State high court rules on warrantless searches

May 15, 2011

Oregon: On Friday May 6, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the police must prove that there is an immediate threat of injury to themselves or others before they can engage in a warrantless search. These searches are known as "protective sweeps" and are authorized as a safety measure to help protect officers in cases where individuals under investigation pose immediate threats. The case revolved around a search of a house in February, 2005, led by an Oregon State Police detective after he received a tip that it could be a drug house and that it was used to hide people wanted by police. Another officer involved in the search had also received a tip from an unidentified informant who claimed that a resident of the house was a convicted felon involved with guns. During the case, the officer acknowledged that he had confused the resident with another man with a similar name and that no one involved in the investigation saw any sign of weapons or saw any violent or threatening behavior by people in the house. The court's opinion, by Justice Robert Durham, said that even though two men tried to run out of the house and were stopped at a back door by an officer was not enough to pose an immediate threat to justify the sweep that included the upstairs bedroom, therefore, the search, which found drug paraphernalia in an upstairs bedroom, was thrown out. The opinion included this line, "We have described a person’s living quarters as ‘the quintessential domain protected by the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches.'"