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Home is where the meth is

The 9th Circuit seems to have a talent for hearing bizarre cases. I might be so bold as to call them the most Dictalicious circuit in the country.

The case involves a Fourth Amendment dispute over the reach of Georgia v. Randolph. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that when two co-occupants are present and one consents to a search while the other refuses, the search is not constitutional.

But there are some pretty hilarious facts you need to know about this 9th Circuit case:
1. A guy was living in a storage facility being rented by a friend of his.
2. The guy who rents the unit had tried (unsuccessfully) to kick the squatter out.
3. The guy in the storage unit was making meth (sounds like a wonderful chum).

The cops got permission from the guy renting the unit to search the unit for drugs. The guy living in the unit refused consent for the search. The district court ruled that the squatter did not "exercise sufficient control over the storage units to possess the authority to grant or withhold consent to a search of them." Intuitively, this makes some sense. He wasn't legally allowed to live there, and his friend did not want him there either.

But the 9th Circuit reversed, arguing: "The Randolph Court acknowledged the 'multiplicity of living arrangements' that people have, but stated that such variance does not mean that 'the rule to be applied to them is similarly varied.'"

This might be a bit of a stretch. The facts in Randolph involved a husband and wife who jointly owned a house. The wife gave consent to search a house, the husband did not.

I'm not sure where I come down on this. An acceptable compromise might be that when the squatter opened up the door to the storage unit to tell the officers to f*&% off, the meth paraphernalia was in plain sight. Maybe exigent circumstances would make the search lawful.

But the point of this case isn't who's right and who's wrong. The point is the 9th Circuit is looking out for the rights of meth-making storage unit squatters. They are people too, and they have rights. God bless America!

Hat tip to the good folks over at Decision of the Day.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).