Search and Seizure - 4th Amendment

4th Amendment

The fourth Amendment provides that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Thermal Device - Kyllo v. US

the use of the imager was a Fourth Amendment Search, which was presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. the device was not in general civilian use, and enabled the agents to learn information what was going on inside the house, thus does not fall within the plain view doctrine

Government Conduct

1. Officials or others acting under official authority Rule: Once it has been determined that there is government conduct, the courts must determine what constitutes a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment. If the conduct challenged does not fall within the Fourth Amendment, the individual will not enjoy protection under the Fourth Amendment.

Analysis and Steps for a 4th Amendment Issue

1. government conduct 2. search or seizure under 4th 3. unreasonable or justified 4. warrant? Or exception? 5. Exlusionary Rule

Information that Gives Rise to Reasonable Suspicion

1. officer's personal observations; 2. Common sense inferences about human behavior, made with due regard for the officer's unique experience and training 3. the location of the stop 4. anonymous tips A series of factors that, by themselves, seem totally innocent may still give rise to reasonable suspicion when considered together, in light of the overall context

Garner Pre-Conditions in using the Reasonableness Analysis

1. the suspect must have posed an immediate threat of serious physical harm to the officer or others 2. deadly force must have been necessary to prevent escape 3. where feasible, the officer must have given the suspect warning need not be rigidly applied

Dog Sniffs on Property - FL v. Jardines

: Police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a search within the meaning of the 4th and without consent, requires probable cause and a search warrant.

Balancing Test in Graham v. Connor

A court should analyze excessive force claims that involve an officer's use of force during an investigatory stop, arrest, or other seizure under the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard. the court must first determine which constitutional right is allegedly violated by the use of force. In analyzing a claim that an officer used excessive force during an arrest, investigatory stop, or other seizure, the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizures is at issue. These claims should therefore be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard.

"Door Bell Knocker"

A doorbell or knocker is typically treated as an invitation, or license, to the public to approach the front door of the home to deliver mail, sell goods, solicit for charities - this license extends to the police, who have the right to try and engage a home's occupant in a knock and talk for the purpose of gathering evidence without a warrant

Dog Sniffs and Routine Traffic Stops - Illinois v. Caballes

A drug dog may ordinarily be used to perform a sniff test during the course of an otherwise lawful traffic stop without violating the Fourth Amendment

Two-Prong Test for Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

A person will be found to have had a reasonable expectation of privacy if the person has (1) exhibited an actual, subjective, expectation of privacy and (2) it is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. Thus, a search occurs whenever the government intrudes upon a private citizen's sincerely held, objectively reasonable expectation of privacy

Using Force to Detain an Unarmed Suspect

A police officer may not use deadly force to stop an unarmed suspect from fleeing unless (1) it is necessary to prevent the escape and (2) the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.

Terry Detention

A seizure generally results when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a person. There are two types of seizures: 1. brief seizures for investigatory purposes in a manner that fall short of a full-blown arrest 2. those that amount to an arrest or its functional equivalent.

Arrests and Seizures

A seizure in the 4th Amendment context requires some meaningful interference with an individual's liberty (arrest) or possessory interests (a seizure). Can occur by: 1. person submits to a show of authority by an officer 2. the officer arrests the person successfully 3. the officer physically subdues or restrains the person. In situations that do not fit neatly into any of these three categories, a seizure generally occurs when, under the totality of the circumstances, the conduct of the police communicates to a reasonable person that he or she is not free to decline the officer's request or otherwise terminate the encounter. This can be accomplished through a variety of coercive and intimidating means, both verbal and non-verbal. A seizure of a person connotes taking a person physically or constructively into custody and detaining that person, thus causing a deprivation of the person's freedom of movement in a significant way.

Seizures Under the 4th Amendment (NON-PHYSICAL)

A seizure of a person, within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, occurs when the police's conduct would communicate to a reasonable person, taking into account the circumstances surrounding the encounter, that the person is not free to ignore the police presence and leave at his will. Two elements must be present to constitute a seizure of a person; (1) there must be a show of authority by the police officer and (2) the person being seized must submit to the authority

Aerial Photography - Dow v. US

Aerial photography of such area is not deemed a search, although it is possible that an aerial government search using "highly sophisticated surveillance equipment generally available to the public" may constitute a search and necessitate a warrant. However, the open areas of a large industrial plant complex are akin to an open field and are subject to warrant less aerial photography

Police Use of Deadly Force - Seizure

Although an officer may arrest a suspect when she has probable cause o believe the suspect has committed a crime, that does not necessarily mean that she may apprehend the suspect by killing her. SC has held that a police officer's use of deadly force is the ultimate seizure under the 4th and must therefore be reasonable.

