{"id":15991,"date":"2016-06-21T08:01:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaska-appeals-court-targets-police-searches\/"},"modified":"2016-06-21T08:01:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:01:40","slug":"alaska-appeals-court-targets-police-searches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-appeals-court-targets-police-searches\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska appeals court targets police searches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>FAIRBANKS<\/strong> \u2014 The Alaska Court of Appeals is asking the state\u2019s highest court to re-examine rules regarding police searches after throwing out a conviction for a Fairbanks man who was charged because officers found cocaine in his vehicle\u2019s ashtray.<\/p>\n<p>A Superior Court judge found Frederick Pitka guilty in 2011 of driving under the influence and fourth-degree felony drugs misconduct. Superior Court Judge Michael MacDonald had rejected Pitka\u2019s argument that the ashtray search violated his federal and state rights protecting him from \u201cunreasonable searches and seizures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The appeals court decision issued Friday states that Pitka\u2019s Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution weren\u2019t violated because police had probable cause to suspect he had illegal drugs in his vehicle. However, the three-judge panel found that the officers violated a state law that says a closed container in a vehicle can only be searched if it\u2019s \u201cimmediately associated\u201d with the suspect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere, the police understandably (though erroneously) assumed that the ashtray of a vehicle could be searched as a matter of course incident to the arrest of the driver,\u201d the opinion says.<\/p>\n<p>In a separate concurring opinion, judges David Mannheimer and Marjorie Allard asked the Alaska Supreme Court to look review laws that allow police to search center consoles in vehicles, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe current law has proved confusing and difficult to apply in practice \u2014 as Pitka\u2019s case illustrates,\u201d the judges wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The court\u2019s Friday decision does not affect Pitka\u2019s DUI conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FAIRBANKS \u2014 The Alaska Court of Appeals is asking the state\u2019s highest court to re-examine rules regarding police searches after throwing out a conviction for a Fairbanks man who was charged because officers found cocaine in his vehicle\u2019s ashtray. A Superior Court judge found Frederick Pitka guilty in 2011 of driving under the influence and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15991"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}