Seizure of Evidence (4th Amendment)

Question 1

Olmstead v. United States

Answer 1

Telephone wire-taping cannot be included under the Fourth Amendment, no search or seizure occurred.

Question 2

Katz v. United States

Answer 2

You have a right to have a conversation with someone else, without having it overheard and made use of
Limits:
-Unless the government has obtained a warrant
-Probable cause that a crime has been committed, and evidence of a crime has been found that something is going to occur
-Extreme warrant exception
(telephone booth)

Question 3

United States v. Jones

Answer 3

GPS tracking device attached to the vehicle; the officers encroached on a protected area- physical trespass of the vehicle

Question 4

United States v. Knotts

Answer 4

Augmented visual surveillance did not constitute a search because a person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another

Question 5

Carpenter v. United States

Answer 5

Government’s acquisition of the cell-site records was a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment

Question 6

United States v. Miller

Answer 6

Could assert neither ownership or possession of the documents and the nature of the records confirmed his limited expectation of privacy because they were not confidential communications but negotiable instruments to be used in commercial transactions

Question 7

Smith v. Maryland

Answer 7

Government’s use of a pen register was not a search- don’t entertain actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial

Question 8

Kyllo v. United States

Answer 8

Use of a thermal imager to detect heat radiating from the side of a the defendant’s home was a search

Question 9

Hill v. California/Maryland v. Garrison

Answer 9

Officers’ failure to realize the over-breadth of the warrant was objectively understandable and reasonable, and the evidence was lawfully seized

Question 10

Ybarra v. Illinois

Answer 10

Can’t search people just because they are present at a scene of a crime. Can’t search people just because they are present where there is a search warrant to do some search

Question 11

Aguilar v. Texas

Answer 11

Search warrant should not have been issued because the affidavit did not provide a sufficient basis for a finding of probable cause and that the evidence obtained as a result of the search warrant was inadmissible in petitioner’s trial

Question 12

Nathanson v. United States

Answer 12

An officer may not properly issue a warrant to search a private dwelling unless he can find probable cause therefore from facts or circumstances presented to him under oath or affirmation

Question 13

Giordenello v. United States

Answer 13

Inferences from the facts which lead to the complaint must be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in ferreting out crime

Question 14

Spinelli v. United States

Answer 14

Informant’s tip was not sufficient to provide the basis for a finding of probable cause. Nothing alleged which would permit the suspicions engendered by the informant’s report to ripen into a judgement that a crime was probably being committed. Affidavit falls short of the standards set forth in Aguilar, Draper and other decisions.

Question 15

Illinois v. Gates

Answer 15

Totality of the circumstances approach is more consistent with prior treatment of probable cause , than is any rigid demand that specific tests be satisfied by every informant’s tip

Question 16

Illinois v. Caballes

Answer 16

Canine sniffs by well-trained narcotics protection dogs, is sui generis (of it’s own kind) because it discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics, a contraband item.

Question 17

United States v. Place

Answer 17

Drug sniffs are designed to reveal only the presence of contraband

Question 18

Florida v. Harris

Answer 18

Police officer has probable cause to conduct a search when the facts available to him would warrant a person of reasonable caution in the belief that contraband or evidence of a crime is present

Question 19

Florida v. Jardines

Answer 19

Government’s use of trained police dogs to investigate the home and its immediate surroundings is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment

Question 20

Rodriguez v. United States

Answer 20

If an officer can complete traffic-based inquiries expeditiously, then that is the amount of time reasonably required to complete the stop’s point is unlawful

Question 21

Arizona v. Johnson

Answer 21

Seizure remains lawful only so long as unrelated inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop

Question 22

New Jersey v. TLO

Answer 22

Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to public school officials, they may conduct reasonable warrantless searches of students under their authority notwithstanding the probable cause standard that would normally apply to searches under the Fourth Amendment.

