Arkansas v. Sanders 1979

• Author: Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw
• Pages: 457-461

Contenidos

• The Man With the Green Suitcase.
• Privacy Prevails.
• Criminal Justice Fails?.
• Suggestions for further reading.

Page 457

Petitioner: State of Arkansas

Respondent: Lonnie James Sanders

Petitioner's Claim: That the police did not violate the Fourth Amendment by searching Sanders's suitcase without a search warrant.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: Joseph H. Purvis, Deputy Attorney General of Arkansas

Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Jack T. Lassiter

Justices for the Court: Warren E. Burger, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White

Justices Dissenting: Harry A. Blackmun, William H. Rehnquist

Date of Decision: June 20, 1979

Decision: The Supreme Court said the search violated the Fourth Amendment.

Significance: With Sanders, the Supreme Court said police may not search luggage without a warrant unless there are exigent, or urgent, circumstances.

A person's privacy is protected by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Fourth Amendment requires searches and seizures by the government to be reasonable. In most cases, law enforcement officers must get a warrant to search a house or other private place for evidence of

Page 458

a crime. To get a warrant, officers must have probable cause, which means good reason to believe the place to be searched has evidence of a crime.

There are exceptions to the warrant requirement. The automobile exception allows police to stop and search a car without a warrant when they have probable cause to believe the car is holding evidence of a crime. There are two reasons for the automobile exception. First, because a car can be moved, police might lose the evidence if they were forced to get a warrant. Second, Americans have less privacy in their cars than in their homes. In Arkansas v. Sanders, the U.S. Supreme Court had to decide whether police could search a suitcase in the trunk of a car without a warrant.

The Man With the Green Suitcase

David Isom was an officer with the police department in Little Rock, Arkansas. On April 23, 1976, an informant told Isom that at 4:35 in the afternoon, Lonnie James Sanders would arrive at the Little Rock airport carrying a green suitcase with marijuana inside. Isom believed the informant because just three months earlier, the informant gave the police information that led to Sanders's arrest and conviction for possessing marijuana.

Acting on the informant's tip, Isom and two other police officers placed the...