would you go against this or for it?

Question

Police searches for cars is weakening the 4th Amendment. New policy goes against the 4th Amendmen. Passangers are not allowed to be searched

Answer 1

Actually, what the Supreme Court decided was that passengers have an expectation of privacy in someone Else's car.
It works more like this. A woman is in a car, and I am driving. We get stopped because I blew the stop sign. The officer writes the ticket and says he would like to search for drugs. I know I have none and say, "have at it." The woman, a hook I picked up;) is a little jumpy and the officer asks her to get out of the car. She does, but leaves her purse on the passenger seat. The office uses my permission to search her purse. Previously, she had not expectation of privacy. Now she does. Now regardless of his finding anything in her purse, say he finds drugs in the crack of seat, he arrests her and me for it. I test clean and they decide to cut me free since she had a drug pipe in her purse (Marijuana pipe which in California is usually considered not a crime). Since she never gave her permission to search her area, you has standing to fight the search. In the old days....last year....she would have no standing. Only the driver ever had standing. Now all people in a car do. The new ruling makes the fourth amendment rights stronger.

This answer is not to say the case is right or wrong, just kind of explain it.

Answer 2

Actually, that's not exactly how the Supreme Court ruling came out -- the issue was one of standing, and who was entitled to what 4th Amendment protections based on the actions of others.

Police searches of cars have long been held to a lower standard than (for example) searches of houses -- for a variety of reasons.

The recent Supreme Court case on the issue dealt with the issue of whether a passenger could be searched, based solely on the actions of the driver -- and whether a passenger was considered "seized" if the police told the drive to stop.

That's a question of standing -- whether the passengers own rights were at issue, or whether only the rights the driver applied in the equation. The substantive law didn't change -- only how the question of "who is affected" gets resolved.

Answer 3

What are you asking? If we are for or against passengers being searched when a car is stopped?

If a car is stopped on probable cause and then a passenger behaves in a suspicious manner, giving the police probable cause to search them, I support that.

I do not support sobriety checkpoints where everyone is stopped and I do not support searching passengers without independent probable cause.

So there.