Chapter 10 Flashcards
The Fourth Amendment
The collection of physical evidence is controlled by the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by the police.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and, no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Olmstead v. United States (1928)
Articulated the initial interpretation of the Fourth Amendment best. Agents, without first obtaining a search warrant, placed wire taps on Olmstead’s phone lines without setting foot on his property. The Supreme Court had the view that the Fourth Amendment did not restrict police searches and seizures unless law enforcement physically intruded on a person’s property. So, if police did not physically search through a person’s belongings or trespass on their property, the Fourth Amendment did not apply.
Became known as the “physical penetration rule.” As long as the police did not physically encroach on an individual’s person, house, papers, or effects, evidence gathered without a search warrant could be used in court.
Katz v. United States (1967)
Relevant Case Facts:
FBI agents suspected Charles Katz of engaging in illegal bookmaking activities. Specifically, they thought he was transmitting bets and wagering information over the phone. To gather evidence they placed listening devices outside the telephone booth Katz used to make his calls. They used the evidence to gather an 8-count indictment.
Legal Question:
Is a person protected by the Fourth Amendment when he seeks to preserve his privacy even in an area accessible to the public?
Holding:
Yes. 7-1 vote.
Reasoning:
We reiterate again that searches, without judicial oversight, are per se unreasonable under the 4th Amendment.
Judicial process is a requirement that cannot be waived, even when agents are very careful, and limit their searches to only what is necessary.
The Fourth Amendment applies not only to the seizure of tangible things but extends to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any technical trespass. It protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of the Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
Dissent (Justice Black):
Used both textualism and original meaning. It is not the proper role of the Court to rewrite the meaning of the 4th Amendment to reach a result that people believe are desirable. The 4th Amendment simply does not apply to eavesdropping. If the framers wanted to cover this, they would have done so. However, they did not. There is no general right created by the Amendment so as to give this Court the unlimited power to hold unconstitutional everything which affects privacy.
Why is Katz case important (3 reasons)?
First, the Court applied the right of privacy (from Griswold 1965) to searches and seizures – if a citizen has an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable, then that person is entitled to that privacy.
Second, the Fourth Amendment protects people and not places or things.
Third, the Fourth Amendment protects not just tangible things, but the intangible as well.
Expectation of privacy was born and prevails today.
United States v. Jones (2012)
Relevant Case Facts:
The FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department suspected Jones of cocaine trafficking. As part of the investigation, officers secured a warrant authorizing them to install covertly and to monitor a GPS tracking device on a Jeep Grand Cherokee registered to Jones’s wife but used exclusively by him. It required the GPS device to be installed within a 10-day period but the officers installed the device on the 11th day. They changed batteries on the device and it remained on the car for 28 days. Over this four-week period the device transmitted to police computers more than 2,000 pages of data on the car’s movements, but could not tell police who was driving, if there were passengers, or what the driver and passengers did in the car or at their destination. Based on intercepted phone calls, police learned that Jones was expecting a shipment of cocaine in October 2005. On October 24, police executed search warrants for a number of locations. After an initial trial ending in an acquittal on some charges and a deadlocked jury on others, Jones was indicted on a new charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Over Jones’s objections, the judge allowed the information collected by the GPS device to be admitted as evidence. Jones was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He also was ordered to forfeit $1 million in drug proceeds.
Legal Question:
Does the attachment of a GPS tracking device to an individual’s vehicle, and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets, constitute a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment?
Holding:
Yes. 9-0.
Reasoning:
1. The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.
2. In Katz we said that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” and found a violation in attachment of an eavesdropping device to a public telephone booth. Our later cases have applied the analysis of Justice Harlan’s concurrence in that case, which said that a violation occurs when government officers violate a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” But Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, we must preserve the degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. We note that the Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test.
Katz’s reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test augmented, but did not displace or diminish, the common-law trespassory test that preceded it. When the Government physically invades personal property to gather information, a search occurs. The reaffirmation of that principle suffices to decide this case.
The government violates the Fourth Amendment when it physically intrudes on a suspect’s constitutionally protected space with the purpose of gathering information against him.
