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Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to the Fourth Amendment and
individual liberty yesterday. In a 5-4
ruling, the
Court said police officers can jail citizens for minor offenses
without arrest warrants. The case, Atwater v. City of
Lago Vista, lowers the constitutional threshold by which citizens
can be deprived of their liberty.
Gail Atwater
was driving her kids home from a soccer game. A toy fell out of
the vehicle in their neighborhood and Atwater was retracing their
route slowly so that the kids might be able to spot the lost toy.
A police officer pulled Atwater over and barked at her for not keeping
her kids in their seatbelts. Instead of issuing her a ticket, the
cop put Atwater in handcuffs and took her into custody. Luckily
for the Atwater family, a neighbor arrived on the scene just in
time to spare the children from temporary foster care.
Atwater spent
an hour in jail, posted bond, and returned home. She later admitted
to the seatbelt infraction and paid the $50 fine. But Atwater was
so upset by the way in which the patrolman scared her kids and bullied
her that she sued the cop and the city for violating her constitutional
rights.
The case worked
its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. The City of Lago Vista
argued that its cop noticed a legal infraction and exercised his
legal discretion in taking Atwater into custody. Police officers
might disagree among themselves as to the propriety of that decision,
but there was no constitutional violation. Atwater argued that the
Fourth Amendment constitutionalized the common-law rules pertaining
to arrests and searches — and that under the common law, police
needed an arrest warrant for misdemeanors that did not involve a
breach of the peace. Since the officer had no arrest warrant for
Atwater, her arrest was unconstitutional.
Writing for
a majority of justices, David Souter found the common law to be
unclear on the matter. The majority then quickly reached the conclusion
that the police have to have unfettered discretion because any other
rule would hamper law enforcement and foster litigation.
The Atwater
ruling is terribly mistaken because it essentially reads the Warrant
Clause out of the Constitution. In a matter of a few short years,
the term "arrest warrant" will gradually vanish from usage.
After all, why should the police apply for an arrest warrant when
the court has now given the executive branch a license to arrest
citizens whenever they believe a law has been violated?
The Framers
of the Constitution sought to limit the power of search and arrest
by dividing that power between the executive branch and the judicial
branch. If the police can convince a judicial officer with evidence
that a person committed a crime, a warrant would issue. Otherwise,
the police had to leave the citizen unmolested and continue investigating.
What's important to note here is that the constitutional presumption
favors individual liberty, not police power.
The Atwater
ruling turns the Framers presumption on its head. The Atwater
rule now give the police a green light to arrest citizens —
and we'll sort everything else out later. Amazingly, the Court admitted
that the officer who arrested Atwater exercised "extremely
poor judgment." Nevertheless, the Court callously observed
that because Atwater's attorney could not prove that such incidents
were of "epidemic" proportions, the problem could be handled
by local electoral processes.
Conservatives
are rightly indignant when liberal Supreme Court justices ignore
constitutional provisions like the Second Amendment and the Tenth
Amendment. But in this case the conservatives teamed up with David
Souter to ignore the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment.
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