United States v. Padilla

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has adopted what it terms a “coconspirator exception” to the rule regarding who may challenge the constitutionality of a search or seizure. Under its reasoning, a co-conspirator obtains a legitimate expectation of privacy for Fourth Amendment purposes if he has either a supervisory role in the conspiracy or joint control over the place or property involved in the search or seizure. This “exception,” apparently developed in a series of earlier decisions of the Court of Appeals, squarely contradicts the controlling case from this Court.…