E.D.Wis.: Officers are not required to doubt what they see in determining apparent authority to consent

The consenter called 911 to say that her live-in boyfriend locked her out of the house and battered her. When they arrived, she was back in, and her children were there, along with her and clothes and kids’ toys. Based on their observations and her representations, she had apparent authority. United States v. Clinton, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95947 (E.D. Wis. May 15, 2014):

In any case where there is evidence to support the conclusion that an individual lacked the actual authority to consent to a search it will always be possible to argue that officers could have discovered this additional information if only they had sought out certain information. But the question here is whether they were required to inquire further. The Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to doubt everything they see and their common sense tells them to be true; the standard under the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. Here, the officers’ actions were reasonable and a reasonable person in the position of the officers would have concluded, just as they apparently did, that Kidd was a resident of Clinton’s home.