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Full-Text Articles in Law
Computationally Assessing Suspicion, Wesley M. Oliver
Computationally Assessing Suspicion, Wesley M. Oliver
Law Faculty Publications
Law enforcement officers performing drug interdiction on interstate highways have to decide nearly every day whether there is reasonable suspicion to detain motorists until a trained dog can sniff for the presence of drugs. The officers’ assessments are often wrong, however, and lead to unnecessary detentions of innocent persons and the suppression of drugs found on guilty ones. We propose a computational method of evaluating suspicion in these encounters and offer experimental results from early efforts demonstrating its feasibility. With the assistance of large language and predictive machine learning models, it appears that judges, advocates, and even police officers could …
Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Lila J.E. Nojima
Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Lila J.E. Nojima
Faculty Scholarship
Theories of rational behavior assume that actors make decisions where the benefits of their acts exceed their costs or losses. If those expected costs and benefits change over time, behavior will change accordingly as actors learn and internalize the parameters of success and failure. In the context of proactive policing, police stops that achieve any of several goals — constitutional compliance, stops that lead to “good” arrests or summonses, stops that lead to seizures of weapons, drugs, or other contraband, or stops that produce good will and citizen cooperation — should signal to officers the features of a stop that …
Terry Stops And Frisks: The Troubling Use Of Common Sense In A World Of Empirical Data, David Rudovsky, David A. Harris
Terry Stops And Frisks: The Troubling Use Of Common Sense In A World Of Empirical Data, David Rudovsky, David A. Harris
All Faculty Scholarship
The investigative detention doctrine first announced in Terry v. Ohio and amplified over the past fifty years has been much analyzed, praised, and criticized from a number of perspectives. Significantly, however, over this time period commentators have only occasionally questioned the Supreme Court’s “common sense” judgments regarding the factors sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks. For years, the Court has provided no empirical basis for its judgments, due in large part to the lack of reliable data. Now, with the emergence of comprehensive data on these police practices, much can be learned about the predictive power of …
Terry Stops And Frisks: The Troubling Use Of Common Sense In A World Of Empirical Data, David A. Harris, David Rudovsky
Terry Stops And Frisks: The Troubling Use Of Common Sense In A World Of Empirical Data, David A. Harris, David Rudovsky
Articles
The investigative detention doctrine first announced in Terry v. Ohio and amplified over the past fifty years has been much analyzed, praised, and criticized from a number of perspectives. Significantly, however, over this time period commentators have only occasionally questioned the Supreme Court’s “common sense” judgments regarding the factors sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks. For years, the Court has provided no empirical basis for its judgments, due in large part to the lack of reliable data. Now, with the emergence of comprehensive data on these police practices, much can be learned about the predictive power of …
Whither Reasonable Suspicion: The Supreme Court's Functional Abandonment Of The Reasonableness Requirement For Fourth Amendment Seizures, Steven P. Grossman
Whither Reasonable Suspicion: The Supreme Court's Functional Abandonment Of The Reasonableness Requirement For Fourth Amendment Seizures, Steven P. Grossman
All Faculty Scholarship
Although the United States Supreme Court’s approach to issues governing application of the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment has mutated over the years, at least one aspect of its approach has remained constant. Before information leading to probable cause or its lesser iteration of reasonable suspicion is found to exist, the government must demonstrate in some meaningful way the reliability of the person providing the information or of the information itself. Lacking such reliability, no search or seizure based on probable cause or reasonable suspicion is permitted. In its recent decision in Navarette v. California, the Court largely …
Terry'S Original Sin, Jeffrey Fagan
Terry'S Original Sin, Jeffrey Fagan
Faculty Scholarship
In Mapp v. Ohio, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the due process protections of the exclusionary rule to include all "constitutionally unreasonable searches" that were done without a basis of probable cause. In the seven years after Mapp, when homicide rates in the U.S. nearly doubled, riots broke out in at least forty-seven U.S. cities. During the same era, a heroin epidemic gripped the nation's urban centers, giving rise to street drug markets and associated violence and pressures on law enforcement to curb those markets. As violence increased, a turn in the nation's political culture questioned Mapp's restraints on …
Big Data And Predictive Reasonable Suspicion, Andrew Ferguson
Big Data And Predictive Reasonable Suspicion, Andrew Ferguson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The Fourth Amendment requires “reasonable suspicion” to seize a suspect. As a general matter, the suspicion derives from information a police officer observes or knows. It is individualized to a particular person at a particular place. Most reasonable suspicion cases involve police confronting unknown suspects engaged in observable suspicious activities. Essentially, the reasonable suspicion doctrine is based on “small data” – discrete facts involving limited information and little knowledge about the suspect.But what if this small data is replaced by “big data”? What if police can “know” about the suspect through new networked information sources? Or, what if predictive analytics …
Probable Cause And Reasonable Suspicion: Totality Tests Or Rigid Rules?, Kit Kinports
Probable Cause And Reasonable Suspicion: Totality Tests Or Rigid Rules?, Kit Kinports
Journal Articles
This piece argues that the Supreme Court's April 2014 decision in Navarette v. Calfornia, like last Term's opinion in Florida v. Harris, deviates from longstanding Supreme Court precedent treating probable cause and reasonable suspicion as totality-of-the-circumstances tests. Instead, these two recent rulings essentially rely on rigid rules to define probable cause and reasonable suspicion. The article criticizes the Court for selectively endorsing bright-line tests that favor the prosecution, and argues that both decisions generate rules that oversimplify and therefore tend to be overinclusive.
Nuance, Technology, And The Fourth Amendment: A Response To Predictive Policing And Reasonable Suspicion, Fabio Arcila Jr.
Nuance, Technology, And The Fourth Amendment: A Response To Predictive Policing And Reasonable Suspicion, Fabio Arcila Jr.
Scholarly Works
In an engaging critique, Professor Arcila finds that Professor Ferguson is correct in that predictive policing will likely be incorporated into Fourth Amendment law and that it will alter reasonable suspicion determinations. But Professor Arcila also argues that the potential incorporation of predictive policing reflects a larger deficiency in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and that it should not be adopted because it fails to adequately consider and respect a broader range of protected interests.
Nothing Plus Nothing Equals... Something? A Proposal For Flir Warrants On Reasonable Suspicion, Steve Coughlan, Marc Gorbet
Nothing Plus Nothing Equals... Something? A Proposal For Flir Warrants On Reasonable Suspicion, Steve Coughlan, Marc Gorbet
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Over a series of decisions, the Court has been backing itself into a corner with its section 8 jurisprudence. Section 8 protects against unreasonable searches. Since the earliest ruling on the section in Hunter v. Southam} searches are prima facie unreasonable if they take place without a warrant. Thus, before conducting a search, police must have a warrant. Before getting a warrant, police must have information about the accused. Obtaining information about the accused probably involves conduct that qualifies as a search. Thus for example in K. v. Kokesch, R. v. Wiley, and R. v. Plant, perimeter searches, conducted in …
Race And The Decision To Detain A Suspect, Sheri Johnson
Race And The Decision To Detain A Suspect, Sheri Johnson
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.