Illinois v. Gates (1983)
Relevant Case Facts:
The police received an anonymous letter informing them of illegal drug activity by the Gates. After partially verifying the information, the police obtained a warrant and waited for the couple to return from Florida, where they allegedly picked up some drugs and drove back to Illinois. The police executed the search warrant and found 350 pounds of marijuana.
Legal Question:
Does a search based on an anonymous tip violate the 4th Amendment protection against illegal searches and seizures?
Holding:
No. By a vote of 6-3 the Court ruled in favor of Illinois.
Reasoning:
1. Nothing in the letter indicates that the author was reliable or honest, and there is no indication of the basis for the writer’s predictions. The affidavit from the detective might have supplemented the anonymous letter to show probable cause. Therefore, the Illinois Supreme Court applied the Spinelli “Two-Pronged Test.” Under this test, the letter had to satisfy both requirements—it had to reveal the “basis of knowledge” of the letter writer, and it had to provide facts establishing the “veracity” or reliability of the information.
2. Thus, we should look at the “Totality of the Circumstances” approach which is more consistent with prior treatment of probable cause, than are specific, rigid tests.
3. Probable cause is a fluid concept—Rigid legal rules are ill-suited to an area of such diversity. As such, the “Two-Pronged Test” is inappropriate—it encourages technical dissection of informants’ tips with undue attention focused on isolated issues that cannot be separated from the facts presented to a magistrate. Anonymous tips would seldom survive the Spinelli two pronged test, but such tips when accompanied by police work, are quite useful. In this case, the police work supplemented the tip, which ultimately lead to the warrant being issued.
Exceptions to Search Warrant requirements
- Searches incident to a valid arrest (conducted at time of arrest to disarm the suspect, prevent destruction of evidence, and remove possible means of escape).
- Loss of evidence searches (preserve evidence that is about to be destroyed).
- Consent searches (people consent to a search; must be made voluntarily and by a person with proper authority).
- Safety searches (if there is a danger to law enforcement or public).
- Plain view seizures (may seize evidence of a crime, contraband, or other when it is in plain view of an officer legally present).
Florida v. Jardines (2013)
Relevant Case Facts:
The police received an anonymous letter informing them of illegal drug activity by the Gates. After partially verifying the information, the police obtained a warrant and waited for the couple to return from Florida, where they allegedly picked up some drugs and drove back to Illinois. The police executed the search warrant and found 350 pounds of marijuana.
Legal Question:
Is using a drug-sniffing dog on a homeowner’s porch to investigate the contents of the home a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment?
Holding:
Yes. By a vote of 5-4 the Court ruled in favor of Jardines.
Reasoning:
1. The Fourth Amendment establishes a simple baseline, one that for much of our history formed the exclusive basis for its protections: When “the Government obtains information by physically intruding” on persons, houses, papers, or effects, “a `search’ within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment” has “undoubtedly occurred
2. We regard the area “immediately surrounding and associated with the home”—what our cases call the curtilage—as “part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.” Since the officers’ investigation took place in a constitutionally protected area, we turn to the question of whether it was accomplished through an unlicensed physical intrusion.
3. Introducing a trained police dog to explore the area around the home in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence is something else. There is no customary invitation to do that. An invitation to engage in canine forensic investigation assuredly does not inhere in the very act of hanging a knocker.
Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding (2009)
Relevant Case Facts:
On October 8, 2003, Savana Redding, a 13-year-old student at Safford (Arizona) Middle School was called to assistant principal Kerry Wilson’s office where Wilson told Redding several students claimed that she was giving prescription-strength ibuprofen to fellow students. Redding denied the charge and allowed Wilson to search her backpack where he found nothing. Wilson then instructed administrative assistant Helen Romero to take Redding to the school nurse’s office to search her clothes for the pills. Romero and the nurse, Peggy Schwallier, asked Redding to remove her jacket, socks, shoes, stretch pants and T-shirt (both without pockets). Finally, Savana was told to pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. No pills were found. April Redding, Savana’s mother, sued the school district and the school officials involved for conducting a strip search of her daughter in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district court found no violation but the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that under T.L.O. students have a right to personal privacy that was unreasonably violated here. The school district appealed and the Court granted certiorari.
