Professor Chin Cited in Supreme Court Dissent

Professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin is cited in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissenting opinion in Utah v. Strieff, a case concerning Fourth Amendment rights and police searches. 

In the majority opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court held that if law enforcement officers illegally detain an individual and then discover an arrest warrant exists for that person, evidence seized as a result of that stop may be used in court. 

Justice Sotomayor's dissent is sharply critical of the decision, which in her view "holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer's violation of your Fourth Amendment rights."  She cites Professor Chin's paper "The New Civil Death: Rethinking Punishments in the Era of Mass Conviction" in referencing the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. 

Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at King Hall, is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.