Opinion

Minnesota v. Olson

  • 495 U.S. 91
  • 58 U.S.L.W. 4464
  • 110 S. Ct. 1684
  • 109 L. Ed. 2d 85
  • 1990 U.S. LEXIS 2038
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Filed
Apr 18, 1990
Status
Published
Author
Stevens
On the bench
Blackmun, Brennan, Kennedy, Marshall, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Stevens, White
Cited by
1,506 cases
Authority
More cited than 24.3%

finding exigent circumstances did not justify a warrantless entry into an upstairs duplex for the purpose of arresting an overnight guest believed to be involved in a murder where the police knew that the suspect was in the upstairs duplex with no suggestion of *369 danger to the other occupants of the duplex, the police had already recovered the murder weapon, the police thought the suspect was the driver of the getaway car and knew he was not the murderer, the police had surrounded the duplex, it was evident that the suspect was going nowhere, and the suspect would have been promptly apprehended had he exited the duplex

How later courts described this case

  • finding exigent circumstances did not justify a warrantless entry into an upstairs duplex for the purpose of arresting an overnight guest believed to be involved in a murder where the police knew that the suspect was in the upstairs duplex with no suggestion of *369 danger to the other occupants of the duplex, the police had already recovered the murder weapon, the police thought the suspect was the driver of the getaway car and knew he was not the murderer, the police had surrounded the duplex, it was evident that the suspect was going nowhere, and the suspect would have been promptly apprehended had he exited the duplex
  • holding that an overnight guest possessed 1Officers testified that they removed the car from the scene because onlookers were becoming argumentative and combative; the officers feared for their safety as well as for the integrity of the crime scene. Our review of the surveillance CD shows a couple of curious passersby. -3- a legitimate expectation of privacy and was thus entitled to the protection of the Fourth Amendment
  • explaining that “a person may have a sufficient interest in a place other than his home to enable him to be free in that place from unreasonable searches and seizures,” and more specifically that “a houseguest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s home”
  • finding that a defendant’s status as an overnight guest in the upper unit of a duplex home was sufficient for him to claim a protected privacy interest in the premises, even though he was not given a key or left alone in the unit, and did not pay for his stay

Written by the judges who cited it.

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by State of West Virginia v. Lamar Dorsey, 234 W. Va. 15 (2014)

    We find, however, that the petitioner’s reliance upon Adkins and Olson is misplaced as those eases are clearly distinguishable from the facts presented here.
    West Virginia Supreme CourtJun 4, 2014Read it
  • Distinguished by State v. Christian, Unpublished Decision (6-11-2004), 2004 Ohio 3000 (2004)

    We reject appellants' arguments that Utz somehow conferred an expectation of privacy to his guests or that these guests were akin to the houseguests described in Minnesota v. Olsen (1990), 495 U.S. 91, 99-100.
    Ohio Court of AppealsJun 11, 2004Read it

The opinion

Justice Stevens,

concurring.

While I join the Court’s entire opinion, I add this caveat concerning the discussion in Part II of respondent’s standing to challenge his arrest on federal constitutional grounds. If we had concluded that he did not have standing as a matter of federal law, the question that would then have been presented would be whether this Court simply should have dismissed the appeal. For we have no power to prevent state courts from allowing litigants to raise federal questions even though they would not have standing to do so in a federal court. See Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U. S. 947, 970-971 (1984) (concurring opinion).

Questions of that kind buttress my opinion that the Court grants review in far too many cases in which state courts have protected the constitutional rights of their own citizens. Notwithstanding the Court’s decision to enlarge its *102 own power to review state-court judgments, see Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983), I remain convinced that this power should be used sparingly. See generally Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U. S. 673, 689-708 (1986) (dissenting opinion). Only in the most unusual case should the Court volunteer its opinion that a state court has imposed standards upon its own law enforcement officials that are too high.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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