Week Three, Part 1 - Crim: Exceptional Circumstances

“Purple Funk” is the Monday headline in The Observer, and it pretty well describes the mood on campus after the upset by Northwestern University.

I see Kevin Patrick at lunch. “You were right about the ‘perennial Big Ten doormat’ being better than advertised.”

He dunks The Observer into a recycle bin. “Yeah, but I never thought we’d lose.”

Professor Dutile starts Criminal Procedure with, “‘The game's not important,’ I said to myself... with my head in the oven.”

He points out that of the 75 entries in Friday’s guess-the-score contest, only one person picked the Wildcats. Dutile calls out the name, Dan Overbey. Gentle boos rain down on the ex-cop from Florida.

“I played the percentages,” he protests. “Northwestern had a better chance of winning than me predicting the spread against this many people.”

Now why can’t I be smart like that, I think.

Dutile turns our attention to the case at hand. In Johnson v. United States, narcotic agents smelled opium coming from a hotel room. They knocked and Johnson opened the door. The agents arrested her and without a warrant searched the room, finding – surprise! – opium and smoking paraphernalia.

In 1948 the Supreme Court held that a warrantless search will only be upheld in cases of “exceptional circumstances,” such as where a suspect is fleeing or evidence is about to be destroyed. In Johnson’s situation, the officers should have first gone to a magistrate and obtained a search warrant. Conviction overturned.

Johnson is the first case that provokes me. I’m frustrated by the holding, and all my sympathies are with the men in blue.

Dutile’s take on the case is hard to read. His questions flesh out all angles of the debate. I like it when he asks, “Do you suppose the Court would have been so quick to reverse if Johnson had been charged with a triple homicide? If we're going to be consistent in our principles, the nature of the crime is irrelevant.”

That evening I tell Terri about Johnson while we walk around the block.

She asks, “And do you want your hotel room searched because a cop thinks he smells drugs?”

“Go right on ahead. I’ve nothing to hide.”

Terri looks at me like I’m channeling some third-world dictator. “I don’t want the police searching my house without a warrant!”

“Why not?”

“I remember how it felt when I got served my divorce papers. There’s a police car in the driveway. A deputy knocks on your door. I had piano students in the house. It’s embarrassing!”

“Hmm. But suppose the target wasn’t you, but Cliff next door. And rather than divorce, it’s a homicide. Can you still be consistent in your principles?”

Terri slips her arm around me and hooks her thumb in my belt loop. “It’s obvious you’re not getting enough sleep,” she says softly. “That’s the only principle I see.”

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