Court: Campus cops can't just root around students' rooms

The Supreme Judicial Court today threw out drug evidence against two BC students because campus police didn't have a warrant or clear, voluntary permission from the students to search their room.

Campus police originally showed up at Daniel Carr and John Sherman's dorm room in 2007 after a residence assistant reported they might have a weapon. The two allowed officers inside, but after they handed over what turned out to be a replica gun, a folding knife and a throwing star, a police sergeant said he wanted to search the room more thoroughly. The students signed a waiver of a reading of their Miranda rights, but didn't sign another form consenting to the search. When police searched the room, anyway, they found what was later identified as enough cocaine and psilocybin to indict the two for drug trafficking.

The judge in their case agreed this violated their rights and ordered the evidence suppressed, noting the lack of signatures on the search-consent form and what appeared to be less than voluntary verbal assent to a search. The Massachusetts Appeals Court overturned that ruling, but now the state's highest court has in turn reversed that decision, saying :

The judge's ultimate conclusion that the Commonwealth had not proved voluntary consent was supported by her subsidiary findings that: (1) "[Sergeant] Derick immediately demanded the occupants' identities and ordered [another student] to leave; thus, his very first acts had a compulsory dimension to them"; (2) the "armed officers completely blocked the only exit[,] and the two resident directors § stood] in the hallway[, lending] further institutional presence"; (3) "[Sergeant] Derick signaled his distrust of the defendants"; and (4) Sergeant Derick's "pronouncement, 'I would like to search the room,' sounded more like an order than a request." The judge found that "an objective person would not have felt able to refuse the officer's request or leave the room." Each of her subsidiary findings were in turn based on testimony adduced at the hearing.

Complete ruling.