WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court set the legal precedent which allows police to initiate traffic stops based solely on anonymous tips. The Navarette v. California decision was so dangerous that one Justice called it “a freedom-destroying cocktail.”
"The Court’s opinion serves up a freedom-destroying cocktail," argued Justice Scalia.
“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
– Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. United States (1928)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court set the legal precedent which allows police to initiate traffic stops based solely on anonymous tips. The Navarette v. California decision was so dangerous that one Justice called it “a freedom-destroying cocktail.”
On August 23, 2008, Pravdo Navarette was stopped by a California Highway Patrol (CHP). No police officer ever witnessed Navarette driving in a way that would have indicated that he was impaired behind the wheel of his truck. Instead, entire basis for the stop was an anonymous phone call to police alleging that Navarette had driven dangerously. The caller identified the make, model and license plate number of the truck. Fifteen minutes later, a highway patrolman proceeded to follow Navarette for five minutes before finally pulling him over.
Once officers had Navarette on the side of the road, they observed that he was not intoxicated. However, officers began fishing for reasons to search the vehicle. One officer reported smelling the odor of marijuana. Police proceeded to search his truck, found a bundle of cannabis, and then arrested both men in the vehicle.
Navarette’s legal team argued that “the initial stop was unconstitutional because police did not have reasonable suspicion to stop his truck.” The also argued that police did not have reasonable suspicion to pull him over because they had not determined the identity or credibility of the caller.
The case was taken all the way to the highest court in the nation. At issue was whether the Fourth Amendment allows police to stop a vehicle based on an anonymous tip of reckless driving, without first witnessing any illegal behavior, and without identifying the alleged witness.
On April 22, 2014, the court issued its 5-4 ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas authored the majority opinion upholding the initial stop based on the anonymous tipster’s observations. The U.S. Supreme Court found that the Fourth Amendment rights of the two men had not been violated, essentially because the anonymous caller was considered an eyewitness; her tip was all that police needed to stop the motorists and investigate them.
Three points were emphasized in the court’s decision:
Read carefully, one could easily surmise that the absence of evidence is, in fact, not proof that a person is innocent of an alleged behavior (drunk driving, in this case). Justice Thomas added insult to injury during his reading of the court’s decision to uphold the right of the police to search the two men when he mockingly quipped, “[drivers] probably shouldn’t carry 30 pounds of marijuana.”(a) Justice Thomas contended that reasonable suspicion takes into account “the totality of the circumstances,” and depends “upon both the content of information possessed by police and its degree of reliability.”
Justice Clarence Thomas. (Source: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)
(b) The 9-1-1 call “bore adequate indicia of reliability” for the officer to believe the anonymous caller’s version of events. Her eyewitness knowledge of the vehicle was found to be specific enough to justify the actions of the police officer.
(c) The anonymous tip constituted reasonable suspicion of drink driving. In a summary of the majority opinion, Justia.com wrote: The tip created reasonable suspicion of drunk driving. Reasonable suspicion “need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct.” The officer’s failure to observe additional suspicious conduct during the short period that he followed the truck did not dispel the reasonable suspicion of drunk driving.
Justice Antonin Scalia insisted that in order to comply with the Fourth Amendment, “the stop required suspicion of an ongoing crime, not merely suspicion of having run someone off the road earlier. And driving while being a careless or reckless person, unlike driving while being a drunk person, is not an ongoing crime.”
“The truck might have swerved to avoid an animal, a pothole, or a jaywalking pedestrian,” Scalia reasoned in his dissent. “I fail to see how reasonable suspicion of a discrete instance of irregular or hazardous driving generates a reasonable suspicion of ongoing intoxicated driving.”
Scalia suggested that an unscrupulous person could falsely report another driver because of the message on a bumper sticker. With no accountability, an anonymous 9-1-1 caller could turn any perceived slight into a criminal investigation involving police. In his scathing dissent, Scalia opined:
Scalia pointed out that the majority decision left out what he called the “pesky little detail that, for the five minutes that the truck was being followed (five minutes is a long time), Lorenzo’s driving was irreproachable.” While allowing that drunken driving is a “serious matter,” Scalia contended, “so is the loss of our freedom to come and go as we please without police interference.”“The Court’s opinion serves up a freedom-destroying cocktail consisting of two parts patent falsity: (1) that anonymous 9-1-1 reports of traffic violations are reliable so long as they correctly identify a car and its location, and (2) that a single instance of careless or reckless driving necessarily supports a reasonable suspicion of drunkenness. All the malevolent 9-1-1 caller need do is assert a traffic violation, and the targeted car will be stopped, forcibly if necessary, by the police. If the driver turns out not to be drunk (which will almost always be the case), the caller need fear no consequences, even if 9-1-1 knows his identity. After all, he never alleged drunkenness, but merely called in a traffic violation—and on that point his word is as good as his victim’s.”
Justice Antonin Scalia
…”They did not know her name. They did not know her phone number or address. They did not even know where she called from (she may have dialed in from a neighboring county.) The tipster said the truck had ‘[run her] off the roadway,’ but the police had no reason to credit that charge and many reasons to doubt it, beginning with the peculiar fact that the accusation was anonymous. ‘Eliminating accountability . . . is ordinarily the very purpose of anonymity.’ The unnamed tipster ‘can lie with impunity.’ Anonymity is especially suspicious with respect to the call that is the subject of the present case. When does a victim complain to the police about an arguably criminal act (running the victim off the road) without giving his identity, so that he can accuse and testify when the culprit is caught?”
– Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting in Navarette v. California (2014)
“After today’s opinion,” said Scalia, “all of us on the road, and not just drug dealers, are at risk of having our freedom of movement curtailed on suspicion of drunkenness, based upon a phone tip, true or false, of a single instance of careless driving.”
Both opinions are worth reading in full because they provide a glimpse into the justices’ reasoning while contemplating the very issues so often discussed here in such great detail. Justice Scalia warned, “To prevent and detect murder we do not allow searches without probable cause or targeted Terry stops without reasonable suspicion.” And if you don’t object to being randomly pulled over for no reason, then there is little reason to object to the police erecting mass checkpoints every ten miles throughout the country for the purposes of preventing crime.
Source: Prado Navarette v. California, No. 12–9490 (2014)