Court Opinion

ID: 9431436
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:16.901963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:28.421131
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
While I join Justice Marshall’s opinion explaining why the majority’s extension of the Court’s holding in Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984), “emasculates the Warrant Clause and provides an intolerable incentive for war-rantless searches,” ante this page, I remain convinced that the Segura decision itself was unacceptable because, even then, it was obvious that it would “provide government agents with an affirmative incentive to engage in unconstitutional violations of the privacy of the home,” 468 U. S., at 817 (dissenting opinion). I fear that the Court has taken another unfortunate step down the path to a system of “law enforcement unfettered by process concerns.” Patterson v. Illinois, ante, at 305 (Stevens, J., dissenting). In due course, I trust it will pause long enough to remember that “the efforts of the courts and their officials to bring the guilty to punishment, praiseworthy as they are, are not to be aided by the sacrifice of those great principles established by years of endeavor and suffering which have resulted in their embodiment in the fundamental law of the land.” Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 393-394 (1914).