Schneckloth v. Bustamonte

Although the Court heard Bustamonte's Fourth Amendment claim, a decision that was roundly criticized by three justices, the Court ruled against him. In the process, the Court established that police officers do not have to tell people that they can refuse an officer's request to search their person or their belongings.

On the morning of 19 January 1967, in the town of Mountain View, California, Speedway Car Wash owner Charles Kehoe discovered that he had been burglarized. A check-writing machine (a "check protector") and blank checks had been taken from Kehoe's office. Two days later, Robert Bustamonte, with the assistance of Joe Alcala and Joe Gonzalez, made out one of the stolen checks to a "Joe Garcia" for $63.75 and cashed it to buy a carton of cigarettes.

The three men made several other attempts to cash the checks at private businesses, but they were unsuccessful. On 30 January 1967, the men traveled to San Jose to find three other men for help in cashing the checks. Riding in a black 1958 Ford 4-door sedan with only one functioning headlight and a burnt-out license plate light, the six men set out to cash the checks. At approximately 2:40 a.m. on 31 January, Officer James Rand of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety spotted the sedan and stopped them. Gonzalez, who was driving, did not produce a driver's license for Officer Rand; only Alcala could produce a license, and Alcala stated that the car belonged to his brother. Officer Rand ordered the men out of the vehicle, and two more police officers arrived. Officer Rand then asked Alcala if he could search the car, and, according to Officer Rand, Alcala said "`Sure, go ahead.'" Officer Rand and another officer searched the car and they found three Speedway Car Wash checks wadded up under the left rear seat.

The officers arrested the six men. Thereafter, Sunnyvale police obtained a search warrant to search Bustamonte's cars. In the cars, the police found Speedway Car Wash checks and a check protector. Bustamonte was prosecuted in California state court on a charge of possessing a check with intent to defraud, and prosecutors gave Gonzalez a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Bustamonte. Bustamonte moved the trial court to exclude, or suppress, the evidence found in the car, arguing that the evidence was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Specifically, Bustamonte argued that Alcala's consent was the result of police coercion. In a suppression hearing conducted before trial, Gonzalez supported Officer Rand's version of events, testifying that Alcala had given his consent to a search of the car and even helped by opening the trunk and the glove compartment. The trial court denied Bustamonte's motion to suppress the evidence, and Bustamonte was convicted after a trial. The conviction was upheld on appeal. According to the state appeals court, the consent given by Alcala to the search was not invalidated by any "express or implied assertion of authority."

The California Supreme Court refused to review the case, and Bustamonte filed a habeas corpus petition against his jailer in federal district court. That court denied the petition, but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the state had to prove not only the absence of police coercion, but that Alcala knew that he could withhold his consent. The federal district court had not analyzed whether Alcala knew of his right to reject Officer Rand's request to search, so the appeals court remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings. The state of California, through prison Superintendent Merle R. Schneckloth, appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

By a vote of 6-3, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed. In an opinion written by Justice Stewart, the plurality identified the issue in the case: "what must the prosecution prove to demonstrate that a consent was `voluntarily' given." Upon a thorough review of the Court's precedent and a thorough analysis of the term "voluntariness," the plurality concluded that the prosecution did not have to prove that a person knew of the right to refuse consent.

The Court acknowledged the competing interests in the case. On one hand, society must be protected from unfair and brutal police tactics. On the other hand, society needs "police questioning as a tool for the effective enforcement of criminal laws." In other cases where voluntariness was questioned, such as cases involving criminal confessions, the Court had looked at a number of factors and all of the circumstances surrounding the consent to determine whether the confession was voluntary. The Court believed that the determination of whether consent to search was voluntary should be subjected to the same type of analysis.

The plurality believed that a person's knowledge of the right to refuse was a factor in determining whether a person's consent to search was voluntarily given. However, it was not the only factor, and it was not the deciding factor. Voluntariness was, the plurality emphasized, a vital aspect to a consent to search. However, it would be a "near impossibility" for the prosecution to prove that a person knew of the right to refuse consent because the person could "simply fail to testify that he in fact knew he could refuse to consent."

The plurality rejected the requirement that the police warn a person of his or her rights regarding consent to search. Most courts had refused to create such a requirement, and the Court did the same. "[I]t would be thoroughly impractical," declared the plurality, "to impose on the normal consent search the detailed requirements of an effective warning." The plurality noted that consent searches "are part of the standard investigatory techniques of law enforcement agencies," that they normally take place in public or at home "under informal and unstructured conditions." The request for consent to search may be "a logical extension of investigative police questioning," and the police may wish to follow up leads. "These situations are a far cry," reasoned the Court, "from the structured atmosphere of a trial, where, assisted by counsel if he chooses, a defendant is informed of his trial rights." There was, announced the Court, "a vast difference between those rights that protect a fair criminal trial and the rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment."

