Lead Opinion
the opinion of the Court.
In United States v. Matlock,
I
Respondent Edward Rodriguez was arrested in his apartment by law. enforcement officers and charged with possession of illegal drugs. The police gained entry to thе apartment with the consent and assistance of Gail Fischer, who had lived there with respondent for several months. The relevant facts leading to the arrest are as follows.
On July 26, 1985, police were summoned to the residence of Dorothy Jackson on South Wolcott in Chicago. They were met by Ms. Jackson’s daughter, Gail Fischer, who showed signs of a severe beating. She told the officers that she had been assaulted by respondent Edward Rodriguez earlier that day in an apartment on South California Avenue. Fischer stated that Rodriguez was then asleep in the apartment, and she consented to travel there with the police in order to unlock the door with her key so that the officers could enter and arrest him. During this conversation, Fischer several times referred to the apartment on South California as “our” apartment, and said that she had clothes and furniture there. It is unclear whether she indicated that she currently lived at the apartment, or only that she used to live there.
Rodriguez was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. He moved to suppress all evidence seized at the time of his arrest, claiming that Fischer had vacated the apartment several weeks earlier and had no authority to consent to the entry. The Cook County Circuit Court granted the motion, holding that at the time she consented to the entry Fischer did not have common authority over the apartment. The Court concluded that Fischer was not a “usual resident” but rather an “infrequent visitor” at the apartment on South Cаlifornia, based upon its findings that Fischer’s name was not on the lease, that she did not contribute to the rent, that she was not allowed to invite others to the apartment on her own, that she did not have access to the apartment when respondent was away, and that she had moved some of her possessions from the apartment. The Circuit Court also rejected the State’s contention that, even if Fischer did not possess common authority over the premises, there was no Fourth Amendment violation if the police reasonably believed at the time of their entry that Fischer possessed the authority to consent.
The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed the Circuit Court in all respects. The Illinois Supreme Court denied the State’s petition for leave to appeal,
II
The Fourth Amendment generаlly prohibits the warrant-less entry of a person’s home, whether to make an arrest or to search for specific objects. Payton v. New York,
As we stated in Matlock, supra, at 171, n. 7, “[cjommon authority” rests “on mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes . . . .” The burden of establishing that common authority rests upon the State. On the basis of this record, it is clear that burden was not sustained. The evidence showed that although Fischer, with her two small children, had lived with Rodriguez beginning in December 1984, she had moved out on July 1, 1985, almost a month before the search at issue here, and had gone to live with her mother. She took her and her children’s clothing with her, though leaving behind some furniture and household effects. During the period after July 1 she sometimes spent the night at Rodriguez’s apartment, but never invited her friends there, and never went there herself when he was not home. Her name was not on the lease nor did she contribute to the rent. She had a key to the apartment, which she said at trial she had taken without Rodriguez’s knowledge (though she testified at the preliminary hearing that Rodriguez had given her the key). On these facts the State has not established that, with respect to the South California apartment, Fischer had
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A
The State contends that, even if Fischer did not in fact have authority to give consent, it suffices to validate the entry that the law enforcement officers reasonably believed she did. Before reaching the merits of that contention, we must consider a jurisdictional objection: that the decision below rests on an adequate and independent state ground. Respondent asserts that the Illinois Constitution provides greater protection than is afforded under the Fourth Amendment, and that the Appellate Court relied upon this when it determined that a reasonable belief by the police officers was insufficient.
When a state-court decision is clearly based on state law that is both adequate and independent, we will not review the decision. Michigan v. Long,
On the merits of the issue, respondent asserts that permitting a reasonable belief of common authority to validate an entry would cause a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights to be “vicariously waived.” Brief for Respondent 32. We disagree.
We have been unyielding in our insistence that a defendant’s waiver of his trial rights cannot be given effect unless it is “knowing” and “intelligent.” Colorado v. Spring,
“There is a vast difference between those rights that protect a fair criminal trial and the rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. Nothing, either in the purposes behind requiring a ‘knowing’ and ‘intelligent’ waiver of trial rights, or in the practical application of such a requirement suggests that it ought to be extended to the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.”412 U. S., at 241 .