Balance Test in Johnson - DP (GRAHAM DISREGARDED THIS)

Applied substantive due process in analyzing an excessive force claim.Under the Johnson test, the four factors to consider in determining whether a defendant has a claim for excessive use of force under 42 U.S.C. §1983 are (1) the need to apply force, (2) the relationship between the need to apply force and the amount of force applied, (3) extent of injury, and (4) whether force was used in a good faith attempt to restore order or maliciously to cause injury

Smith v. Maryland - 3rd Party Doctrine

Conveying information to the phone company was not found for defendant to have a reasonable expectation of privacy

Curtilage - US v. Dunn Factors

Curtilage of a home includes the area immediately surrounding a dwelling and it counts as part of the home for many legal purposes, including searches and seizures When considering whether something is in a dwelling's curtilage, courts consider four factors: 1. proximity of the thing to the dwelling 2. the thing is within an enclosure surrounding the home 3. what it is used for 4. what steps were taken to protect the thing from observation and access by people passing by. The "curtilage" is the area immediately surrounding the home and closely located to it, and which "harbors the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a [person's] home and the privacies of life."

Guests and Rights under the 4th Amendment

Factors in determining whether a guest has a reasonable expectation of privacy in another's home: 1. Time of being a guest 2. Relationship with the owner 3. Purpose of being on the property 4. Prior relationship with the owner

Areas Protected by the 4th Amendment

Generally, when the government obtains information by physically intruding into a person's house, a Fourth Amendment search has occurred. A person's house for Fourth Amendment purposes includes the area immediately surrounding the physical structure, referred to as the Curtilage of the home

Limitation on "Doorbell Knocker"

However, this implicit license typically permits the visitor to approach the home by the front path, knock prompt, wait briefly to be received and then leave... traditional invitation does not require fine-grained legal knowledge. Thus, when a police officer brings a dog to the home's curtilage to perform a forensic exploration for incriminating evidence, it is no different than a visitor exploring the front path with a metal detector, or allowing police to peer into the house through binoculars with impunity because these actions are not implicitly licensed by the homeowner, which would constitute a trespass under the common law

Dog Sniffs

If a police officer, or a dog being used by an offer, smell contraband while standing in a place where he has the right to be, no Fourth Amendment search has taken place, thus no requirement of a warrant is needed. (Plain view - plain smell = no reasonable expectation of privacy in the defendant's odor. Generally, the smell of one's luggage or other personal belongings, at least in public places, such as an airport, car, open fields, is not protected. Thus, the police can have a trained dog sniff a person's luggage in a public place, without it constituting a search, since the dog's mere act of smelling does not require the police to seize the luggage, open it up, rummage through it, or otherwise physically manipulate it.

What Constitutes a Search?

In order to determine whether the defendant's claim that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, the court must determine whether a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment took place. Generally, a search can occur two ways under the 4th Amendment; one being a physical intrusion on one's property and the other being an intrusion on one's reasonable expectation of privacy.

Plain Feel Doctrine

Must be immediately apparent to the officer - if an officer is lawfully patting someone down under Terry, and during the course of the pat-down he or she "feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity [as a dangerous weapon or contraband] immediately apparent," then the officer may seize it without a warrant. Here, reasonable suspicion is not enough; the officer needs probable cause to believe that the object is a weapon or a piece of contraband. If the officer has to manipulate the object in any way, beyond the Terry frisk, in order to ascertain its incriminating character, then the plain-feel doctrine does not apply, and the search is illegal (at least, without additional justification, such as probable cause to arrest).

Terms and Scope of Terry

Once reasonable suspicion arises for a Terry stop, the stop must be limited, in terms of scope and duration, to what is reasonably necessary to confirm or dispel the officer's suspicions, without crossing the line into a full-blown arrest. During a Terry stop, the officer may question the subject about any number of things reasonably related to the investigation of the crime.

GPS and Beeper (NO Physical Intrusion) - US v. Knotts

Police could legitimately follow the vehicle containing the barrel on the public streets and highways, without there being a search. NOTE: the beeper did not enable the police to learn anything that they could not have learned by mere visual surveillance from public vantage points. by moving about on the public streets, the defendants assumed the risk that anyone—including the police—would be able to track their movements, whether visually or through advanced technology. Accordingly, there was no "search" here.

