Richard Wolf

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court divided largely along ideological lines Monday in ruling that police can seize evidence from an unconstitutional search if they first discover the suspect has one or more outstanding arrest warrants.

The court's four conservative justices, joined by Justice Stephen Breyer, ruled that even if police violate the Constitution by stopping someone without suspicion, an arrest warrant entitles them to conduct a search. In that circumstance, they said, there is no "flagrant police misconduct."

"Evidence is admissible when the connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. The vote was 5-3.

The decision was controversial because in some cities thousands of people have arrest warrants pending against them, mostly for traffic violations as insignificant as unpaid parking tickets.

There were 16,000 outstanding arrest warrants in Ferguson, Mo., as of 2015 — a figure that amounts to roughly 75% of the city’s population — the Justice Department found during its investigation into the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old African-American man. Cincinnati recently had more than 100,000 warrants pending for failure to appear in court. New York City has 1.2 million outstanding warrants.

The high court case involved a Utah narcotics detective's detention of a man leaving a house that was under observation for possible drug dealing. Based on the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant for a minor traffic infraction, the man was searched and found to have illegal drugs.

Thomas said the court's precedents do not call for excluding evidence "when the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefits." He noted that the court's decision does not stop the complainant, Edward Strieff, from seeking other remedies for the violation of his constitutional rights.

Still, the decision elicited angry dissents from three liberal justices — most notably Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dropped the customary word "respectfully" from her final "I dissent."

"The court today holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer's violation of your Fourth Amendment rights," Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. "This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants — even if you are doing nothing wrong."

African Americans and other minorities are subjected to such searches more than others, Sotomayor said, citing the likes of W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin. "For generations," she said, "black and brown parents have given their children “the talk” — instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger — all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them."

Justice Elena Kagan noted that the initial detention was "far from a Barney Fife-type mishap," a reference to the bumbling deputy sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show. Rather, she said, it was a "calculated decision, taken with so little justification that the state has never tried to defend its legality."

The Utah Supreme Court had ruled that the initial stop was illegal and the discovery of the arrest warrant insufficient to justify the search and arrest, prompting Utah to appeal.

The Supreme Court has ruled many times on what evidence can be admitted and what must be suppressed under the exclusionary rule, which restricts evidence that is gathered illegally. The latest case, Utah v. Strieff, tested the impact of outstanding arrest warrants on that balancing act.

In some municipalities, police are encouraged to track down the guilty parties in order to get fines paid and increase revenue. Such incentives, the liberal justices said, may lead to police conducting fishing expeditions.

"I was staggered by the number of arrest warrants that are out on people," Kagan said during oral argument in February, held on the court's first day back after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Since most police stops based on reasonable suspicion occur in high-crime areas, she said, a ruling in Utah's favor could give police broad new incentive to detain people while searching for arrest warrants.

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But Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said most states and municipalities do not have huge numbers of outstanding arrest warrants, thereby eliminating any incentive.