Question 23

Knowles v. Iowa

Answer 23

Search incident to arrest exception

• need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody
• need to preserve evidence for later use at a trial

Question 24

Pennsylvania v. Mimms

Answer 24

Whether the search occurred inside or outside the car was irrelevant when the officers stopped for a legitimate reason and, upon observing the bulge in his jacket, any person of reasonable caution would have conducted the search

Question 25

United States v. Robinson

Answer 25

Traffic violations necessarily involve less danger to officers than other types of confrontations

Question 26

Arizona v. Hicks

Answer 26

Only when a police officer had probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, could they invoke the “plain view” doctrine.

Question 27

Coolidge v. New Hampshire

Answer 27

A warrantless seizure by police of an item that comes within plain view during their lawful search of a private area may be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment

Question 28

Kyllo v. United States

Answer 28

Where the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a “search” and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.
(thermal imager)

Question 29

Riley v. California

Answer 29

Immense storage capacity of modern cell phones in holding that police officers must generally obtain a warrant before searching the contents of a phone

Question 30

New York v. Belton

Answer 30

1. How much of the car can be searched/extent of the car?

2. Does it follow automatically to the fact that the person’s been arrested?

Question 31

Chimel v. California

Answer 31

Incident to a lawful arrest, a search of any area beyond the arrestee’s immediate control, is unlawful under the Fourth Amendment unless there a clear danger that evidence may be destroyed or concealed or there is an imminent threat of harm to the arresting officers

Question 32

Chimel v. California

Answer 32

ncident to a lawful arrest, a search of any area beyond the arrestee’s immediate control, is unlawful under the Fourth Amendment unless there a clear danger that evidence may be destroyed or concealed or there is an imminent threat of harm to the arresting officers

Question 33

Trupiano v. United States

Answer 33

Clear danger that evidence may be destroyed or concealed or there is an imminent threat of harm to the arresting officers

Question 34

United States v. Rabinowitz

Answer 34

Warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest may generally extend to the area that is considered to be in the possession of under the control of the person arrested

Question 35

Oliver v. United States/Hester v. United States

Answer 35

An individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conduct out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home

Question 36

Bumper v. North Carolina

Answer 36

Search conducted in reliance upon a warrant cannot later be justified on the basis of consent if it turns out that the warrant was invalid

Question 37

Ohion v. Robinette

Answer 37

Fourth Amendment test for a valid consent to search is that the consent be voluntary and voluntariness is a question of fact to be determined from all of circumstances

Question 38

United States v. Drayton

Answer 38

Court has repeated that the totality of the circumstances must control, without giving extra weight to the absence of a search warning

Question 39

Georgia v. Randolph

Answer 39

When two co-occupants are present and one consents to a search while the other refuses, the search is not constitutional

Question 40

Chambers v. Maroney

Answer 40

Seizing officer shall have reasonable or probable cause for believing that the automobile which he stops and seizes has contraband liquor therein which is being illegally transported, right to search and the validity of the seizure are not dependent on the right to arrest

Question 41

Carroll v. United States

Answer 41

Cars and other conveyances may be searched without a warrant in circumstances that would not justify the search without a warrant of a house or an office, provided that there is probable cause to believe that the car contains articles that the officers are entitled to seize

Question 42

Wyoming v. Houghton

Answer 42

Police officers with probably cause to search a car may inspect passengers’ belongings found in the car that are capable of concealing the object of the search

Question 43

Colorado v. Bertine

Answer 43

There is no warrant requirement, under the Fourth Amendment to search a vehicle under a routine inventory search

Question 44

Illinois v. Lafayette

Answer 44

Inventory search of personal effects of an arrestee at a police station was also permissible under Fourth Amendment

Question 45

United States v. Chadwick/Arkansas v. Sanders

Answer 45

Search of closed trunks and suitcases to violate the Fourth Amendment

Question 46

Warden v. Hayden

Answer 46

Search without warrant was valid as “the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative