The Nebraska Supreme Court recently handed down a new Fourth Amendment decision, State v. Sievers, allowing a suspicionless stop of a car on the ground that the officers were merely seeking information about a crime believed to be going on where the car had recently been parked. The case strikes me as wrongly decided, and I thought I would explain why.The question in Sievers is whether the police could stop a truck that had recently left a house that was suspected of being a place where drugs were sold and stolen firearms were being stored. The police were watching the house and were in the process of getting a warrant to search it. They saw a truck leave the premises and drive away, so they stopped the truck five blocks away. They did not observe any traffic violations that might have independently permitted the stop. A subsequent search of the car revealed two small baggies of meth in the front console of the car, and the driver’s was convictied of possessing the meth.On appeal, the Nebraska Supreme Court frames the legal issue as being “whether the suspicionless stop of [the truck] to gather information about stolen property and possible criminal activity at the residence he drove from, for which a search warrant was being sought, violated [the truck driver’s] Fourth Amendment rights.” So framed, the Court rules, the suspicionless stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Source: Court Allows Suspicionless “Information Seeking” Stop of a Car Leaving a Home