Consent searches, opined the plurality, also were different from police interrogations. In Miranda v. Arizona, a 1966 case, the High Court had held that police officers had to apprise arrested persons of the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. However, in that case, the Court had stated that police did not have to give such warnings to persons during "'[g]eneral on-the-scene questioning."

Instead of requiring the government prove that a person had knowledge of the right to refuse consent to a search, the Court had to engage in a "careful sifting of the unique facts and circumstances of each case." In prior consent cases, the Court had reversed convictions where the consent to search was "coerced by threats or force, or granted only in submission to a claim of lawful authority." In no case had the Court held that knowledge of the right to refuse consent was a prerequisite to finding voluntary consent. The Court had upheld strict standards on waivers of rights at trial, such as the right to counsel and the right to a jury trial, but such standards were necessary to prevent the "severe injustice risked by confronting an untrained defendant with a range of technical points of law, evidence, and tactics familiar to the prosecutor but not to himself."

The Fourth Amendment, by contrast, had nothing to do with promoting a fair trial. Consent searches occurred outside the controlled setting of the courthouse, and "it was unrealistic to expect that in the informal, unstructured context of a consent search, a policeman, upon pain of tainting the evidence obtained, could make [a] detailed type of examination." The Court disagreed with the appeals court that such an examination was required, and Bustamonte continued to languish in prison.

Justice Blackmun filed a short concurring opinion. According to Justice Blackmun, the Court should not have reconsidered its opinion in a precedent-setting case, Kaufman v. United States (1969), in deciding Bustamonte's case. Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist joined a separate concurring opinion authored by Justice Powell. Justice Powell agreed with the judgment of the Court, but he believed that the issue in the case should have been limited to the following: whether Bustamonte "was provided a fair opportunity to raise and have adjudicated the question in state courts." In Justice Powell's opinion, Bustamonte should not have been allowed to base his habeas corpus petition on a Fourth Amendment claim unless he was arguing that the state courts had unfairly denied him an opportunity to raise and argue the claim. In Kaufman v. United States, the Court had held that a habeas corpus petitioner could base the petition on a Fourth Amendment violation that had been fully litigated in state court. In Powell's opinion, Kaufman should have been overruled.

Justice Powell conducted a thorough examination of the history of the habeas corpus petition. The habeas corpus petition was an exception to the general rule of "due regard for the finality of the judgment of the committing court." Habeas corpus petitions essentially constituted another round of appeals for a convicted criminal defendant. However, the range of issues that a habeas corpus petitioner could raise was limited to questions about the trial court's jurisdiction and questions that concerned the Constitution. Justice Powell, concerned about the abuse of state court decisions through the use of habeas corpus petitions in federal court, felt that the issues in such a petition should not be expanded to include claims of Fourth Amendment violations that had already been litigated. Other constitutional claims, though, could be placed in a habeas corpus petition even if they had been fairly litigated in state court.

Fourth Amendment claims, Justice Powell argued, were different from other constitutional claims. Specifically, they had little to do with guilt or innocence. The exclusionary rule, which forbade the use of evidence that had been obtained in violation of Fourth Amendment rights, had benefits and "liabilities." The rule was a prophylactic for the right of persons to live free from unreasonable searches and seizures, but it also deprived the criminal justice system of the opportunity to use evidence that, in most cases, clearly established guilt. "Prisoners raising Fourth Amendment claims [in a habeas corpus petition] usually are quite justly detained," Powell declared. Powell maintained that the habeas corpus petition should be reserved for cases where the issue is "whether the prisoner was innocent of the crime," and not "whether some evidence of undoubted probative value has been admitted in violation of an exclusionary rule ritualistically applied without due regard for whether it has the slightest likelihood of achieving its avowed prophylactic purpose."

Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall each filed separate dissenting opinions. Justice Douglas supported the federal appeals court's decision, and would have denied review of Bustamonte's petition and let the petition go forward in the district court. Justice Brennan decried the plurality's treatment of the Fourth Amendment. "It wholly escapes me," Justice Brennan confessed, "how our citizens can meaningfully be said to have waived something as precious as a constitutional guarantee without ever being aware of its existence."

Justice Marshall, in a long dissenting opinion, objected to "the curious result that one can choose to relinquish a constitutional right--the right to be free of unreasonable searches--without knowing that he has the alternative of refusing to accede to a police request to search." The Court had "always scrutinized with great care" other cases in which a person had failed to assert a constitutional right, and Marshall "saw no reason" to treat the Fourth Amendment differently. The Court's opinion, Marshall maintained, had "sanction[ed] a game of blindman's bluff, in which the police always have the upper hand, for the sake of nothing more than the convenience of the police."