduct routine traffic stops may perform a frisk of a driver and any passenger if they had “reasonable suspicion that they may be armed and dangerous.” The opinion then went on to concluded that the principle would now be made clearcut Fourth Amendment law.
If the traffic stop is not unduly prolonged by search activity following the initial stop, the opinion said, it has not been concluded for Fourth Amendment purposes until the police have completed exercising control of the scene — including a frisk when they believe someone in the vehicle may be armed and dangerous.
