Argument of Speaker
Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in No. 99-1132, Illinois versus McArthur will be announced by Justice Breyer.
Argument of Justice Breyer
Mr. Breyer: Tera McArthur asked two police officers to accompany her to a trailer home where she lived with her husband Charles, so that she could take her belongings out of the home.
Just after she came out of the trailer with her things she told the police that Charles had some drugs inside.
The police knocked, they asked Charles if they could search, he said no, he then came out of the trailer and eventually one of the policeman stopped Charles from going back into the trailer while the other one went off to get a warrant.
The Illinois Court later held at the trial of Charles McArthur that this police restrained stopping him from going back into the trailer, while they were going to look for a search warrant, violated the Fourth Amendment.
Today we disagree with that conclusion.
We have examined the restraint that the police imposed in order to decide whether it was reasonable in Fourth Amendment terms, and we conclude that it was.
The police had probable cause to believe that McArthur’s trailer home contain drugs.
There are both evidence of a crime and contraband.
They had good reason to fear that unless restrained Charles McArthur would destroy the drugs before they could come back with the warrant.
They imposed the restraint for a limited time, two hours; during that time they acted with diligence to obtain a warrant, and hence consequently in imposing this limited restraint for a limited time they made reasonable efforts to reconcile law enforcement needs with the demands of personal privacy.
We do not believe the Fourth Amendment requires more.
For these and related reasons we revere the Illinois Court’s contrary determination.
Justice Souter has filed a concurring opinion; Justice Stevens has filed a dissenting opinion.
