United States v. Santana

Petitioner
United States
Respondents
Mom Santana, et al.
Petitioner's Claim
That Santana's arrest for possession of heroin with intent to distribute waslegally admissible, despite the fact that the arrest occurred within her homeand without benefit of a search or arrest warrant.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Frank H. Easterbrook
Chief Lawyer for Respondents
Dennis H. Eisman
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
24 June 1976
Decision
Reversed the finding of the court of appeals, ruling that the respondents' arrest was legal given the fact that Santana was first confronted in the vestibule of her home, and the actual arrest occurred during "hot pursuit."
Significance
The ruling confirmed the Court's view that warrantless searches and arrests may be conducted in public places as long as police can show probable cause for their actions as developed in United States v. Watson (1976) and Katz v. United States (1967). Dissenting justices maintained that policecould manipulate circumstances to create the conditions necessary for warrantless search and arrest given the latitude for action that this decision allows them in pursuing criminal investigations and detentions.
A Drug Bust
In August 1974 undercover police officer Michael Gilletti of the Philadelphianarcotics squad set up a purchase of heroin from a woman named Patricia McCafferty. Officer Gilletti had purchased illegal drugs from McCafferty in the past, and when he approached her to set a time for his buy, McCafferty told him to meet her at a set location, and to bring $115 with him. After obtaining$110 in marked bills from his commanding officer, Gilletti met McCafferty andthe pair drove to the home of Mom Santana, to purchase the heroin.
McCafferty took Gilletti's money and entered the house, pausing first to speak with a man named Alejandro (who became one of the respondents in this case), and emerged shortly thereafter bearing several envelopes containing heroin,which she handed over to Gilletti. At this point Gilletti identified himselfas a police officer, placed McCafferty under arrest, informed her the policewould be raiding Santana's house shortly, and asked her what had happened tothe money he had given her. McCafferty informed him that she had given the money to Mom Santana, and Gilletti passed this information along to Sergeant Pruitt, who would lead the raid.
When Pruitt and his team arrived, they saw Santana standing in the doorway ofher house with a brown paper bag in her hand. As the officers got out of their vehicles and approached Santana, she attempted to withdraw into her house,but was apprehended in the vestibule. As she tried to elude the officers, Santana dropped several "glazed paper packets" containing a "white powder" (subsequently identified as heroin). Alejandro picked up the packets and attempted to make off with them, but was apprehended before he could leave the premises. Santana was then ordered to empty her pockets, and was found to be in possession of $70 of the marked bills given to McCafferty by Gilletti.
Charges and Preliminary Trials
Santana and Alejandro were charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute, and McCafferty was charged with distribution of heroin, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. McCafferty pled guilty to the charges against her, but Santana and Alejandro moved that the heroin and money seized from them in the arrest be suppressed since it had beenobtained without benefit of a warrant. The district court upheld the respondents' contention, stating that although probable cause existed to suspect Santana of participating in the drug buy made by McCafferty, one of the police officers involved in the operation testified that its true objective was the arrest of Santana, while another officer testified that the true objective wasthe recovery of the money planted by Gilletti. If either of these were the true objective of the raid, a warrant would have been required for its execution. The circuit court also found that Santana's retreat into her house did notconstitute a flight from the police, and, as such, that the police did not have the right to follow her into the house without possessing a warrant, on the grounds of being in "hot pursuit" of a suspect. The case was then heard bythe state court of appeals, which upheld the ruling of the district court inall its parts. The U.S. Attorney General's office then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case, and the Court heard arguments in the matter on27 April 1976.
Search and Seizure
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits unreasonable search and seizure of individuals and their property. The Amendment defines reasonable searches and seizures as those which are conducted under legal warrant issued due to the existence of probable cause that wrongdoing will be uncovered by them. Throughout its history, the Supreme Court has wavered in its interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. This wavering has centered around a fundamental question: are only searches and seizures conducted under legal warrants admissible, or are there some occasions when a search or seizure may be undertaken without a warrant. During the decade of the 1970s, the Court considered this issue on several occasions, and established precedents which were applied to its ruling in United States v. Santana.
The Court handed down its decision in the case on 24 June 1976, reversing thelower court rulings and holding that the actions of the Philadelphia policewere legal and the evidence obtained in the raid against Santana was admissible in court. Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority, identified two questions as being crucial to the Court's view of the case. The Court consideredif Santana was in a public place when the police attempted to arrest her andif were the police were justified in following Santana into her home to achieve her arrest. With regard to the first question, the Court relied on its rulings in United States v. Watson and Katz v. United States, as precedents. In Watson the Court ruled that a warrantless arrest of a person in a public area, given the existence of probable cause, did not violatethe Fourth Amendment. In Katz, the Court held that "what a person knowingly exposes in public, even in his own house or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." In the Court's opinion Santana, by standing in her doorway where she was as "exposed to public view, speech, hearing, andtouch as if she had been standing completely outside her house," had been ina public place when the police began their attempt to apprehend her. This view also answered the second question, in that Santana's retirement into her house constituted an attempt to flee police pursuit, making the entry by the police into her house legally admissible as a result of their "hot pursuit" ofa fleeing suspect. The right of police to pursue suspects into their homes, given probable cause, had been established by the Court in Warden, MarylandPenitentiary v. Hayden (1967). The Court did not question the existenceof probable cause for police action in the case. In summarizing the majorityopinion, Justice Rehnquist stated: "a suspect may not defeat an arrest whichhas been set in motion in a public place, and is therefore proper under Watson, by the expedient of escaping to a private place." The dissenting justices in the case did not dispute the issue of the existence of probable cause, and only mildly disagreed with the majority's opinion that Santana had been in a public place when the attempt to arrest her began. Instead, they weretroubled by the possibility that the police were really seeking to arrest Santana from the start, and merely used McCafferty's heroin purchase as a ruseto establish circumstances under which a warrantless search and seizure wouldbe possible.
Impact
United States v. Santana represented a less rigorous definition of theFourth Amendment than the Court had maintained earlier in the decade. In theyears since this decision, the Court has identified many new circumstances under which warrantless searches and seizures may be made. Familiar examples of such searches include metal detection searches of individuals entering public schools and federal government buildings, drug testing of public and transportation employees, and various searches conducted within prisons by penal authorities. The Court also ruled, subsequent to Santana, that police officers who had a "reasonable" belief that circumstances justified a warrantless search or seizure could proceed with such action, and that any evidence obtained by such a search would be admissible in court.
Related Cases

• Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294 (1967).
  
• Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).
  
• United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411 (1976).