Judicial Rulings
U.S. Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-3 decision in May that newspaper offices are subject to police searches by search warrants. The high court overturned a circuit court of appeals ruling which said third parties, such as newspapers, should be served subpoenas for obtaining evidence thought to be in their possession, instead of using search warrants, especially when they are not directly involved in the perpetrated crime. The case, Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, involved the Stanford University campus newspaper which had printed photographs taken of demonstrators assaulting policemen. Later the police searched the newspaper office looking for other pictures to use to identify demonstrators. The police found no evidence other than those pictures already printed. The Stanford Daily filed a suit saying "its First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments had been violated." Justice Byron R. White wrote the court's opinion which Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, and Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist joined. White wrote that the district and circuit court of appeals had redefined the Fourth amendment when they ruled newspapers should be exempt from search warrants. But White stated, "Properly administered, the preconditions for a warrant — probable cause, specificity with respect to the place to be searched and the things to be seized, and overall reasonableness — should afford sufficient protection against harms that are assertedly threatened by warrants for searching newspaper offices." But many newspapers and broadcast stations have pointed to problems that could occur if magistrates and police agencies are over zealous: disruption of the regular business of a newsroom and, most importantly, its liability of losing confidential sources. But White asserted, ". . . if the requirements of specificity and reasonableness are properly applied, policed and observed, there (won't) be any occasion or opportunity for officers to rummage at large in newspaper files or to intrude into or to deter normal editorial and publication decisions . . . Nor are we convinced . . . that confidential sources will disappear and that the press will suppress news because of fears of warranted searches." Powell wrote a concurring opinion which mainly dealt with refuting Justice Potter Stewart's dissenting opinion. "As I understand that opinion," wrote Powell, "it would read into the Fourth Amendment, as a new and per se exception, the rule that any search of an entity protected by the Press Clause of the First Amendment is unreasonable so long as a subpoena could be used as a substitute procedure." Powell further stated, "There is no authority either in history or in the Constitution itself for exempting certain classes of persons or entities from its [the search warrant's] reach." Stewart made clear in his dissenting opinion that he didn't "read anything into the Fourth Amendment, but simply enforced the provisions of the First Amendment." Justice Thurgood Marshall concurred with Stewart's opinion which made references to warrant searches as police raids. A major point argued by the majority of the justices is that a search warrant is based on the premise of probable cause with the belief that other parties have evidence of crime on their property. But Justice Stevens in another dissenting opinion said, "But if nothing said under oath in the warrant application demonstrates the need for an unannounced search force, the probable cause requirement is not satisfied. Stewart further states, "Perhaps as a matter of abstract policy a newspaper office should receive no more protection from unannounced police searches than, say, the office of a doctor or the office of a bank. But we are here to uphold a Constitution. And our Constitution does not explicitly protect the practice of medicine or the business of banking from all abridgment by government. It does explicitly protect the freedom of the press. Justice William J. Brennan did not take part in considering or deciding the case. August 1978/Illinois Issues/31
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