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The 'High Crime Area' Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis, Andrew Ferguson, Damien Bernache
The 'High Crime Area' Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis, Andrew Ferguson, Damien Bernache
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This article proposes a legal framework to analyze the "high crime area" concept in Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion challenges.Under existing Supreme Court precedent, reviewing courts are allowed to consider that an area is a "high crime area" as a factor to evaluate the reasonableness of a Fourth Amendment stop. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). However, the Supreme Court has never defined a "high crime area" and lower courts have not reached consensus on a definition. There is no agreement on what a "high-crime area" is, whether it has geographic boundaries, whether it changes over time, whether it …
Grand Jury Discretion And Constitutional Design, Roger Fairfax
Grand Jury Discretion And Constitutional Design, Roger Fairfax
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The grand jury possesses an unqualified power to decline to indict - despite probable cause that alleged criminal conduct has occurred. A grand jury might exercise this power, for example, to disagree with the wisdom of a criminal law or its application to a particular defendant. A grand jury might also use its discretionary power to send a message of disapproval regarding biased or unwise prosecutorial decisions or inefficient allocation of law enforcement resources in the community. This ability to exercise discretion on bases beyond the sufficiency of the evidence has been characterized pejoratively as grand jury nullification. The dominant …