scholarly journals Third-Party Consent Searches, the Supreme Court, and the Fourth Amendment

2000 ◽  
pp. 11-43
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Supreme Court

Dangerous Warrants

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nirej Sekhon
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Police Discretion ◽  
Accurate Identification ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Local Courts ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Municipal Court

The Supreme Court has cast judicial warrants as the Fourth Amendment gold standard for regulating police discretion. It has embraced a "warrant preference" on the premise that requiring police to obtain advance judicial approval for searches and seizures encourages accurate identification of evidence and suspects while minimizing interference with constitutional rights. The Court and commentators have overlooked the fact that most outstanding warrants do none of these things. Most outstanding warrants are what this article terms "non-compliance warrants": summarily issued arrest warrants for failures to comply with a court or police order. State and local courts are profligate in issuing such warrants for minor offenses. For example, the Department of Justice found that the municipal court in Ferguson, Missouri issued one warrant for every two of its residents. When issued as wantonly as this, warrants are dangerous because they generate police discretion rather than restrain it. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has, most recently in Utah v. Strieff, treated non-compliance warrants as if no different from the traditional warrants that gave rise to the Fourth Amendment warrant preference. This article argues that non-compliance warrants pose unique dangers, constitutional and otherwise. Non-compliance warrants create powerful incentives for the police to conduct unconstitutional stops, particularly in poor and minority neighborhoods. Their enforcement also generates race and class feedback loops. Outstanding warrants beget arrests and arrests beget more warrants. Over time, this dynamic amplifies race and class disparities in criminal justice. The article concludes by prescribing a Fourth Amendment remedy to deter unconstitutional warrant checks. More importantly, the article identifies steps state and local courts might take to stem the continued proliferation of non-compliance warrants.

The Application of Presumptions to the Derivative forms of an Offence

1968 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Z. Feller
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The State ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
State Of Israel

Both the facts of The State of Israel v. Siman Tov, and the solution adopted in that case by the Supreme Court, raise, it is felt, a number of legal problems which warrant particular attention.The respondent, Siman Tov, owner of a grocer's shop, sold goods worth IL. 6,000 on credit to someone called Pressman. When Siman Tov requested payment from Pressman, the latter offered him U.S. $4,000 which Siman Tov was to deposit with a third party of his own choice in return for a loan of IL. 12,000, on the understanding that Siman Tov would deduct the money owing to him from this last sum and hand over the balance of IL. 6,000 to Pressman. Siman Tov accepted the offer and received from Pressman a package containing 4,000 ostensibly genuine dollar banknotes. He then approached a neighbour, Binat, who agreed to accept the dollars as security for a loan of the equivalent sum in Israeli pounds. On examining the package and finding that the dollars were counterfeit, Binat returned them to Siman Tov and refused to go on with the transaction. Siman Tov for his part had believed the notes to be genuine until Binat's disclosure.

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