Supreme Court hears search and seizure, pension cases

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Supreme Court hears search and seizure, pension cases

October 8, 2008 06:18:00 am

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments Tuesday in three cases, including two raising issues of criminal procedure. In Herring v. United States [Cornell LII backgrounder; merit briefs], 07-513, the Court will decide whether evidence seized during a search incident to an arrest must be suppressed when the sole premise for the arrest was information later found to be negligently provided by another law enforcement agency. More specifically, the Court must decide whether using the evidence found incident to such an arrest would violate Fourth Amendment [text] protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] last July that such suppression would not significantly deter the law enforcement agency providing the misinformation, because it would affect only the agency conducting the arrest. Representing the petitioner during Tuesday's arguments [transcript], Pamela Karlan told the justices:

Our view is, just as is true with respect to probable cause, the fact that 99 percent of a department's arrests are with probable cause doesn't mean that when they arrest someone without probable cause you say, well, you get one bite at the apple or a sort of "good enough for government work" theory.

Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben countered that "[i]n this case, where nothing is shown other than a negligent and isolated clerical error in the maintenance of warrants, there is no showing that suppression of evidence will achieve … appreciable deterrence."

The Court also heard arguments [transcript] Tuesday in Arizona v. Gant [Cornell LII backgrounder; merit briefs], 07-542, presenting the question of whether "the Fourth Amendment require[s] law enforcement officers to demonstrate a threat to their safety or a need to preserve evidence related to the crime of arrest in order to justify a warrantless vehicular search incident to arrest conducted after the vehicle's recent occupants have been arrested and secured." Arizona is appealing an Arizona Supreme Court ruling [PDF text] that Rodney Joseph Gant's constitutional rights were violated when police searched his car after he was handcuffed and seated in a police car.

The final case argued [transcript] Tuesday was Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan [backgrounder; merit briefs], 07-636, where the Court will consider whether the Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) provision [text; DOL backgrounder] of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) is the exclusive means by which to waive one's right to a divorcing spouse's pension benefits. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the provision does not permit a waiver at common law.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.