Last week, the Supreme Court granted cert in a Fourth Amendment case, Lange v. California, that asks whether a police officer in “hot pursuit” of a suspected misdemeanant must get a warrant before entering the suspect’s home. That question turns out to be momentous for several reasons, two of which are obvious and one of which is less so but may be even more profound.
First, the vast majority of arrests in this country are for misdemeanors. Citing our friend Alexandra Natapoff, Lange’s cert petition notes that “[r]oughly thirteen million misdemeanor cases are filed each year, outnumbering felonies by four to one.” Indeed, as Prof. Natapoff documents in her wonderful book, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal and in this interview, “[t]he misdemeanor system represents 80 percent of the state criminal dockets in this country.” Thus, contrary to Justice Souter’s misperception in one of the Supeme Court’s most important misdemeanor cases, Atwater v. City of Lago, we certainly are “confronting … an epidemic of unnecessary minor-offense arrests.” Moreover, as Prof. Natapoff and others have documented, arrests for even minor offenses can have devestating effects on people’s lives. Among other things, misdemeanors “are moneymakers for local jurisdictions,” and the fines, court fees, and other monetary penalties they impose can result in crushing debt and a cascading financial crisis from which it becomes impossible for many people to escape. Besides the direct financial implications, a misdemeanor conviction can have serious collateral consequences, including loss of employement, housing, and eligibility for various government benefits. In short, contrary to what you—or, perhaps more to the point, many judges—might think, a misdemeanor arrest is a really big deal.
Read the rest of this post →