来源：《洛杉矶时报》
刊登日期：2021年5月17日
On Monday the Supreme Court bolstered the 4th Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” ruling that police officers may not enter a home without a warrant and seize property as part of their so-called “community caretaking” role. But in another decision handed down that day, the court was depressingly less protective of the right to a fair trial guaranteed by the 6th Amendment.
周一，最高法院巩固了宪法第四修正案关于“不合理搜查和没收”的禁令，裁定警察不得在没有搜查令的情况下进入民宅并没收财产，作为他们所谓的“社区照顾”角色的一部分。但在当天公布的另一项裁决中，令人沮丧的是，最高法院对宪法《第六修正案》所保障的公平审判权的保护力度不够。
In the 4th Amendment case, the court ruled in favor of Edward Caniglia, a Rhode Island man whose guns were seized by police who entered his home without a warrant after his wife expressed concern that he might kill himself.
在涉第四修正案的案件中，最高法院判决爱德华卡尼利亚胜诉。这名罗德岛州男子的枪支被警方没收，因为他的妻子担心他可能会自杀，警方在没有搜查令的情况下进入他的家中。
Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said the so-called “community caretaking” exception to the warrant requirement — established in a 1973 decision about the search of an seized rental car — didn’t extend to searches of the home. Thomas noted that the court has said that the “very core” of the 4th Amendment’s protection was “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.”
克拉伦斯·托马斯大法官在为法院撰写意见书时表示，搜查令要求的所谓“社区照顾”例外——这是1973年一项关于搜查一辆缴获的租赁汽车的决定中确立的——并没有扩展到对房屋的搜查。托马斯指出，最高法院曾表示，第四修正案保护的“核心”是“一个人回到自己家中，有不受政府不合理侵扰的权利”。
Unfortunately, a majority of the court was less sensitive to constitutional rights in another new ruling, this one involving the right to a jury trial.
不幸的是，在另一项涉及陪审团审判权的新裁决中，多数大法官对宪法权利不那么敏感。
Last year the court ruled that the 6th Amendment required that juries in state courts must be unanimous when they convict a defendant of a serious crime. But on Monday, by a 6-3 vote, the justices refused to apply that ruling retroactively in the case of Thedrick Edwards, who was in convicted in 2007 by a non-unanimous jury of armed robbery, rape, and kidnapping. Edwards had sought to overturn his conviction in a federal proceeding.
去年，最高法院裁定，第六修正案要求，当各州法院判定犯有严重罪行的被告有罪时，陪审团必须意见一致。但是在周一，大法官以6票对3票的结果，拒绝对爱德华兹一案实施追溯性裁决。2007年，一个非一致的陪审团裁定爱德华兹持械抢劫、强奸和绑架罪名成立。爱德华兹曾试图在联邦诉讼中推翻对他的定罪。
Writing for the majority, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said that under Supreme Court precedents, decisions announcing a “new procedural rule” were not retroactive in cases such as Edwards’. Kavanaugh’s opinion seemed to nullify a 1989 decision allowing retroactivity for “watershed rules” of criminal procedure implicating fundamental fairness.
撰写多数意见书的卡瓦诺大法官表示，根据最高法院的先例，宣布“新程序规则”的裁决在爱德华兹这样的案件中没有追溯效力。卡瓦诺的意见似乎推翻了1989年的一项决定，该决定允许涉及基本公平的刑事诉讼“分水岭规则”具有追溯力。
Kavanaugh justified the decision by arguing that applying the court’s 2020 decision retroactively “would potentially overturn decades of convictions” in states that allowed non-unanimous jury verdicts. But that’s a matter of speculation.
卡瓦诺为这一决定辩护称，在允许陪审团作出不一致裁决的州，追溯适用法院2020年的裁决“可能会推翻数十年的定罪”。但这只是猜测而已。
More to the point, defendants such as Edwards shouldn’t be denied a new trial because they were convicted before the court decided that unanimity was essential. As Justice Elena Kagan put it in a powerful dissenting opinion: “If the right to a unanimous jury is so fundamental — if a verdict rendered by a divided jury is ‘no verdict at all’ — then Thedrick Edwards should not spend his life behind bars over two jurors’ opposition.”
说得更直白一些，像爱德华兹这样的被告，不应该因为他们是在最高法院判决陪审团一致必不可少之前被定罪的，就被拒绝给予重新审判的机会。正如大法官艾琳娜·卡根在一份强有力的反对意见中所指出的:“如果陪审团意见一致的权利如此重要——如果一个意见分歧的陪审团做出的裁决就是‘根本没有裁决’——那么，由于有两个陪审员有反对意见，爱德华兹不应该在监狱里度过他的一生。”