Social Perceptions of Third-Party Consent and the Reasonableness Test of Illinois v. Rodriguez

United States Supreme Court rulings on the reasonableness of third-party consent to warrantless searches have focused on the consentor's degree of possessory control over the place of search. The authors predicted that (1) laypersons perceive as reasonable third-party consentors only those individuals having high control over the place of search and a close social relationship with the target-person of the search (suspect); and (b) police detectives' perceptions of reasonable third-party consentors would fall intermediately between lay and legal perceptions as expressed in the caselaw. Forty-eight undergraduates and 35 police detectives were randomly assigned to experimental conditions. Two levels of third party's control over the place of search (low or high) were crossed with two levels of third party's social relationship with the target person of search (low or high). As predicted, lay perceptions regarding reasonable third-party consentors involve a more restricted range of people than legal perceptions. Contrary to expectation, police detectives' perceptions closely correspond with lay perceptions.