Most readers of this blog know (1) that a search done pursuant to consent doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment, but (2) that the scope of search is limited by the terms of the consent. Thus, if Ollie Officer asks Sam Suspect whether he can search Sam's house for the body of Vickie Victim, and Sam says, "OK, but you can't look in the basement," then Ollie can't look in the basement, unless he has some other basis, besides consent, to do so. Furthermore, Ollie can't look in, say, a shoebox in Sam's closet, beacuse Sam only agreed to let Ollie look for Vickie's body, and Vickie's body couldn't reasonably be in a shoebox. The scope of a person's consent is determined under an objective test: "[w]hat would the typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect?" Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 250 (1991). Sometimes that's an easy question, and sometimes it isn't. An example of the latter is State v. Stone, 362 N.C. 50 (2007), in which a divided North Carolina Supreme Court held that a drug suspect's general consent to a search of his person didn't allow officers to look inside his underwear. Difficult questions about the scope of consent arise particularly often in connection with computer searches. For example, in State v. Prinzing, __ N.E. 2d. __, 2009 WL 1099774 (Ill. Ct. App. Apr. 21, 2009), officers went to the home of a person they suspected of possessing child pornography. The officers [...]
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