Legal Question:
Was Savana Redding’s Fourth Amendment right violated by a strip search conducted on the reasonable suspicion that she brought forbidden prescription drugs to school?
Holding:
Yes. The Court held 8-1 that the search violated the Constitution.
Reasoning:
1. The Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to have probable cause to conduct a search. T.L.O. recognizes that school settings require a careful balancing of government and private interest that stops short of probable cause. The standard is therefore that the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.
2. The standard for schools is that there should be a moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing
3. A detailed examination of the facts suggests that Wilson’s suspicion was enough to justify a search of Savana’s backpack and outer clothing but a strip search of the nature Savana was exposed to requires distinct justifications. The indignity of the search alone does not outlaw it but in this case the content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion.
Terry v. Ohio (1968)
Relevant Case Facts:
While patrolling in plain clothes, officer McFadden observed two men he had never seen before. He saw them pace along the street and pause in front of the same store 24 times. After each pass they conferred, and the office also saw a third man join the two briefly. Thinking they were casing the store for a robbery, he approached them and identified himself as a police officer. He asked them to identify themselves, and Terry mumbled something inaudible. The office then spun Terry around, patted down his outside clothing and found a gun in his overcoat pocket. He also found a gun on one of the other men, and arrested them on concealed weapons charges.
Legal Question:
Is it always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest?
Holding:
No. By a vote of 8-1 the Court ruled in favor of Terry.
Reasoning:
1. It must be recognized that a person is seized whenever he or she is restricted from walking away. Thus the 4th Amendment comes into play even in the slightest search and seizure instance. Here, there is no question that the office seized the petitioner and subjected him to a search. As such, we must determine if these actions were reasonable.
2. Because there is no ready test for reasonableness, we balance the need to search (the governmental interest) against the invasion which it entails. One government interest is crime prevention. It is this interest which underlies the recognition that an officer may, in appropriate circumstances, and in an appropriate manner, approach a person to investigate criminal activity even though there is no probable cause for an arrest. Here, it is clear that there was appropriate that the officer investigated, based on the facts we have before us.
3. We cannot blind ourselves to the need of the officer to protect themselves from violent situations. They need not be certain that a person is armed; they only need determine whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.
Exclusionary Rule
Discourages violations of the Fourth Amendment. A judge created rule that excludes from evidence at trial any evidence that was obtained in violation of Fourth Amendment, i.e., illegal searches and seizures. The idea is that if the police and the prosecution know that evidence produced by an illegal search will be of no use in a trial, they have a strong motive not to violate the Constitution during criminal investigations.
Positive effects: Acts as an enforcement mechanism to increase compliance with the Fourth Amendment, prevents the police from benefiting from illegal actions at the expense of the accused, serves to increase public confidence in the criminal justice system, and prevents convictions and incarcerations based on illegally obtained evidence.
Negative effects: Obviously guilty people go free because of technical violations of the rules, cost on society of allowing criminals to go free and recidivating, tilts the balance too much in favor of the accused and hamstrings the police, and rules are technical and difficult to comply with in a fast paced real world of criminal investigation.
Mapp v. Ohio (1961)
Relevant Case Facts:
The police tried to enter Mapp’s house on the ground that she was harboring a fugitive who was suspected of blowing up Don King’s house. Mapp would not let them in because they did not have a search warrant. The officer waited, and three hours later tried to enter again. When Mapp did not answer her door, the police forced their way into the home. At the same time, Mapp’s attorney arrived and tried to see her, but the police would not let him do so. Hearing the police break in Mapp also came down and argued with them and demanded to see a warrant. The office held up a piece of paper, claimed it was a warrant, and shoved it down Mapp’s blouse. The search turned up no evidence of the fugitive, but they did seize some obscene pictures that were illegal to possess under Ohio law. At trial the warrant was never produced, but Mapp was found guilty of possession of obscene material.