What Rodriguez is assured by the trial right of the exclusionary rule, where it applies, is that no evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment will be introduced at his trial unless he consents. What he is assured by the Fourth Amendment itself, however, is not that no government search of his house will occur unless he consents; but that no such search will occur that is “unreasonable." U. S. Const., Arndt. 4. There are various elements, of course,
The fundamental objective that alone validates all un-consented government searches is, of course, the seizure of persons who have committed or are about to commit crimes, or of evidence related to crimes. But “reasonableness,” with respect to this necessary element, does not demand that the government be factually correct in its assessment that that is what a search will produce. Warrants need only be supported by “probable cause,” which demands no more than a proper “assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts . . . .” Illinois v. Gates,
Another element often, though not invariably, required in order to render an unconsented search “reasonable” is, of course, that the officer be authorized by a valid warrant. Here also we have not held that “reasonableness” precludes error with respect to those factual judgments that law enforcement officials are expected to make. In Maryland v. Garrison,
*185 “[T]he validity of the search of respondent’s apartment pursuant to a warrant authorizing the search of the entire third floor depends on whether the officers’ failure to realize the overbreadth of the warrant was objectively understandable and reasonable. Here it unquestionably was. The objective facts available to the officers at the time suggested no distinction between [the suspect’s] apartment and the third-floor premises.” Id., at 88.
The ordinary requirement of a warrant is sometimes supplanted by other elements that render the unconsented search “reasonable.” Here also we hаve not held that the Fourth Amendment requires factual accuracy. A warrant is not needed, for example, where the search is incident to an arrest. In Hill v. California,
“The upshot was that the officers in good faith believed Miller was Hill and arrested him. They were quite wrong as it turned out, and subjective good-faith belief would not in itself justify either the arrest or the subsequent search. But sufficient probability, not certainty, is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment and on the record before us the officers’ mistake was understandable and the arrest a reasonable response to the situation facing them at the time.” Id., at 803-804.
It would be superfluous to multiply these examples. It is apparent that in order to satisfy the “reasonableness” requirement of the Fourth Amendment, what is generally demanded of the many factual determinations that must regularly be made by agents of the government — whether the magistrate issuing a warrant, the police officer executing a warrant, or the police officer conducting a search or seizure under one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement — is not that they always be correct, but that they always be rea
“Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability.”
We see no reason to depart from this general rule with respect to facts bearing upon the authority to consent to a search. Whether the basis for such authority exists is the sort of recurring factual question to which law enforcement officials must be expected to apply their judgment; and all the Fourth Amendment requires is that they answer it reasonably. The Constitution is no more violated when officers enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe that the person who has consented to their entry is a resident of the premises, than it is violated when they enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe they are in pursuit of a violent felon who is about to escape. See Archibald v. Mosel,
“It is important to bear in mind that it was the petitioner’s constitutional right which was at stake here, and not the night clerk’s nor the hotel’s. It was a right, therefore, which only the petitioner could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent.” Id., at 489.
