Arizona vs. Hicks

When a bullet was fired through the floor of Hicks’ apartment on April 18th, 1984, a man in the apartment below was injured. After police arrived and investigated bullet’s source, an officer noted the serial numbers on some stereo equipment that he suspected was stolen and seized the equipment. The officer’s assumption was correct. Hicks was later indicted for the robbery of the stolen equipment. Hicks argued that while the police did originally have the right to be in his apartment because of the shooting, they did not have the right to move or inspect his stereo without a warrant. The state of Arizona tried to justify the search by saying that the equipment fell under the plain view exception, which made a warrant unnecessary. The state trial court granted his motion to suppress the seized evidence because a warrantless search must be concerned with only the details of the situation it was initiated by. The Court of Appeals ruled that by obtaining the serial numbers from the stereo, the policeman had violated the Fourth Amendment (as seen in Terry vs. Ohio and Carroll vs. United States) since the stereo was in no way related to the shooting. Similarly, this logic also prevents the ‘plain view’ doctrine from justifying the policeman’s actions, because the fourth amendment considered his actions to be unreasonable and without probable cause. Justice O’Conner disagreed with the majority on the grounds that the search was a cursory inspection and argued that police could conduct cursory inspections whenever they believe an object to be contraband.

Work Cited

Seid, David. "Aftermath of Arizona v. Hicks: An Expectation of Privacy at Home." American Journal of Criminology and Law 17 (1989): 81. Print.