Complex Question--the Right Call : Inadmissibility issue aired in Simpson hearing

The Fourth Amendment reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

A historic sentence that hangs on one of its 54 words: unreasonable. And it was over the interpretation of this one word that prosecutors and defense attorneys argued so skillfully in Municipal Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell’s courtroom in a preliminary hearing on murder charges against O. J. Simpson. It is a word that lies at the center of many questions and fears about unchecked police power. Was the initial, warrantless entry by police into Simpson’s home soon after they learned that his ex-wife and a friend had been murdered unreasonable? Was their search of the home’s grounds unreasonable? Were the many pieces of evidence collected in that search seized illegally, in violation of Simpson’s rights and, as a result, were they inadmissible?

Defense attorney Gerald Uelmen argued eloquently that warrantless searches are justified in only a very few cases, when there is a clear, imminent threat. Those circumstances, he contended, did not apply when police arrived at Simpson’s house hours later. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark was even more persuasive. Officers feared something was amiss at Simpson’s home when no one answered the door there. Had they not entered as they did, she argued, “we would justifiably call them derelict in their duty.”

Questions about the search are certain to arise again as this case unfolds. But for now, the lawyers and Judge Kennedy-Powell have provided a real-life illumination of one of the difficult, gray areas of the law. The exercise was a riveting and instructive mini-course in criminal law.

In 1819, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall noted that the Constitution was “intended to endure for ages to come, and . . . be adapted to the various crises of human affairs. . . . It would have been an unwise attempt to provide by immutable rules for exigencies, which, if foreseen at all, must have been seen dimly and can best be provided for as they occur.” Wrote another chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, nearly a century later, “The Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty . . . under the Constitution.”

Kennedy-Powell fulfilled her solemn responsibility Thursday when she ruled that the search of Simpson’s property was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence gathered was admissible at the preliminary hearing. Her ruling was neither unexpected nor a foregone conclusion. It was the right call.