NCJ Number
138966
Journal
University of Cincinnati Law Review Volume: 60 Issue: 3 Dated: (Winter 1992) Pages: 857-875
Date Published
1992
Length
19 pages
Annotation
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Chaidez case eroded the probable cause standard by setting a dangerous precedent that undermined principles of the fourth amendment which protect an individual from arrest without probable cause.
Abstract
After receiving a reliable tip that Chaidez was a large-scale heroin dealer, the Chicago police initiated a moving surveillance. Later, the police stopped and searched Chaidez and an associate. After one associate consented to a search of the group's rented house, the police found drugs in the house and arrested the defendants. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that the stop was reasonable. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the investigative seizure of the defendants was constitutionally sound, rejecting Chaidez's argument that the seizure of his associate went beyond the bounds allowed by Terry v. Ohio for a nonarrest investigatory detention and that the associate's consent to search the house in which the police found drugs was therefore invalid. Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals used the sliding scale approach, considering the facts of the case, the associate's rendezvous with Chaidez on a day he was probably conducting drug business, and the associate's perceived sudden flight, to determine that the suspicion was adequate to support the intrusion. In a dissenting opinion, one judge argued that the detention of the associate amounted to a de facto arrest requiring probable cause. The dissent stated that a citizen's privacy rights could not be subordinated in this manner to the interests of law enforcement. In holding that reasonable suspicion was enough in the Chaidez case, the Court of Appeals went beyond U.S. Supreme Court precedents and reduced the need for probable cause to a full custodial arrest at a government facility. The author concludes that exceptions to probable cause permitted by this holding will effectively eliminate the probable cause requirement of the fourth amendment and leave individuals open to intrusive searches or seizures against which the fourth amendment is designed to protect. 151 footnotes