Look no Further! The Scope of Consent Searches After Commonwealth v. Ortiz
by Jessica Langsam
Case Focus
In Commonwealth v. Ortiz, 478 Mass. 820 (2018), a closely-divided Supreme Judicial Court held that, under the Fourth Amendment and article 14 of the Declaration of Rights, a suspect’s consent to search for weapons or drugs “in the vehicle” does not include consent to search under the hood (and under a removed air filter) unless it is “reasonably clear” to a “typical reasonable person” that consent extends beyond the interior of the vehicle and the trunk. Id. at 826-27. The case turned on the scope of the suspect’s consent and the application of the settled rule that “[t]he standard for measuring the scope of a suspect’s consent under the Fourth Amendment [and article 14] is that of ‘objective’ reasonableness — what would the typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect?” Id. at 824 (quoting Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 251 (1991)). Ortiz considered “the words spoken” in the exchange to be informed only by “the context” as it existed during that time, id., a narrower period than in previous cases and one that excludes a suspect’s lack of objection when his consent to the scope of the search is deemed ambiguous.
Background
An officer stopped the defendant’s car and asked if there was anything “in the vehicle that the police should know about, including narcotics or firearms.” Ortiz, 478 Mass. at 821. The defendant replied, “No, you can check.” Id. He exited the vehicle at an officer’s request and was then handcuffed. Id. at 821-822. A drug-detection dog walked around the vehicle but did not alert. Id. at 822. Officers searched the vehicle’s interior but found no contraband. Id. They then raised the hood, removed the air filter, and found a bag containing firearms. Id. The defendant watched from the side of the road but did not object. Id. He was arrested and subsequently told officers that the firearms belonged to him and that he had given consent to look in his vehicle. Id.
The defendant sought to suppress the firearms and his statements on the ground that the search unconstitutionally exceeded the scope of his consent. Id. After an evidentiary hearing, the court suppressed the evidence, ruling that although the defendant’s consent was free and voluntary, when the officer asked only about items “in the vehicle,” a typical reasonable person would understand the scope to have been limited to the interior, and the scope of the defendant’s consent was not expanded by his lack of objection during the search. Id. at 822-823.
The Majority Opinion
In this 4-3 decision, the SJC affirmed suppression, concluding that the defendant’s consent was limited to a search of the vehicle’s interior, which included, the Court said, the passenger compartment and the trunk. The majority cited a similar conclusion by the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Troxell, 78 S.W.3d 866 (Tenn. 2002). Ortiz, 478 Mass. at 824. There, an officer asked the driver of a pickup truck whether he had “any weapons in the vehicle”; the driver replied “no, nothing”; the officer asked, “Okay if we take a look?”; and the driver answered, “Yeah, go ahead.” Id. (emphasis in original). As the SJC noted, Troxell concluded that “[t]he verbal exchange therefore expressly indicated” that the officer intended to search “in the vehicle” (i.e., the cab) and that it was therefore “objectively reasonable to conclude that the consent to search included only the interior.” Id. (quoting Troxell, 78 S.W.3d at 872).
In essentially an alternative ruling, the majority stated that as a matter of fairness, the scope of consent, like voluntariness, must be unambiguous and that the scope of consent here was ambiguous and suppression was warranted because the police may not take advantage of an ambiguity that could be resolved with a clarifying question. Id. at 825-826. The Court held that “unless it is reasonably clear that the consent to search extends beyond the interior of the vehicle, the police must obtain explicit consent before a vehicular search may extend beneath the hood.” Id. at 826-827. It held that where, as here, the scope of consent to search was not reasonably clear, the defendant’s silence when the search extended to the hood was not a substitute for consent but was rather “mere acquiescence to a claim of lawful authority” and his failure to revoke consent was not an agreement to expand the scope beyond its initial limit. Id. at 827.
The Dissent
The dissent would have reversed suppression, noting that to apply the standard interpreting a suspect’s consent to search required considering not only the exchange itself but also the “facts and circumstances surrounding” it, including whether the defendant limited the scope, and, as stated in Jimeno, the “expressed object” of the search. Id. at 827-28. Concluding that the defendant did not limit consent to the interior and trunk, the dissent pointed to his “unqualified and unambiguous general consent” in response to the officer’s request to search for “any narcotics or firearms in the vehicle” and his lack of objection when officers looked under the hood, which would indicate to a “typical reasonable person” that he “authorized the entire search.” Id. at 828.
The dissent noted that whereas Troxell concluded that “in the vehicle” referred to the pickup’s cab, the Ortiz majority concluded that “in the vehicle” referred to the cab plus the trunk – and that there was no “meaningful difference” between the trunk and the hood because both were beyond the passenger compartment and opened separately. Id. at 828-29. The dissent also noted that Troxell’s “narrow focus on the colloquial use” of “in” ignored the conversation’s subject matter, and that Troxell’s search was more extensive in kind and duration and included a drug detection dog, an officer’s examination of the vehicle’s underside and gas tank, and removal of the gas tank at a service station (to which the defendant was instructed to drive), where drugs were found. Id. at 829. In contrast, the dissent found no ambiguity in the defendant’s consent to the scope of the search and noted that his failure to object when the search moved to the hood further evidenced his initial authorization for that portion of the search. Id. at 830.
Consent Searches Post-Ortiz
Cases prior to Ortiz considered a broader context to ascertain the scope of a suspect’s consent, including whether the defendant objected. In Commonwealth v. Gaynor, 443 Mass. 245, 255 (2005), cited by the Ortiz majority and dissent, the defendant argued that the scope of his consent was limited by what officers told him, which was that they wanted to test his blood and compare the results with results of testing connected to one victim. Id. However, the Gaynor Court held that a reasonable person likely would have concluded that the police were seeking the defendant’s blood test results, including his DNA profile, that the scope was not limited to the current investigation (there were additional victims), and that the defendant never limited the scope. Id. at 255-56. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Caputo, 439 Mass. 153, 163 (2003) (holding that when defendant invited officers inside residence and then said that he did not want to talk with them, but did not ask them to leave and did not object when two officers reentered after inspecting his car, invitation to enter was not circumscribed). By way of explanation for limiting the context to only the exchange between the suspect and police, the majority noted that the law is already “quite protective of law enforcement” in that consent may be found valid even when the suspect was not informed of and was unaware of his right to refuse. Ortiz, 478 Mass. at 826.
Going forward, police who want to search a suspect’s vehicle should choose their words carefully and obtain explicit consent for a search beyond the vehicle’s passenger compartment and trunk. A suspect’s consent will likely not be held to be any broader than the plain language of that exchange and could turn, as it did here, on what the meaning of “in” is.
Jessica Langsam is Senior Appellate Counsel at the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. She has litigated motions to suppress and cases at trial and has argued before the Appeals Court and the Supreme Judicial Court. This article represents the opinions and legal conclusions of its author and not necessarily those of the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
