Kentucky man says police violated Fourth Amendment by searching his backpack during arrest

Petitions of the week

The Petitions of the Week column highlights a collection of cert petitions lately filed within the Supreme Courtroom. A listing of all petitions we’re watching is on the market here.

The Fourth Modification typically bars police from looking individuals or their property with no warrant. The Supreme Courtroom has made an exception for searches made throughout an arrest. However though that exception applies to arrestees themselves, it solely extends to their close by possessions if there’s a danger they’ll attain into them to seize a weapon or destroy proof. This week, we spotlight petitions that ask the court docket to think about, amongst different issues, whether or not a backpack that’s exterior the attain of an individual in handcuffs falls throughout the warrant exception.

In 2019, police on bicycle patrol in Lexington, Kentucky, noticed two males at a park bench alternate money for what they believed to be a joint containing artificial marijuana. The officers adopted the suspected purchaser, who admitted to the sale and turned over the joint. One officer then returned to the park. The officer approached the suspected vendor, William Benbury, who was nonetheless sitting along with his backpack on the desk, and introduced he was underneath arrest.

As soon as Bembury was handcuffed along with his arms behind his again, the officers searched his backpack, uncovering a small bag of artificial marijuana and 7 {dollars} in money.

Bembury pled responsible to 1 depend of possession of artificial medication, on the situation that he may search to have the proof from looking his backpack tossed out on attraction. As a result of he was not sporting the backpack when he was arrested, was handcuffed whereas police rummaged via it, and by no means consented to the search, Bembury argued, no exception to the Fourth Modification utilized, and the officers wanted a warrant earlier than making the search.

A Kentucky appeals court docket agreed with Bembury that the search was doubtless unconstitutional. However the Kentucky Supreme Courtroom reversed and upheld his conviction. Acknowledging that the U.S. Supreme Courtroom has but to determine whether or not gadgets like backpacks or purses are categorically protected by the Fourth Modification from search throughout arrest, the state supreme court docket was break up on easy methods to proceed.

A majority of the court docket dominated that any container that had been in somebody’s possession at or instantly earlier than their “time of arrest” falls inside current exceptions to the warrant requirement, and thus the officers have been justified in looking Bembury’s backpack.

In dissent, different justices advocated for a middle-ground method to steadiness the state’s curiosity in defending each police and proof in opposition to a person’s proper to privateness in every case, or for a categorical bar on looking private gadgets exterior the attain of somebody being arrested.

In Bembury v. Kentucky, Bembury asks the justices to grant assessment and reverse the Kentucky Supreme Courtroom’s ruling. He argues that there’s a divide over whether or not the Fourth Modification barred the search of his backpack with no warrant – not solely amongst a spread of states and federal courts of appeals, however on the Kentucky excessive court docket itself, which produced a splintered set of opinions in his personal case. “[A]rrests of individuals possessing an exterior container occur everywhere in the nation many occasions day-after-day,” Bembury writes, urging the justices to resolve this query for good.

A listing of this week’s featured petitions is under:

Benning v. Oliver
23-664
Points: (1) Whether or not, the place the Supreme Courtroom has required {that a} prisoner is entitled to procedural safeguards if their “correspondence” is intercepted, respondents are entitled to certified immunity just because the correspondence within the Supreme Courtroom case was postal mail, moderately than electronic mail; and (2) whether or not the doctrine of certified immunity must be abolished, pared again, or clarified.

Alvarado v. Austin
23-717
Points: (1) Whether or not a Religious Freedom Restoration Act problem to the Division of Protection’s failure to accommodate army chaplains’ spiritual objections to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate was and stays justiciable after Congress directed the Division to rescind the mandate; and (2) whether or not a problem to the Division’s coercing chaplains to talk its message in regards to the COVID-19 vaccine survives as able to repetition but evading assessment.

Forsythe v. McDonough
23-779
Points: (1) Whether or not the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Federal Circuit misinterpreted 38 U.S.C. § 5103(a)(1) to permit the Division of Veterans Affairs to situation evidentiary discover solely earlier than receiving a veteran’s declare, despite the fact that the statute requires discover that accounts for proof “not beforehand offered to the Secretary that’s essential to substantiate the declare”; and (2) whether or not the Federal Circuit violated the longstanding doctrine of Accardi v. Shaughnessy by allowing the VA to violate its personal regulation on the bottom that the company’s noncompliance can’t be “prejudicial” to veterans.

PHH Mortgage Corporation v. Guthrie
23-785
Concern: Whether or not the Bankruptcy Code preempts state-law claims premised on alleged efforts to gather a debt in violation of the chapter court docket’s discharge injunction.

Bembury v. Kentucky
23-802
Concern: Whether or not the exception to the Fourth Modification’s warrant requirement for searches incident to arrest permits a warrantless search of a backpack, purse, baggage, or different exterior container within the arrestee’s possession on the time of arrest, if, on the time of the search, the container is separated from the individual and there’s no cheap risk the arrestee may entry the container to acquire a weapon or destroy proof.