Johnson v. United States:   
United States Supreme Court, 1948. 

Statement of the Case:

      An appeal from the District Court to suppress evidence of opium smoking before trial that was admitted over the defendant's objection when the police entered her home without a warrant or true consent, since they said they were coming in and searching.

Procedure:

      Conviction resulted and the Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.

Facts:

      An informant told police (Detective Lieutenant Belland) that people were smoking Opium in a room in the Europe Hotel. The manager was contacted who also said they could smell it. The police followed to the room and could smell opium from inside the room outside the door. They knocked, identified themselves as the police, and the person, the female appellant, let them in. As soon as she let them in, the police told them to consider themselves under arrest because they were going to search the room. The search turned up incriminating opium, smoking apparatus, the latter being warm, apparently from recent use.

Issue:

      Whether the police violated the ?’s rights to protection from unreasonable search and seizure when she let the police into her house since they identified themselves as officers.

Procedural Result:

      Judgment reversed for ?.

Holding:

      The police violated the ?’s rights to protection from unreasonable search and seizure when she let the police into her house only after they identified themselves as officers, but did not expressly request entry, seemingly demanding it.

Reasoning:

• Entry to defendants’ living quarters was demanded under color of office.
• It was granted in submission to authority rather than as an understanding and intentional waiver of a constitutional right.
• No reason is offered for not obtaining a search warrant except the inconvenience to the officers and some slight delay necessary to prepare papers and present the evidence to a judge. this is not a good enough reason to bypass the constitutional requirement
• Probable cause must be made by a judge, not police officers.
• Police cannot make assumptions to what a judge would decide, because it would reduce the 4th Amendment to nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers

Additional Points:

• Searches conducted without warrants have been held unlawful “notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause.”
• Searches conducted outside the judicial process, without approval by a judge, are per se unreasonable under the 4^th Amendment (subject only to the few exceptions).