2/24/16 US Supreme Court Rules 911 Call with Limited Corroboration Can Justify the Stop of a Motor Vehicle For DUI.
The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. Information the police receive in anonymous 911 calls by themselves cannot serve as a legal basis to justify the stop of a motor vehicle. The 911 calls and circumstances surrounding the calls must also provide ‘indicia of reliability”, to establish a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular criminal activity is taking place.
In a 2014 case the United States Supreme Court in Prado Navarette v. California, 134 S. Ct. 1683 showed how little evidence is required to establish the necessary indicia of reliability. In the case the police received the following 911 call: “‘Showing southbound Highway 1 at mile marker 88, Silver Ford 150 pickup. Plate of 8-David94925. Ran the reporting party off the roadway and was last seen approximately five [minutes] ago.’ ” As mentioned in Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion, the police did not have the phone number the call came from. Additionally, after finding the vehicle and following it for five minutes the police noted no illegal or bad driving. In Justice Thomas’s majority opinion the court held there was indicia of reliability, a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular criminal activity. In doing so the court emphasized that the caller knew the vehicle’s location, direction of travel, had just recently observed the bad driving and had described driving which could be consistent with drunk driving. The court also noted that the call was made to a 911 number which captures the phone number (though the opinion does not say it did) and false calls to a 911 number are a crime in California and so a person would think twice about making a false call to a 911 number.
In his dissent Justice Scalia pointed out several flaws in the court’s opinion. Those include, the fact that the police followed the vehicle for five minutes and observed no bad driving, which was inconsistent with someone driving under the influence. Also, the caller did not say the driver was driving under the influence but only that the vehicle forced her off the roadway. Since there was no independent evidence of the allegation it would simply have been the caller’s word against the driver of the other vehicle, which could not have subjected the caller to prosecution for making a false call to a 911 number.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/572/12-9490/
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