Question

Brief the following case: Harris v united states

1.Citation. 2 Facts. ... 3 Issue. ... 4 Decision. ... 5 Reason.

Answer 1

In this case, which involved a search incident to an arrest, the Supreme Court affirmed the admissibility of evidence of one crime that was found by officers during a proper, but warrantless, search for evidence of another unrelated crime. The basis for the Court’s ruling was subsequently expanded by the courts as the test required for the plain view doctrine.
George Harris was a suspect in the forgery of a $25,000 check drawn on an Oklahoma oil company that was to be cashed in a New York bank. Two warrants were issued for his arrest, and subsequently five Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents arrested him in the living room of his Oklahoma City apartment. After the arrest, agents spent five hours searching the four-room apartment for evidence of the forgery.
Just before completing the search, one of the agents found a sealed envelope in a bedroom dresser marked “George Harris, personal papers.” Inside that envelope was a second sealed envelope in which the officer found 8 draft cards and 11 draft registration certificates. Harris was subsequently convicted of unlawful possession, concealment, and alteration of the Selective Service materials.
Harris attempted, unsuccessfully, to have the evidence found in his dresser suppressed as the result of what his attorney argued was an unreasonable and unconstitutional search. The Court rejected Harris’s arguments that officers could not search his apartment, reasoning that searches incident to arrests were authorized to include “the premises under his immediate control.” In this case (under now-antiquated Fourth Amendment jurisprudence), the Court held, that included the entire apartment. Opening and then searching the sealed envelopes were authorized because officers were looking for canceled checks and related pieces of paper that easily could have been hidden in the envelopes. The argument that the documents found had nothing to do with the crime then being investigated also failed to convince the Court’s majority. “In keeping the draft cards in his custody [Harris] was guilty of a serious and continuing offense against the laws of the United States. A crime was thus being committed in the very presence of the agents conducting the search. Nothing in the decisions of this Court gives support to the suggestion that under such circumstances the law-enforcement officials must impotently stand aside and refrain from seizing such contraband material.”
The ruling essentially followed earlier findings that generally related to discoveries by police in fields or private yards. In those instances, the courts relied on the premise that citizens had no expectation of privacy for activities conducted in open yards or fields. The Harris Court brought concepts from the earlier rulings indoors.
In Harris, the FBI agents were properly in the defendant’s home, the initial search was deemed valid, and given the nature of the search, the draft cards were discovered in plain view by an agent while he was searching for other papers. Thus, the draft cards were subject to seizure without a warrant. The resulting plain view doctrine thus became an exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement that permits law enforcement officers to seize clearly incriminating evidence or contraband when it is discovered in a place where the officers have a legal right to be.