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Drug Searches - Win One, Lose One (Part I)
Brother and sister Yosef and Sequoia lived together. Burlington police heard a drug dealer sold drugs from a white jeep, and was accompanied by a Hispanic from New York. They obtained a subpoena for the suspect. Yosef was present in the apartment when the subpoena was served. As he was Hispanic, and appeared to be from New York, the police followed him when he took a taxi to his home. The taxi went to Yosef’s house several times a day. Drug dealers frequently use taxis to avoid detection.
When Yosef got out of the taxi, officers asked him if he had any weapons on him. He gave a knife to the officer. A pat down search followed which revealed a wad of cash, and 2 grams of marijuana.
With Sequoia’s permission (more about this in my next column) they entered the house and found more drugs. Yosef and Sequoia claimed both the outside and apartment searches were illegal. They pled guilty on condition that the pleas would be revoked if the Supreme Court ruled the searches illegal.
Regarding the outside search, the question before the Court was: Would a reasonable person in Yosef’s position feel he was not free to leave (i.e. he was arrested), and if so, did the officer have probable cause to arrest, so that the discovery of the drugs was legal? The Court concluded the police acted only on a “hunch” when they followed Yosef to his home, had no reasonable objective basis for believing he had, or dealt drugs. Hence he was arrested without probable cause and discovery of drugs was an illegal search. Accordingly he was illegally convicted based on that search.
A win for Yosef? Not quite. Three Justices:, Reiber, Burgess and Dooley, with Johnson and Skoglund dissenting, said the officers’ tip that a taxi frequently went to Yosef’s house, and drug dealers used taxis, was enough suspicion for them to ask Sequoia if they could come in. She consented to the search, but claimed she was coerced into doing so. (That is the subject of my next column.) The Court disagreed, upheld the consent search, and upheld Yoself’s conviction for illegal possession of the drugs in the apartment because he lived there. Taxi anyone? State vs. Yosef and Sequoia Pitts 2009 Vt 51
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