WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.
The unanimous decision comes in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic-ticket offense.
David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for police to issue a court summons and let the driver go.
Instead, city detectives arrested Moore, and prosecutors say that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search can be used against him as evidence.
“We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect in order to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety.
Looking to state laws to provide the basis for searches would introduce uncertainty into the legal system, 18 states said in court papers in support of Virginia prosecutors.
Benefits-claims debate
Also Wednesday, the court struggled with how much weight to give an insurance company’s potential conflict of interest when it denies an employee’s benefits claim.
The lawyer representing a woman who sued MetLife Inc. over a disability claim argued that insurance companies have a financial incentive to deny claims. That conflict of interest should weigh heavily in employees’ favor when they challenge claims in court, Joshua Rosenkranz said in court papers.
The dispute is being watched closely by insurance companies and business groups. The dispute could make it easier for employees to win benefit payments in court.
