Fourth Amendment Commons^™

The Reasonableness And Unreasonableness Of Delays In Obtaining Search Warrants, Brianna N. Stanley

Mercer Law Review

Imagine a couple driving down the road and lawfully being stopped by police. Next, envision that traffic stop turning into an arrest and the couple's phones being seized, their vehicle being impounded, and their computer and tablet within the vehicle taken to the inventory room at the police department. If you are thinking this does not sound like anything out of the ordinary, you would be correct. However, imagine their defense attorney constantly asking for the phone, tablet, and computer to be given back to the couple so that evidence on these devices could be examined for their criminal case. …

The Probationer, The Free Man, And The Fourth Amendment: Constitutional Protections For Those Who Have Served Their Sentences And Those Who Have Not, Rachel Ness-Maddox

Mercer Law Review

In Park v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court evaluated whether persons convicted of sexual offenses and subsequently classified as "sexually dangerous predator[s]" may be required to wear Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices after serving their full sentences, including fulfilling probation or parole requirements. The court held that, under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, such a requirement is invalid because it infringes on the right free people have against unreasonable searches and seizures executed by the state—no matter the crimes for which they were convicted or their status as registered sex offenders. However, the court made …

Hey Siri, How Does The Judicial System Treat Searches And Seizures Of Electronic Devices? Here’S What I Found, Sandy Davis

Mercer Law Review

In a world where access to an expansive array of information is open and freely available from our back pockets, entrenched legal notions such as privacy and property come to the fore. More to the point, the Fourth Amendment test for balancing government and possessory interests plays an ever-expanding role in shaping how government agencies search and seize our electronic devices—or more precisely, our “virtual homes.”

When the government searches and seizes personal property, it must do so within the scope of Fourth Amendment reasonableness. When that personal property is an electronic device, such a search and seizure must be …

Davis And The Good Faith Exception: Pushing Exclusion To Extinction?, Eleanor De Golian

Mercer Law Review

To mitigate the effects of unlawful searches and remain faithful to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the United States Supreme Court created the exclusionary rule, which requires lower courts to suppress evidence obtained from illegal searches. The Court, however, has recognized exceptions to the exclusionary rule, many of which involve police officers' "good faith" reliance on what they believe to be legal authority to search. In Davis v. United States, the Supreme Court held that, where a police officer relies on binding precedent in performing a search, the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule will not be used …

Hiding In Plain Sight: Protection From Gps Technology Requires Congressional Action, Not A Stretch Of The Fourth Amendment, Kimberly C. Smith

Mercer Law Review

In the fall of 2010, a college student in Santa Clara, California, found a peculiar object on the underside of his vehicle after a trip to the mechanic. The student's friend posted an online picture of the strange device asking for suggestions about its source and "if it mean[t] the [Federal Bureau of Investigation] 'is after us.'" As it turns out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was secretly tracking the twenty-year- old Arab-American using a Global Positioning System (GPS) affixed to the underside of his vehicle. The FBI located the student two days after the posting and demanded the …

Padgett V. Donald: Why Not So Special, Victoriya Kulik

Mercer Law Review

In Padgett v. Donald, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously held that a state statute, permitting compelled collection of saliva samples from incarcerated felons for DNA profiling, does not violate the federal Constitution's Fourth Amendment, the search and seizure provisions of the state constitution, or the felons' rights to privacy under the federal or state constitutions. The circuits are split whether to apply the special needs analysis or the balancing test to DNA profiling statutes. In this case of first impression for the circuit, the Eleventh Circuit applied the balancing test. This decision is important because it opens …

Form Over Substance? Qualified Immunity In Groh V. Ramirez, Lenard F. Harrelson Jr.

Mercer Law Review

In Groh v. Ramirez, the United States Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that a search warrant may be so facially defective that the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid. The Court reasoned that the warrant deficiency in this case, revolving around the particularity requirement, flows directly from the text of the Fourth Amendment, and thus, no reasonable officer could believe a warrant that obviously did not comply with this standard was valid. The Court proceeded to deny the executing officer qualified immunity by holding that reliance upon this facially defective warrant was objectively unreasonable. …

To Serve And Protect: Thornton V. United States And The Newly Anemic Fourth Amendment, Jason Lewis

Mercer Law Review

In Thornton v. United States, the United States Supreme Court further weakened the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment by holding that an officer may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle incident to arrest even when the suspect is first approached after exiting the vehicle. Under the guise of providing protection to police officers, this decision greatly expands the power of an arresting officer to search the private property of the arrestee and creates uncertainty on what constitutional limits apply to searches incident to arrest outside the home.

