Source: https://openjurist.org/395/us/814
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 02:46:24+00:00

Document:
The petitioners were convicted in a New Jersey trial court of conspiring to maintain a building for purposes of lewdness and to commit acts of lewdness, N.J.Rev.Stat. §§ 2A:98—1, 2A:133—2, 2A:115—1, N.J.S.A.; permitting a building to be used for purposes of lewdness, N.J.Rev.Stat. § 2A:133—2(b), N.J.S.A.; and possessing with intent to utter obscene publications, N.J.Rev.Stat. § 2A:115 2, N.J.S.A. Their convictions were affirmed by the Superior Court, Appellate Division, 102 N.J.Super. 102, 245 A.2d 495, and the Supreme Court of New Jersey denied review, 52 N.J. 499, 246 A.2d 456. The petitioners make several arguments, but their principal contention is that evidence introduced at their trial was secured in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Although the arrest of petitioner Von Cleef may for our purposes be assumed to have been lawful (the petitioners argue that it was not), the factual circumstances here are otherwise quite different from those of Rabinowitz. Even the facts of Harris v. United States, supra—in which the search of a four-room apartment and the seizure of an envelope containing altered Selective Service documents were sustained on the ground that they were contemporaneous with a lawful arrest—are a far cry from those of this case. While Rabinowitz made the principles governing searches accompanying arrests unfortunately hazy, see Chimel v. California, supra, 395 U.S., at 766, 89 S.Ct., at 2041 we have no hesitation in concluding that the action of the police here in o mbing a three-story, 16-room house from top to bottom and carting away several thousand papers, publications, and other items cannot under any view of the Fourth Amendment be justified as 'incident to arrest.' Like the search and 'mass seizure' in Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346, 77 S.Ct. 828, 1 L.Ed.2d 876, see Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 239, 80 S.Ct. 683, 697, 4 L.Ed.2d 668, such action is simply 'beyond the sanction of any of our cases.' 353 U.S., at 347, 77 S.Ct., at 829.

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