Potter Stewart

“ Justice WHITE, post, at 521, 520 that we cease today 'to strive for clarity and consistency of analysis,' or that we have 'abandoned any attempt' to find reasoned distinctions in this area. The time is long past when men believed that development of the law must always proceed by the smooth incorporation of new situations into a single coherent analytical framework. We need accept neither the 'clarity and certainty' of a Fourth Amendment without a warrant requirement nor the facile consistency obtained by wholesale overruling of recently decided cases. ”

“ Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. ”

“ Where the police act without an arrest warrant, the suspect may argue that an arrest warrant was necessary, that there was no probable cause to arrest, [34] or that even if the arrest was valid, the search and seizure went beyond permissible limits. [35] Perhaps because each of these lines of attack offers a plethora of litigable issues, the more fundamental question of when the police may arrest a man in his house without a warrant has been little considered in the federal courts. ”

“ It is accepted, at least as a matter of principle, that a search or seizure carried out on a suspect's premises without a warrant is per se unreasonable, unless the police can show that it falls within one of a carefully defined set of exceptions based on the presence of 'exigent circumstances.' [30] As to other kinds of intrusions, however, there has been disagreement about the basic rules to be applied, as our cases concerning automobile searches, electronic surveillance, street searches and administrative searches make clear. ”

“ The 'plain view' doctrine is not in conflict with the first objective because plain view does not occur until a search is in progress. In each case, this initial intrusion is justified by a warrant or by an exception such as 'hot pursuit' or search incident to a lawful arrest, or by an extraneous valid reason for the officer's presence. And, given the initial intrusion, the seizure of an object in plain view is consistent with the second objective, since it does not convert the search into a general or exploratory one. ”

“ Yet if we take the viewpoint of a judge called on only to decide in the abstract, after the fact, whether the police have behaved 'reasonably' under all the circumstances-in short if we simply ignore the warrant requirement-Carroll comes to stand for something more. The stopping of a vehicle on the open highway and a subsequent search amount to a major interference in the lives of the occupants. ”

“ We are convinced that the result reached in this case is correct, and that the principle it reflects-that the police must obtain a warrant when they intend to seize an object outside the scope of a valid search incident to arrest-can be easily understood and applied by courts and law enforcement officers alike. It is a principle that should work to protect the citizen without overburdening the police, and a principle that preserves and protects the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment. ”

“ During the extensive investigation following the discovery of the body, the police had made it a practice to ask all those questioned whether they owned any guns, and to ask the owners for permission to run tests on those that met the very general description of the murder weapon. The trial judge found as a fact that when the police visited Mrs. Coolidge on the night of the 2d, they were unaware of the previous visit during which Coolidge had shown other officers three guns, and that they were not motivated by a desire to find the murder weapon. ”

“ The situation is different, however, if the police are under no circumstances required to obtain an arrest warrant before entering to arrest a person they have probable cause to believe has committed a felony. If no warrant is ever required to legitimate the extremely serious intrusion of a midnight entry to seize the person, then it can be argued plausibly that a warrant should never be required to legitimate a very sweeping search incident to such an entry and arrest. ”

“ The rule that 'searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions,' [37] is not so frail that its continuing vitality depends on the fate of a supposed doctrine of warrantless arrest. The warrant requirement has been a valued part of our constitutional law for decades, and it has determined the result in scores and scores of cases in courts all over this country. ”

“ The limits on the doctrine are implicit in the statement of its rationale. The first of these is that plain view alone is never enough to justify the warrantless seizure of evidence. This is simply a corollary of the familiar principle discussed above, that no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless search or seizure absent 'exigent circumstances.' Incontrovertible testimony of the senses that an incriminating object is on premises belonging to a criminal suspect may establish the fullest possible measure of probable cause. ”

“ United States, 275 U.S. 310, 48 S.Ct. 137, 72 L.Ed. 293.
In a situation like the one before us there no doubt always exist forces pushing the spouse to cooperate with the police. Among these are the simple but often powerful convention of openness and honesty, the fear that secretive behavior will intensify suspicion, and uncertainty as to what course is most likely to be helpful to the absent spouse. But there is nothing constitutionally suspect in the existence, without more, of these incentives to full disclosure or active cooperation with the police. ”

“ With respect to searches and seizures carried out on a suspect's premises, the conflict has been over the question of what qualifies as an 'exigent circumstance.' It might appear that the difficult inquiry would be when it is that the police can enter upon a person's property to seize his 'person * * * papers, and effects,' without prior judicial approval. The question of the scope of search and seizure once the police are on the premises would appear to be subsidiary to the basic issue of when intrusion is permissible. ”

“ The approach taken in Harris and Rabinowitz was open to the criticism that it made it so easy for the police to arrange to search a man's premises without a warrant that the Constitution's protection of a man's 'effects' became a dead letter. ”

“ The second limitation is that the discovery of evidence in plain view must be inadvertent. [26] The rationale of the exception to the warrant requirement, as just stated, is that a plain-view seizure will not turn an initially valid (and therefore limited) search into a 'general' one, while the inconvenience of procuring a warrant to cover an inadvertent discovery is great. But where the discovery is anticipated, where the police know in advance the location of the evidence and intend to seize it, the situation is altogether different. ”

“ Coolidge, the only other adult occupant of the house, that she and her bady had to spend the night elsewhere and that she could not use either of the Coolidge cars. Two police officers then drove her in a police car to the house of a relative in another town, and they stayed with her there until around midnight, long after the police had had the Pontiac towed to the station house. The Coolidge premises were guarded throughout the night by two policemen. [18]
The word 'automobile' is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears. ”

“ On the following Sunday, a policeman called Coolidge early in the morning and asked him to come down to the police station for the trip to Concord, New Hampshire, where the lie-detector test was to be administered. That evening, two plainclothes policemen arrived at the Coolidge house, where Mrs. Coolidge was waiting with her mother-in-law for her husband's return. These two policemen were not the two who had visited the house earlier in the week, and they apparently did not know that Collidge had displayed three guns for inspection during the earlier visit. ”

“ As in every case, our single duty is to determine the issues presented in accord with the Constitution and the law.
Pamela Mason, a 14-year-old girl, left her home in Manchester, New Hampshire, on the evening of January 13, 1964, during a heavy snowstorm, apparently in response to a man's telephone call for a babysitter. Eight days later, after a thaw, her body was found by the site of a major north-south highway several miles away. She had been murdered. The event created great alarm in the area, and the police immediately began a massive investigation. ”

“ The complaint supporting the warrant for a search of Coolidge's Pontiac automobile, the only warrant that concerns us here, stated that the affiant 'has probable cause to suspect and believe, and does suspect and believe, and herewith offers satisfactory evidence, that there are certain objects and things used in the Commission of said offense, now kept, and concealed in or upon a certain vehicle, to wit: 1951 Pontiac two-door sedan * * *.' The warrants were then signed and issued by the Attorney General himself, acting as a justice of the peace. ”

“ In times not altogether unlike our own they won-by legal and constitutional means in England, [9] and by revolution on this continent-a right of personal security against arbitrary intrusions by official power. If times have changed, reducing everyman's scope to do as he pleases in an urban and industrial world, the changes have made the values served by the Fourth Amendment more, not less, important. [10]
The State's first theory is that the seizure on February 19 and subsequent search of Coolidge's Pontiac were 'incident' to a valid arrest. ”

“ On February 19, the results of the investigation were presented at a meeting between the police officers working on the case and the State Attorney General, who had personally taken charge of all police activities relating to the murder, and was later to serve as chief prosecutor at the trial. At this meeting, it was decided that there was enough evidence to justify the arrest of Coolidge on the murder charge and a search of his house and two cars. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Manchester police chief made formal application, under oath, for the arrest and search warrants. ”

“ Here, the specific evil is the 'general warrant' abhorred by the colonists, and the problem is not that of intrusion per se, but of a general, exploratory rummaging in a person's belongings. See, e.g., Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S., at 624-630, 6 S.Ct., at 528-532; Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 195-196, 48 S.Ct. 74, 75-76, 72 L.Ed. 231; Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 85 S.Ct. 506, 13 L.Ed.2d 431. The warrant accomplishes this second objective by requiring a 'particular description' of the things to be seized. ”

“ It is, or should be, an important working part of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the 'well-intentioned but mistakenly over-zealous, executive officers' [38] who are a part of any system of law enforcement. If it is to be a true guide to constitutional police action, rather than just a pious phrase, then ' (t) he exceptions cannot be enthroned into the rule.' United States v. Rabinowitz, supra, at 80, 70 S.Ct., at 441 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) . The confinement of the exceptions to their appropriate scope was the function of Chimel v. ”

“ The exceptions are 'jealously and carefully drawn,' [6] and there must be 'a showing by those who seek exemption * * * that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.' [7] ' (T) he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.' [8] In times of unrest, whether caused by crime or racial conflict or fear of internal subversion, this basic law and the values that it represents may appear unrealistic or 'extravagant' to some. ”

“ Justice Black's opinion for a unanimous Court held that ' (o) nce an accused is under arrest and in custody, then a search (of his car) made at another place, without a warrant, is simply not incident to the arrest.' Id., at 367, 84 S.Ct., at 883. Dyke v. Taylor Implement Mfg. Co., 391 U.S. 216, 88 S.Ct. 1472, 20 L.Ed.2d 538. Cf. Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 47, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 1979, 26 L.Ed.2d 419. Search-incident doctrine, in short, has no applicability to this case. ”