Nothing New Under The Sun? A Technologically Rational Doctrine Of Fourth Amendment Search, Stephen E. Henderson

Mercer Law Review

In late 2002 the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") launched an ill-named, if not entirely ill-advised, data-mining initiative as part of its response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Under the direction of Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter, infamous for his role in Iran-Contra, DARPA dubbed the program "Total Information Awareness" ("TIA). The goal was to amalgamate a mammoth database of existing commercial and governmental information, from Internet mail and calling records to banking transactions and travel documents, which would be analyzed by a to-be developed computer system capable of spotting suspicious behavior

Wyoming V. Houghton: Passengers' Belongings Subject To Searches Under The "Automobile Exception" To The Fourth Amendment's Warrant Requirements, Theresa H. Hammond

Mercer Law Review

In Wyoming v. Houghton the United States Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of conducting a warrantless search of a container under the "automobile exception" to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. The Court held that when police officers have probable cause to search a vehicle, they may also search any container found in the car, including passengers' belongings, that are capable of concealing the object of the search.

Chandler V. Miller: The Supreme Court Closed The Door On The Factual Instances That Warrant Suspicionless Searches, Justin Scott

Mercer Law Review

Chandler v. Miller involved the constitutionality of a Georgia statute that required candidates for designated state offices to pass a drug test prior to qualifying for nomination or election.

Maryland V. Wilson: The Fading Fourth Amendment, Gregory Lineberry

Mercer Law Review

In Maryland v. Wilson, the United States Supreme Court held that a police officer may order a passenger of a lawfully stepped car to exit the vehicle. This "bright-line rule" allows these intrusions as a matter of course and does not require case-by-case determination.

Glide Path To An "Inclusionary Rule": How Expansion Of The Good Faith Exception Threatens To Fundamentally Change The Exclusionary Rule, James P. Fleissner

Mercer Law Review

During recent political debates over the federal budget deficit, it became fashionable to speak of a "glide path" to a balanced budget. Advocates of a budget plan would plan certain tax rates and spending limits, factor in a set of economic assumptions, and graph a swooping path of declining deficits over several years. Needless to say, that sort of exercise in prediction does not involve the sort of odds that would inspire confidence in a gambler. The accuracy of the beguiling graph, of course, depends on whether tax and spending commitments are kept and whether a host of economic assumptions …

Mccabe V. Life-Line Ambulance Service: Another Extension Of The Over-Extended Administrative Search Exception, Anne Tunnessen

Mercer Law Review

In McCabe v. Life-Line Ambulance Service, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit extended the administrative search exception to the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches. The suit alleged a novel violation of the ban in the form of a warrantless involuntary commitment procedure. However, the court found that the procedure fit neatly within the exception and declined to extend Fourth Amendment protection to involuntary commitments.

Resources And Rights: Towards A New Prototype Of Criminal Representation, Laura Gardner Webster

Mercer Law Review

A comprehensive concern in recent criminal procedure decisions in the United States Supreme Court has been the apprehension that certain rights afforded to the accused detract from efficient law enforcement. Efficiency in controlling crime and obtaining accurate verdicts is preferred over the recognition of rights which impede that process. This model of the purposes of the criminal justice system has its origins in the judicial reluctance to apply the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule as a means of excluding otherwise probative evidence simply because "the constable blundered."' The problems in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence are well known. As two commentators have observed, …

Exclusionary Rule Need Not Be Applied In Federal Habeas Reviews Of State Convictions, Jann Johnson

Mercer Law Review

In Stone v. Powell, the U.S. Supreme Court held that if a state "has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth-Amendment claim, a state prisoner may not be granted federal habeas-corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at trial."

Respondent Powell was convicted of second-degree murder in a California state court. A police officer had found the murder weapon on Powell during a search incident to his arrest for violation of a vagrancy ordinance, and the officer's testimony was admitted at trial over Powell's objection. Powell …

The Automobile Exception: What It Is And What It Is Not -- A Rationale In Search Of A Clearer Label, Charles E. Moylan Jr.

Mercer Law Review

The so-called "automobile exception" to the warrant requirement of the fourth amendment would pose few conceptual difficulties but for the simplistic assumption on the part of many lawyers and judges that the "automobile exception" has something to do with automobiles. It is the burden of this article to establish that that is not necessarily so. There are many legitimate warrantless searches of automobiles that do not remotely involve the "automobile exception." Conversely, there are some legitimate warrantless searches of non-automobiles that do. Our only real problem is that of coming to grips with the word "automobile."

"Automobile" means one thing …