I'm writing about this case because of the Fourth Amendment discussion.
Today, in Davis v. United States, --- F.3d ---, No. 15-55671, (9th Cir. 2017), the Ninth Circuit denied qualified immunity to an agent who detained an elderly woman for several hours during a search with a warrant. The case started when the woman tried to sell paperweights belonging to her late husband, one of which contained a piece of moon rock.
The facts are pretty egregious:
At the time of the detention, Conley [the agent] was aware of several facts that color the reasonableness of his actions. First, Conley knew that Davis was a slight, elderly woman, who was then nearly seventy-five years old and less than five feet tall. Second, he knew that Davis lost control of her bladder during the search and was wearing visibly wet pants. Third, he knew that Davis and Cilley were unarmed and that the search warrant had been fully executed by the time Davis was escorted to the parking lot. Fourth, Conley knew that Davis had not concealed possession of the paperweights, but rather had reached out to NASA for help in selling the paperweights. Finally, because all but the first of the phone calls between Davis and “Jeff” were recorded, Conley knew the exact content of most of those conversations, including that Davis was experiencing financial distress as a result of having to raise grandchildren after her daughter died, her son was severely ill and required expensive medical care, and Davis needed a transplant. Those conversations also revealed Davis’s desire to sell the paperweights in a legal manner and her belief that she possessed them legally because they were a gift to her late husband.
The Court explained, under the Fourth Amendment, “a warrant to search for
contraband founded on probable cause implicitly carries with
it the limited authority to detain the occupants of the premises
while a proper search is conducted.” Nevertheless, “special
circumstances, or possibly a prolonged detention, might lead
to a different conclusion in an unusual case.” For instance, search related
detentions that are “unnecessarily painful [or]
degrading” and “lengthy detentions[] of the elderly, or of
children, or of individuals suffering from a serious illness or
disability raise additional concerns.” Thus, a “seizure must be ‘carefully tailored’ to the law
enforcement interests that . . . justify detention while a search
warrant is being executed.”
The search here "was unreasonably prolonged and
degrading." As such, the agent was not entitled
to qualified immunity as a matter of law.
