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United States V. Melgar Case Study

Decent Essays

Even If This Court Was To Find That Ms. Brie’s Authority to Consent Was Ambiguous, This Court Must Still Find that the District Court Properly Denied the Defendant-Appellant’s Motion.

1. The district court correctly held that ambiguity should not defeat her reasonable apparent authority because allowing it to do so would impose an unreasonable burden on police officers.

The district court’s holding that allowing ambiguity to defeat apparent authority would unreasonably burden police officers by forcing them to clarify the consenter’s authority over every container within the area they were permitted to search should be upheld as it is one that is supported by persuasive precedent from a sister circuit of this Court. See United States v. Melgar, 227 F.3d 1038, 1042 (7th Cir. 2000). In Melgar, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit uses Supreme Court precedent to support the position on ambiguous apparent authority stated above. See id. (citing Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 (1999)). The Seventh Circuit states the Supreme …show more content…

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit holds that when officers receive consent to search with no limitations, only spaces and containers that appear to “obviously” not belong to the consenter are excepted from their search. See, e.g., Synpe, 441 F.3d at 136-37. The Seventh Circuit holds similarly that if officers do not have “positive knowledge” that the consenter does not have authority over the space or container prior to the search, then the search is reasonable. See, e.g., Melgar, 227 F.3d at

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