Supreme Court to Hear Simi Valley Search Case

Stepping into a long-running Simi Valley dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court today will examine the extent to which police can detain and question individuals while serving search warrants.

The case stems from a 1998 search by Simi Valley police for weapons at a suspected gang safe house after a drive-by shooting.

With guns drawn, nearly two dozen officers swarmed the Patricia Avenue home at dawn. They held four occupants in handcuffs for what they said was no more than two hours while the search was conducted. Resident Iris Mena, who was not a suspect, sued the city and police, claiming a violation of constitutional guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

A federal jury in Los Angeles agreed with Mena, awarding her $60,000 in damages, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling last year.

Now it is the Supreme Court’s turn to hear arguments in a case with potentially broad ramifications. It will weigh law enforcement’s ability to exercise control over dangerous situations against searches that could violate civil rights.

“It’s a matter in dispute that has national importance,” said Simi Valley City Atty. David Hirsch, who is among a handful of city officials and police officers in Washington, D.C., for the hearing.

“It has important consequences as far as police officer safety,” he said. “We have believed from Day One that the officers used proper tactics given the circumstances: a high-risk search where they were going in looking for evidence of a violent crime.”

But Duke Law School professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who will serve as co-counsel on behalf of Mena, said the jury verdict should stand.

“This was an 18-year-old woman who was held in handcuffs for between two and three hours when she was never for a moment suspected of anything,” Chemerinsky said. “Her rights were violated.”

According to court papers, Mena was asleep the morning of Feb. 3, 1998, when a SWAT team officer broke down her padlocked door, pointed his weapon at her and put her in handcuffs. She and three other occupants were brought to a furnished garage and remained there during the search. During that time, officers also questioned the occupants about their immigration status.

“I thought I was being robbed or something; I thought I was going to be killed,” Mena said in an interview. “They didn’t explain to us what was going on.”

Officers were looking for a gang member and evidence related to a drive-by shooting that had taken place three weeks earlier. Although the gang member rented a room at the residence, he was not there at the time of the search. Officers found a .22-caliber handgun and ammunition, baseball bats bearing gang writing and other gang paraphernalia throughout the house.

Mena said officers left a trail of broken doors and scattered clothes.

“They just left me with all this mess,” said Mena, who called her parents as soon as police left. “I was scared; I was shaking. I said, ‘The police came to look for a gang member over here [and] they destroyed our house.’ ”

Months after the search, Mena and her father, Jose Mena, who owns the home, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, resulting in the jury verdict and damages award.

In upholding that verdict, the appeals court said that officers should have released Mena because she was not the subject of the investigation and posed no immediate threat to officer safety. The panel also said that the officers violated Mena’s constitutional rights “by inquiring unnecessarily into her citizenship status.”

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, attorneys for the city of Simi Valley argued that the findings by the appeals court “both restrict law enforcement officers’ long-recognized ability to ask questions of citizens and undermine those same officers’ power to control dangerous and fluid evidence-gathering efforts.”

“Even though the occupants may not have resisted at first, particularly in light of the surprise entry and show of reasonable, but overwhelming force, the experienced officers were well aware that the situation could change in an instant,” the attorneys argued to the high court.

“The [9th] Circuit’s conclusion that the officers should have released [Mena] because it was ‘clear’ that she did not pose an immediate threat is precisely the sort of second-guessing made ‘in the peace of a judge’s chambers’ that this Court has rejected.”

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Times staff writer Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report.