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Notes on the Pearson v. Callahan Argument

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

The transcript in Pearson v. Callahan is available here. The case involves a civil suit against police who entered a house to make a drug arrest under the "consent once removed" exception. This problematic theory posits that once the drug dealer invites an undercover officer, or perhaps a police informant, into the house for the sale, he has consented to police entry or no longer has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Peter Stirba, for the officers, is first up. He promptly gets in trouble by asserting that the law was clearly established in favor of the validity of the entry. It isn't, and it doesn't need to be for him to win. He only needs to convince the Court that the law was not clearly established the other way. Justices Souter and Ginsburg pummel him for a long time on the underlying Fourth Amendment question and why the officers didn't just get a warrant...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).