On first day without Scalia, Supreme Court faces a possible tie vote

WASHINGTON — Without Antonin Scalia's potential tie-breaking vote, the Supreme Court appeared split down the middle Monday in a case that could impact the way police stop and search suspects.

The court's liberal and conservative members took opposite sides in the case — a relatively frequent occurrence, but one that now could produce 4-4 deadlocks in the wake of Scalia's unexpected death Feb. 13. Such verdicts would uphold decisions reached by lower courts without setting any national precedent.

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The case involves a Utah police officer's detention of a man leaving a house that was under observation for possible drug-dealing. Based on the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant for a minor traffic infraction, the man was searched and found to have illegal drugs.

The Utah Supreme Court ruled that the initial stop was illegal and the discovery of the arrest warrant insufficient to justify the search and arrest, prompting Utah to appeal.

Within minutes, the court's liberal justices seized on the police officer's behavior. "What stops us from becoming a police state?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, if police can simply stop people without reasonable suspicion.

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Conservative justices saw things differently. Chief Justice John Roberts noted police can search suspects to protect themselves, adding, "Not wanting to get shot's a pretty good reason."

The Supreme Court has ruled many times on what evidence can be admitted and what must be suppressed under the exclusionary rule, which restricts evidence that is gathered illegally. The new case, Utah v. Strieff, tests the impact of outstanding arrest warrants on that balancing act.

In some cities, a huge percentage of the population has arrest warrants pending against them. Nearly 80% of the residents in Ferguson, Mo., have arrest warrants, the Justice Department found during its investigation into the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old African-American man.

Cincinnati recently had more than 100,000 warrants pending for failure to appear in court. New York City has 1.2 million outstanding warrants.

Most warrants are for traffic violations. In some municipalities, police are encouraged to track down the guilty parties in order to get fines paid and increase revenue. Such incentives, the liberal justices said, may lead to police conducting fishing expeditions.

"I was staggered by the number of arrest warrants that are out on people," Justice Elena Kagan said. Since most police stops based on reasonable suspicion occur in high-crime areas, she said, a ruling in Utah's favor could give police broad new incentive to detain people while searching for arrest warrants.

But Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — representing the conservative side of the argument in Scalia's absence — said most states and municipalities do not have huge numbers of outstanding arrest warrants, thereby eliminating any incentive.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the most frequent swing vote when Scalia was on the court, also doubted whether the police officer stopped the suspect in order to search for arrest warrants.

"I thought the purpose of the stop was to find out what was going on in the house," Kennedy said.