Divided Justices Back Full Arrests on Minor Charges
"Justice Souter, a former attorney general of New Hampshire, pressed Ms. Atwater's lawyer, Robert C. DeCarli, for information about how widespread a problem such arrests were, and appeared unpersuaded that there was a problem for the Supreme Court to fix. In his opinion today, he said "there simply is no evidence of widespread abuse of minor-offense arrest authority."
April 25, 2001
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
From The New York Times
WASHINGTON, April 24 — A
sharply divided Supreme Court ruled
today that a police officer who observes
someone breaking a law, even a minor
infraction for which the maximum penalty is a
small fine, can make a full custodial arrest
without violating the Fourth Amendment's
prohibition against unreasonable seizure.
The 5-to-4 decision rejected a lawsuit against
a Texas city that was brought by a woman
who was stopped for driving without a seat
belt. The woman, Gail Atwater, was placed under arrest, taken in handcuffs to the
police station and held in a jail cell until she posted $310 bond. The maximum fine
for the offense, a misdemeanor under Texas law, was $50.
Justice David H. Souter said that although Ms. Atwater had been subjected to
"gratuitous humiliations" and "pointless indignity," what happened to her did not
violate the Fourth Amendment. He said that to "mint a new rule of constitutional law"
would be to turn many ordinary arrests into occasions for constitutional litigation.
The case fractured the court's usual alliances, provoking a dissenting opinion by
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who warned that "such unbounded discretion" for
the police "carries with it grave potential for abuse."
Justice O'Connor added that "as the recent debate over racial profiling demonstrates
all too clearly, a relatively minor traffic infraction may serve as an excuse for
stopping and harassing an individual."
Ms. Atwater is white, and race was not an element in the case, Atwater v. City of
Lago Vista, No. 99-1408. That made the dissent's reference to racial profiling
particularly striking; five years ago, before the police practice of focusing on black
motorists for traffic stops became the subject of widespread discussion and official
concern, the court ruled unanimously in a case called Whren v. United States that as
long as a police officer had an objective reason for stopping a driver, the officer's
subjective motive was irrelevant.
Referring to that decision today, Justice O'Connor said that "it is precisely because
these motivations are beyond our purview that we must vigilantly ensure that officers'
post- stop actions — which are properly within our reach — comport with the
Fourth Amendment's guarantee of reasonableness."
The incident that led to the ruling today took place in 1997. Ms. Atwater was
bringing her two young children home from soccer practice, driving her pickup truck
at about 15 miles an hour on the local streets near her home. None of the three was
wearing a seat belt. The officer who ordered her out of the car refused to let her
take her crying children to a neighbor's house and said he would take them into
custody as well, but a neighbor came along in time to take the children.
The officer searched the truck, finding two tricycles, a bicycle, an Igloo cooler, a
bag of charcoal, toys, food and two pairs of children's shoes. After Ms. Atwater
was released from jail, she found that the truck had been towed.
The lawsuit that she and her husband brought against Lago Vista, its police chief,
and the officer who arrested her was dismissed by the federal district court in
Austin. A three- judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit, in New Orleans, reinstated the suit, but the full appeals court vacated that
decision and ruled against the Atwaters by a vote of 11 to 5.
In writing the majority opinion today, Justice Souter was joined by the four most
conservative justices, with whom he is almost always at odds in divided cases: Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and
Anthony M. Kennedy.
Justice O'Connor, who is most often allied with that group, was joined in her dissent
this time by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G.
Breyer.
There was no obvious explanation for the voting pattern beyond the frank and quite
personal responses that both Justice O'Connor and Justice Souter offered when the
case was argued in early December.
"You've got the perfect case!" Justice O'Connor exclaimed then to Ms. Atwater's
lawyer, and she indicated that she saw little difficulty in drafting a rule that would
make custodial arrests for minor offenses the exception rather than the rule.
On the other hand, Justice Souter, a former attorney general of New Hampshire, pressed Ms. Atwater's lawyer, Robert C. DeCarli, for information about how widespread a problem such arrests were, and appeared unpersuaded that there was a problem for the Supreme Court to fix. In his opinion today, he said "there simply is no evidence of widespread abuse of minor-offense arrest authority."
He noted that some states had passed laws to limit police authority to make arrests
for minor offenses, and said that this trend, as well as the "good sense" and "political
accountability" of local officials, should take care of any problem.
A spokesman for the New York City Police Department said it was too early to
comment about how the court's decision might affect the department, which since
the election of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has focused intensely on so-called quality
of life offenses, like smoking on the subways and urinating in public. For such
offenses, as well as for motor vehicle violations, the police will issue summonses
rather than make arrests.
For more serious misdemeanors like shoplifting or property damage, New York
police typically bring suspects back to the stationhouse, where they are fingerprinted
and checked for outstanding warrants.
"We have to review it, then we'll go from there," said Lt. Elias Nikas, a police
spokesman, said of the ruling. "The New York City police department will continue
to adhere to department policies, and our legal bureau will review the Supreme
Court decision."
Susan N. Herman, a law professor at Brooklyn Law School who filed a brief in the
case for the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, said today that the
majority's assumption that a substantial problem did not exist was naïve.
"The reported cases are just the tip of the iceberg," she said, explaining that police
officers who make an arrest and then conduct a search without finding anything
incriminating often let the person go with a citation. The major purpose served by
abusive arrests for minor offenses was to authorize the "search incident to arrest,"
essentially fishing expeditions, she said.
Emily Whitfield, a spokeswoman for the New York office of the A.C.L.U., raised
concerns about the consequences of the decision on minorities. "There is a real fear
that this new authority will be used by the police in a racially discriminatory fashion,"
she said. "Now we have a situation where the government, even if they can't put you
in jail after you're convicted, can put you in jail before you're tried."
Ms. Atwater's lawyer had argued that under early English law, ordinary
misdemeanors were not seen as justifying arrest in the absence of some other
element, like a breach of the peace. Justice Souter rejected this argument as a basis
for finding that the Constitution's framers would have regarded such arrests as
constitutionally unreasonable, saying that the historical evidence was ambiguous.
nytimes.com |
