The Supreme Court on Monday bolstered the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” ruling that police do not have broad authority to enter a home without a warrant to check on someone who may be suicidal and then search and seize evidence that may be used against the person.
In a 9-0 decision, the justices rejected what some courts have called a “community caretaking” rule that may authorize police to enter a home even if they have no evidence of a crime or an emergency.
The case before the court began when the wife of a Rhode Island man called police because she was worried about her husband. They had argued the night before, and he possessed a handgun. Officers found the man, Edward Caniglia, sitting on his front porch. He denied that he was suicidal, but the officers called an ambulance and insisted he go to a hospital for an evaluation. He agreed but told them they may not enter his home and take his guns.
After he left, they did just that and confiscated two handguns.
The homeowner sued, alleging a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and usually requires officers to have a search warrant before going into a residence without the owner’s permission. But the 1st Circuit Court in Boston rejected his claim and said the police were acting to protect the safety and welfare of the homeowner.
The Supreme Court took up his appeal and overturned the lower court’s ruling in a short opinion in Caniglia v. Strom.
Clarence Thomas writes majority opinion
Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said the so-called “community caretaking” exception to the warrant requirement — established in a 1973 decision about the search of an impounded rental car — didn’t extend to searches of the home. Thomas noted that the court has said the “very core” of the Fourth Amendment’s protection was “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.”
“The 1st Circuit’s community caretaking rule goes beyond anything this court has recognized” under the Fourth Amendment, Thomas wrote. The police “lacked a warrant or consent” to enter the home, and they were not “reacting to a crime.” Nor was there an emergency that required officers to enter immediately, he added.
In the past, the court had upheld an officer’s search of a car in a similar situation. But “what is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes,” Thomas wrote.
Several justices wrote separately to say the decision on Monday was narrow. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said “police officers may enter a home without a warrant in circumstances where they are reasonably trying to prevent a potential suicide or to help an elderly person who has been out of contact and may have fallen and suffered a serious injury.”
Sixth Amendment ruling not retroactive
In another decision handed down Monday, the court was less protective of the right to a fair trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.
Last year the court ruled that the Sixth Amendment required that juries in state courts must be unanimous when they convict a defendant of a serious crime.
But on Monday, by a 6-3 vote, the justices refused to apply that ruling retroactively in the case of Thedrick Edwards, who was convicted in 2007 by a non-unanimous jury of armed robbery, kidnapping and rape in 2006 and sentenced to life in prison, but the jury verdicts were not unanimous.
Only two states — Louisiana and Oregon — had permitted guilty verdicts based on a 10-2 or 11-1 vote, and both had agreed to end the practice.
In Edwards v. Vannoy, the court said it would not apply the new rule retroactively to old cases.
Edwards had sought to overturn his conviction in a federal habeas corpus proceeding, but the justices split along ideological lines on whether he could obtain a new trial.
Writing for the majority, Kavanaugh said that under Supreme Court precedents, decisions announcing a “new procedural rule” were not retroactive in cases such as Edwards’. Kavanaugh’s opinion seemed to nullify a 1989 decision allowing retroactivity for “watershed rules” of criminal procedure implicating fundamental fairness.
Kavanaugh justified the decision by arguing that applying the court’s 2020 decision retroactively “would potentially overturn decades of convictions” in states that allowed non-unanimous jury verdicts. But that’s a matter of speculation.
More to the point, defendants such as Edwards shouldn’t be denied a new trial because they were convicted before the court decided that unanimity was essential. As Justice Elena Kagan put it in a powerful dissenting opinion: “If the right to a unanimous jury is so fundamental — if a verdict rendered by a divided jury is ‘no verdict at all’ — then Thedrick Edwards should not spend his life behind bars over two jurors’ opposition.”
Compiled and edited by ArLuther Lee for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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