But as we have discussed, what is at issue when a claim of apparent consent is raised is not whether the right to be free of searches has been waived, but whether the right to be free of unreasonable searches has been violated. Even if one does not think the Stoner opinion had this subtlety in mind, the supposed clarity of its foregoing statement is immediately compromised, as follows:
*188 “It is true that the night clerk clearly and unambiguously consented to the search. But there is nothing in the record to indicate that the police had any basis whatsoever to believe that the night clerk had been authorized by the petitioner to permit the police to search the petitioner’s room.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
The italicized language should have been deleted, of course, if the statement two sentences earlier meant that an appearance of authority could never validate a search. In the last analysis, one must admit that the rationale of Stoner was ambiguous — and perhaps deliberately so. It is at least a reasonable reading of the case, and perhaps a preferable one, that the police could not rely upon the obtained consent because they knew it came from a hotel clerk, knew that the rоom was rented and exclusively occupied by the defendant, and could not reasonably have believed that the former had general access to or control over the latter. Similarly ambiguous in its implications (the Court’s opinion does not even allude to, much less discuss the effects of, “reasonable belief”) is Chapman v. United States,
As Stoner demonstrates, what we hold today does not suggest that law enforcement officers may always accept a person’s invitation to enter premises. Even when the invitation is accompanied by an explicit assertion that the person lives there, the surrounding circumstances could conceivably be such that a reasonable person would doubt its truth and not act upon it without further inquiry. As with other factual determinations bearing upon search and sеizure, determination of consent to enter must “be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment . . . ‘warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief’ ” that the consenting party had authority over the premises? Terry v. Ohio,
* * *
In the present case, the Appellate Court found it unnecessary to determine whether the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had the authority to consent, because it ruled as a matter of law that a reasonable belief could not validate the entry. Since we find that ruling to be in error, we remand for consideration of that question. The judgment of the Illinois Appellate Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for furthеr proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Notes
Justice MARSHALL’S dissent rests upon a rejection of the proposition that searches pursuant to valid third-party consent are “generally reasonable.” Post, at 196. Only a warrant or exigent circumstances, he contends, can produce “reasonableness”; consent validates the search only because the object of the search thereby “limit[s] his expectation of privacy,” post, at 198, so that the search becomes not really a search at all. We see no basis for making such an artificial distinction. To describe a consented search as a noninvasion of privacy and thus a nonsearch is strange in the extreme. And while it must be admitted that this ingenious device can explain why consented searches are lawful, it cannot explain why seemingly consented searches are “unreasonable,” which is all that the Constitution forbids. See Delaware v. Prouse,
Dissenting Opinion
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
Dorothy Jackson summoned police officers to her house to report that her daughter Gail Fischer had been beaten. Fischer told police that Ed Rodriguez, her boyfriend, was her assaulter. During an interview with Fischer, one of the officers asked if Rodriguez dealt in narcotics. Fischer did not respond. Fischer did agree, however, to the officers’ request to let them into Rodriguez’s apartment so that they could arrest him for battery. The police, without a warrant and despite the absence of an exigency, entered Rodriguez’s home to arrest him. As a result of their entry, the police discovered narcotics that the State subsequently sought to introduce in a drug prosecution against Rodriguez.
The majority agrees with the Illinois Appellate Court’s determination that Fischer did not have authority to consent to the officers’ entry of Rodriguez’s apartment. Ante, at 181-182. The Court holds that the warrantless entry into Rodriguez’s home was nonetheless vаlid if the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had authority to consent. Ante this page. The majority’s defense of this position rests on a misconception of the basis for third-party consent searches. That
The baseline for the reasonableness of a search or seizure in the home is the presence of a warrant. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn.,
I
The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their . . . houses . . . shall nоt be violated.” We have recognized that the “physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” United States v. United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan,
“The presence of a search warrant serves a high function. Absent some grave emergency, the Fourth Amendment has interposed a magistrate between the citizen and the police. This was done not to shield criminals nor to make the home a safe haven for illegal activities. It was done so that an objeсtive mind might weigh the need to invade that privacy in order to enforce the law. The right of privacy was deemed too precious to entrust to the discretion of those whose job is the detection of crime and the arrest of criminals.” Id., at 455-456.
The Court has tolerated departures from the warrant requirement only when an exigency makes a warrantless search imperative to the safety of the police and of the community. See, e. g., id., at 456 (“We cannot be true to that
In the absence of an exigency, then, warrantless home searches and seizures are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The weighty constitutional interest in preventing unauthorized intrusions into the home overrides any law enforcement interest in relying on the reasonable but potentially mistaken belief that a third party has authority to consent to such a search or seizure. Indeed, as the present case illustrates, only the minimal interest in avoiding the inconvenience of obtaining a warrant weighs in on the law enforcement side.
