United States v. Matlock

The decision clarified when a third party can give permission for a warrantless search of a property. When a prosecutor seeks to justify a warrantless search by showing voluntary consent was given, that consent is not limited to the defendant, but can be given by a third party who had common authority over the premises.

On 12 November 1970, William Matlock was arrested, on charges of bank robbery, in the front yard of the house where he lived in Pardeeville, Wisconsin. The arresting officers did not ask him if they could search the house, and they did not have a search warrant. Gayle Graff, with whom Matlock shared a room in the house, admitted three of the arresting officers into the house. They told Mrs. Graff that they were looking for money and a gun and asked if they could search the house. She said they could. They did not tell her that she had a right to refuse to consent to the search. The officers searched the bedroom where they found $4,995 in a diaper bag in the closet.

Matlock asked that the evidence seized from the bedroom be suppressed (deemed inadmissible). The district court held that when a third person gives consent for a search, the government must show that it reasonably appeared to the searching officers that the person had authority to consent and that the person had actual authority to permit the search. The district court concluded that the government had failed to prove that Mrs. Graff had actual authority to consent to the search. Although Mrs. Graff had told the officers that she and Matlock shared the bedroom, proving the good faith of the officers, her statement failed to prove that what she said was true. At various times and places Gayle Graff and William Matlock had told people they were married, which they were not. The district court felt that the evidence was insufficient to prove that at the time of the search the two were living together in the east bedroom. The court also rejected the government's claim that it only had to prove that the officers could reasonably have concluded that Gayle Graff's consent was binding on Matlock. The district court excluded the out-of-court statements Mrs. Graff made regarding her and Matlock's joint occupancy and use of the bedroom and their claim that they were married. The court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the district court. The case then went to the Supreme Court.