Fourth Amendment – Seizure Flashcards
Mendehall (1980)
Private Searches, Evaporating Privacy, & Plain View: Test: Examine the Totality of Circumstances insofar as whether a reasonable person (who must be posited as innocent, see Royer) would fee free to leave. In most citizen-police encounters, there’s implicit pressure, so courts examine for addition pressures; however, subjective views of agents are irrelevant except to the extent they communicate that view. To this end, factors include the officers’
(1) Tone (e.g., threatening manner, showing authority, brandishing a weapon)
(2) Not allowing one to leave (compare Delgado with Drayton)
Hodari (1991)
Private Searches, Evaporating Privacy, & Plain View: A seizure of a person has not occurred until that person has been physically seized, or seized through the submission to authority. An arrest has not occurred when a person runs from the police. (Group scattered as cops approached; D tossed crack rock; cops picked up)
Drayton (2002)
Private Searches, Evaporating Privacy, & Plain View: Cops don’t have to inform a person can refuse to be searched; cops did not seize any person on the bus because “all circumstances surrounding encounter” left a reasonable person feeling free to terminate encounter
3 cops stopped bus to check bags, then asked to check person. The pat down found drugs taped to legs.
Brendlin (2007)
Private Searches, Evaporating Privacy, & Plain View: A traffic stop constitutes a 4th seizure; any evidence from 4th violation or derivation of violation (exclusionary rule/fruit of the poisonous tree rule) is inadmissible
Traffic stop based on expired tags but had temporary plates was unlawful stop, thus the meth seized was suppressed
Brinegar (1949)
Private Searches, Evaporating Privacy, & Plain View: Probable cause protects “citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and from unfounded charges of crime,” while giving “fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.”Brinegar