Against this law enforcement interest in expediting arrests is “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Silverman v. United States,
Unlike searches conducted pursuant to the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, see supra, at 191-192, third-party consent searches are not based on an exigency and therefore serve no compelling social goal. Police officers, when faced with the choice of relying on consent by a third party or securing a warrant, should secure а warrant and must therefore accept the risk of error should they instead choose to rely on consent.
II
Our prior cases discussing searches based on third-party consent have never suggested that such searches are “reasonable.” In United States v. Matlock, this Court upheld a warrantless search conducted pursuant to the consent of a
A search conducted pursuant to an officer’s reasonable but mistaken belief that a third party had authority to consent is thus on an entirely different constitutional footing from one based on the consent of a third party who in fact has such authority. Even if the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had authority to consent, she did not, and Rodriguez’s expectation of privacy was therefore undiminished. Rodriguez accordingly can challenge the warrantless intrusion into his home as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This conclusion flows directly from Stoner v. California,
Acknowledging that the third party in this case lacked authority to consent, the majority seeks to rely on cases suggesting that reasonable but mistaken factual judgments by police will not invalidate otherwise reasonable searches. The majority reads these cases as establishing a “general rule” that “what is generally demanded of the many factual determinations that must regularly be made by agents of the government — whether the magistrate issuing a warrant, the police officer executing a warrant, or the police officer conducting a search or seizure under one of the exceptions to the
The majority’s assertion, however, is premised on the erroneous assumption that third-party consent searches are generally reasonable. The cases the majority cites thus provide no support for its holding. In Brinegar v. United States,
Garrison, like Brinegar, thus tells us nothing about the reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment of a warrant-less arrest in the home based on аn officer’s reasonable but mistaken belief that the third party consenting to the arrest was empowered to do so. The majority’s glib assertion that “[i]t would be superfluous to multiply” its citations to cases like Brinegar, Hill, and Garrison, ante, at 185, is thus correct, but for a reason entirely different than the majority suggests. Those cases provide no illumination of the issue raised in this case, and further citation to like cases would be
IV
Our cases demonstrate that third-party consent searches are free from constitutional challenge only to the extent that they rest on consent by a party empowered to do so. The majority’s conclusion to the contrary ignores the legitimate expectations of privacy on which individuals are entitled to rely. That a person who allows another joint access to his property thereby limits his expectation of privacy does not justify trampling the rights of a person who has not similarly relinquished any of his privacy expectation.
Instead of judging the validity of consent searches, as we have in the past, based on whether a defendant has in fact limited his expectation of privacy, the Court today carves out an additional exception to the warrant requirement for third-party consent searches without pausing to consider whether “ ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Mincey,
The majority insists that the rationale of Stoner is “ambiguous — and perhaps deliberately so” with respect to the permissibility of third-party
The majority regards Stoners rejection of “unrealistic doctrines of ‘apparent authority’ ” as ambiguous on the theory that the Court might have been referring only to unreasonable applications of such doctrines and not to the doctrines themselves. Ante, at 187. But Stoner’s express description of apparent authority doctrines as unrealistic cannot be viewed as mere happenstance. The Court in fact used the word “applications” in the same sentence to refer to misapplications of the actual authority doctrine: “Our decisions make clear that the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment are not to be eroded by strained applications of the law of agency or by unrealistic doctrines of ‘apparent authority.’”
Nor did the Stoner Court leave open the door for a police officer to rely on a reasonable but mistaken belief in a third party’s authority to consent when it remarked that “there is nothing in the record to indicate that the police had any basis whatsoever to believe that the night clerk had been authorized by the petitioner to permit the police to search the petitioner’s room.” Id., at 489. Stating that a defendant must “by word or deed” waive his rights, ibid., is not inconsistent with noting that, in a particular case, the absence of actual waiver is confirmed by the police’s inability to identify any basis for their contention that waiver had indeed occurred.
The same analysis applies to Hill v. California,