Legal Question:
Does the exclusionary rule apply to the states through the 14th Amendment?
Holding:
Yes. By a vote of 6-3 the Court ruled in favor of Mapp.
Reasoning:
1. Today we hold that all evidence obtained via illegal searches and seizures is inadmissible in court. Since the 4th Amendment’s right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the states through the due process clause of the 14th amendment, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as it is used against the federal government.
2. Presently, a federal prosecutor may make no use of evidence illegally seized, but a state’s attorney across the street may, although he supposedly is operating under the enforceable prohibitions of the same Amendment. Thus, a state serves to encourage disobedience to the federal constitution which it is bound to uphold.
U.S. v. Leon (1984)
Relevant Case Facts:
The Burbank police received a tip from a person of unproven reliability identifying two people as drug dealers who were selling methaqualone and cocaine from their residence and from another home. The police began to investigate and conducted surveillance on both houses. Following a series of leads they expanded the scope of the investigation, during which they identified two men—including Leon—as participating in the drug operation. Based on their observations and investigations the police obtained a warrant to search the residences and cars. The searches resulted in the seizure of illegal substances.
Legal Question:
Should the 4th Amendment Exclusionary Rule be modified so as not to bar introduction of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probably cause?
Holding:
Yes. 6-3 vote.
Reasoning:
1. The balancing approach that has evolved suggests that the Exclusionary Rule should be more generally modified to permit the introduction of evidence obtained in the reasonable good-faith belief that a search or seizure was in accord with the 4th Amendment. Our evaluation of the costs and benefits of suppressing reliable physical evidence seized by officers reasonably relying on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate leads to the conclusion that such evidence should be admissible in the prosecution’s case.
2. In close cases, a search with a warrant is sustainable, and one without is not. In short, we give deference to magistrates, but we recognize that this deference is not boundless. Courts must insist that the magistrate perform his job as “neutral and detached.” Thus, inquiries can be made about the evidence presented. First, courts may inquire whether the evidence on which the warrant is based is recklessly false. Second, Magistrate must be sure to be neutral and detached, and not act as a rubber stamp for the police. Third, there must be a substantial basis for determining that probable cause exists.
3. The rule in place is meant to deter police misconduct rather than to punish judges or magistrates. Additionally, there is no evidence that exclusion of evidence will lead judges to ignore the 4th Amendment.
4. We find that the marginal benefits produced by suppressing evidence obtained in an objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant cannot justify the costs of exclusion.
Hudson v. Michigan (2006)
Relevant Case Facts:
Michigan police obtained a warrant to search Hudson’s house for drugs and firearms. They arrived and knocked on his door, but only waited 3–5 seconds before entering the home. Upon searching, they found cocaine rocks and a loaded gun. Hudson’s attorney argued that this evidence should be suppressed at trial because the police failed to comply with the traditional “knock and announce” rule which requires police to wait a reasonable amount of time before entering after they knock on a door.
Legal Question:
Is the exclusionary rule appropriate for violation of the knock and announce requirement?
Holding:
No. By a vote of 5-4 the Court ruled in favor of Michigan.
Reasoning:
1. The common law principle that officers must announce their presence and provide residents the opportunity to open a door is an ancient one. We have ruled in the past that such a rule is a command of the 4th Amendment. Michigan concedes that the incident in this case is a knock and announce violation
2. Exclusion may not be premised on the mere fact that a constitutional violation was a “but for” cause of obtaining evidence. Our cases show that but for causality is only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for suppression. Here, even if this is such a situation, we have never held that evidence is “fruit of the poisonous tree” simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police.
3. Unlike other interests, the knock and announce requirement is different in that it does not include shielding potential evidence from the government’s eyes. Knock and announce is simply meant to reduce the potential for violence, and to allow the opportunity to collect oneself before answering the door. It DOES NOT protect against seeing or taking of evidence described in a warrant.
Sixth Amendment
In all criminal prosecutions:
The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial;
A trial by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed;
To be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;
To be confronted with the witnesses against him;
To have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and,
To have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
