Today at 10am the U.S. Supreme Court will hear it’s first oral argument of the 2014 term. The case is North Carolina v. Heien and it asks whether a police officer’s mistaken understanding of the law can be the basis for a constitutionally valid traffic stop. You can read my post about the case here, and there’s a much more comprehensive argument preview at SCOTUSblog.
Last week, the court granted review in 11 new cases and you can read about each of them here. Though everyone is waiting for the justices to grant some combination of gay marriage cases, that hasn’t happened yet, but the Court did agree to hear two interesting criminal cases next term.
Ohio v. Clark
This case is about the limits of a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. The defendant was convicted of physically child abuse after a trial where the abused child did not testify. The court ruled that the victim was too young to be competent to testify, but the judge allowed seven witnesses who spoke to child to take the stand to talk about what he said happened and who he said did it. The defense appealed and the Ohio Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that the trial violated the defendant’s rights under the confrontation clause. The questions the Supreme court will now consider as taken from the SCOTUSblog case page for Clark:
(1) Whether an individual’s obligation to report suspected child abuse makes that individual an agent of law enforcement for purposes of the Confrontation Clause; and (2) whether a child’s out-of-court statements to a teacher in response to the teacher’s concerns about potential child abuse qualify as “testimonial” statements subject to the Confrontation Clause.
United States v. Rodriguez
This case asks when and for how long a police officer can reasonably extend a traffic stop to conduct a drug dog sniff of a car. Dennys Rodriguez was pulled over for swerving into the shoulder of the road. He was issued a warning and then the officer asked if he could walk his drug dog around the car, Rodriguez said no. The officer returned to his car, called for backup and then waited 7 or 8 minutes to return to the car, order Rodriguez out and walk the dog around the vehicle. The dog’s alert lead to a search finding methamphetamine. As Rodriguez said in his petition for certiorari:
This Court has held that, during an otherwise lawful traffic stop, asking a driver to exit a vehicle, conducting a drug sniff with a trained canine, or asking a few off-topic questions are ‘de minimis’ intrusions on personal liberty that do not require reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in order to comport with the Fourth Amendment. This case poses the question of whether the same rule applies after the conclusion of the traffic stop, so that an officer may extend the already-completed stop for a canine sniff without reasonable suspicion or other lawful justification.