CASE STUDY OF WHETHER CONSENT WAS VOLUNTARY OR COERCED

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome everyone to inside the badge. We delve deep into
understanding criminal law. So let's get started. They were going

(00:21):
to be looking at a case to see if voluntary consent.
It's a fake case. It's just a test almost for you,
and looking at police coercion and voluntary consent. So here's
the situation. Let's see what happens when you think about it.
A police officer. Here is a rumor that a man
is selling drugs out of his house. One day, while

(00:41):
patrolling the neighborhood, the officer sees the man walking down
the street. The officer then approaches the man and tells
him he is worried about him and asks permission permit
him to search his house. The man asked the officer
if he is allowed to if he has to allow
him to search the house. The officer responds by telling
him that if he doesn't, he will go attempt to

(01:01):
get a search warrant based on this. The man consents
to allow the police officer to search the house, and
the officer finds over one hundred baggies of drugs. The
question becomes, now are the drugs admissible at a criminal trial?
So let's find out what happens. The key question here
really revolves around whether the man's consent was voluntary or coerced.

(01:25):
Under Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, the Supreme Court
established the consent must be freely involuntarily given and not
the result of duress or coercion express or implied. That's
the charity of circumstances test examines whether a reasonable person
would feel free to decline the officer's request. This test

(01:46):
is something the media tends to leave out when they
report crimes. The officer's statement about obtaining a warrant if
the man refused, could constitute coercion. However, courts have held
merely informing someone about intentions to obtain a warrant doesn't
automatically invalidate consent if presented as a legitimate alternative. Yet

(02:10):
in Quintero, the Court found that threatening to obtain a
warrant without probable cause could render subsequent constant consent involuntary. Here,
the officer only had a sub substantiated rumor lacking probable
cause for a warrant. His statement about getting a ward
could be seen as the baseless threat, since he likely

(02:30):
couldn't obtain one legally. Anyway. This mirror is the Quintario case,
where consent was deemed involuntary when officers threatened to obtain
a warrant without adequate probable cause. Additionally, the officer's approach
under the guys of being worried about the man could
be viewed as potentially deceptive, further undermining the voluntariness. Therefore,
the drugs would likely be in admissible as evidence obtained

(02:52):
through involuntary consent and violation of the Fourth Amendment protection.
The example brings up a couple of questions for me
at least, For instance, how would this change if the
man had prior interactions with law enforcement? Would his familiarity
with police procedures and rights make his consent more likely
to be considered voluntary despite the officer's potentially course of
statement about obtaining a warrant. These are questions that we

(03:16):
can explore in the future. Some of the cases that
were looked at for this was Schneck and Law versus
Bustamante in nineteen seventy three, United States versus Farulo in
nineteen seventy four, in the United States versus Canto in
two thousand and even in the Eighth Circuit so we'll
add these every so often. As well as looking at cases,
we'll add these old case studies for you to use

(03:37):
some critical thinking, see what you would come up with.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast.