U.S. justices hear Utah search case

When a drug dealer opens his door to an undercover informant or police officer, does the dealer also invite the rest of the department inside?

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a Utah search and seizure case that could decide just that.

The case is an appeal from five Central Utah Narcotics Task Force officers who may have to pay damages after entering a man's home without a warrant in 2002. Afton Callahan, of Fillmore, had his criminal case thrown out when he claimed police violated his Fourth Amendment rights by searching his home after an undercover informant completed a drug buy.

"When you let one person into your house, you just don't let in the whole world," Theodore P. Metzler Jr., Callahan's attorney, argued before the nation's highest court Tuesday.

According to court documents, Callahan sold methamphetamine to a confidential informant who "tasted" the drugs and gave police a verbal signal to enter the mobile home. Agents rushed into the home and arrested everyone inside. After the arrests, Callahan consented to a search of the home.

"And here you have a confidential informer going to the place to make sure they really do have the goods," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "Then he goes back to the police. He spends two hours. He's being wired and whatever else. Why didn't somebody pick up the phone and get a warrant at that point?"

Peter Stirba, a Salt Lake attorney representing the officers, said police did not get a warrant because they believed the small amount of drugs would be gone by the time a warrant was secured.

Several lower courts have split on the idea of "consent once removed," an exception to the Fourth Amendment that when a suspect gives an undercover informant or officer permission to enter, the suspect also gives police consent.

"Once a person has, even unknowingly, admitted a government agent into his home, his expectation of privacy is sharply reduced," said Malcolm Stewart, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Attorneys also argued the differences between an informant and an officer, and if an informant is actually an "agent of the state."

The officers argued informants should have the same protections. Stirba said informants are necessary in rural Utah, where police are well-known in the community.

Metzler, and some justices, seemed to disagree.

"Oh, but there is an enormous difference between the training and the character of a police officer and ... the confidential informants (are) often very shady characters who can't be counted on to be truth-tellers, and have a powerful incentive to get someone for the police because in most cases they are seeking to have their own case dealt with sympathetically," Ginsburg said.

The court is expected to issue a decision at a later date.

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E-mail: afalk@desnews.com

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