Reasonable Suspicion

Reasonable suspicion is a quantum of evidence, just like preponderance of the evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt. "Reasonable suspicion" requires facts justifying a person of ordinary caution and prudence in suspecting (not necessarily believing) that the person stopped is committing, or is about to commit, a crime.

Recorded Conversations - US v. White

Recording conversations using concealed radio transmitters worn by informants does not violate the 4th protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, thus no requirement of a warrant

Reasonable Expectation of Privacy - Katz v. US

The Court in Katz, deviated from the trespass doctrine and noted that the 4th protects people, not place. Specifically, the Court stated that what a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection, but what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. Thus, a search or seizure takes place when a person's reasonable expectation of privacy has been violated. Wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures

Electronic Surveillance

The Supreme Court has held that it is a search when police use sense-enhancing technology, especially technology that is not in general public use, to observe intimate details inside the home, or other place where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, that would otherwise not be ascertainable except by physical intrusion. However, the mere use of ordinary sense-enhancing devices to facilitate observation, does not amount to the functional equivalent of physical intrusion into a protected place and is not necessarily a search

GPS - US v. Jones (Property Based Doctrine)

The mere conducting of a physical intrusion by the government is enough to constitute a 4th search, regardless of whether D's reasonable expectation of privacy was ever violated. (Cars are provided less scrutiny but the government physically intruded on D's car) Government physically intruded on D's private property for the purpose of obtaining information, such an intrusion would have been considered a search within the meaning of the 4th when it was adopted - Olmstead was not overruled

Scope and Limit of Frisk

The scope of the search must be strictly confined to what is necessary to discover a deadly weapon—not illegal drugs or other contraband. If an officer starts reaching inside pockets, or groping for things other than weapons, he has exceeded the limits of Terry, and the search is illegal absent further justification

Deadly Force and High Speed Chase

The use of deadly force to terminate a high-speed chase does not violate the 4th. Intentional collision - 4th seizure. The use of excessive force to effect a seizure does not violate the Fourth Amendment as long the use of force is objectively reasonable. The test of reasonableness requires a comparison between the scope of a seizure's intrusion upon Fourth Amendment rights and the value of the interests promoted by the seizure.

Public Vantage Point "Plain View"

There is no "search" for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment whenever the police observe anything that can be seen from a public vantage point without the aid of sensory enhancement devices, that is, with the naked eye, no matter where the subject of the observance is located, whether in someone's bedroom or out in the street.

Deadly Force - Tennessee v. Garner

There is no justification warranting the use of deadly force against an unarmed suspect who poses no danger to others simply because the officer may not be able to immediately apprehend her. However, if the officer has a reasonable belief that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm to others, then it would bot be unreasonable for the officer to use deadly force to prevent the suspect's escape.

Terry Doctrine

Under Terry, the police may briefly detain someone for investigative purposes, in a manner that falls short of a full blown arrest. However, a Terry stop is only justified when, under the totality of the circumstances, police can point to specific, articulable facts giving rise to a "reasonable suspicion" that the person stopped is committing a crime, or is about to commit a crime.

Open Fields Doctrine

Under the open fields doctrine, police officers are permitted to enter and search property deemed "open fields" without a warrant. Thus, warrantless searches of the area outside a property owner's curtilage does not violate the Fourth Amendment. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding anything within an "open field," no matter what sorts of precautions an individual takes in order to ensure privacy. Very generally, an "open field" is anything that is not a home, curtilage, or other place where there is a reasonable privacy expectation—in short, it is something left "out in the open" and therefore visible to the public.

Third Party Doctrine

Under the third-party doctrine, people who voluntarily give information to third parties have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Thus, if information is in the hands of third parties, then an individual can have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the that information, which means the Fourth Amendment does not apply

Trespass Doctrine - Olmstead

Under the trespass doctrine, a court trying to decide whether a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment had taken place would ask whether there had been a physical intrusion or a trespass by government agents into a constitutionally protected area. Thus, where the government physically intrudes on a person's house, papers, and effects for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment

4th Amendment Standard - Graham

Under this standard, the court balances the individual's Fourth Amendment interest against the government's interest. A court should consider the particular circumstances surrounding each individual claim, how severe the crime at issue is, the threat posed to officers, and whether the suspect is resisting arrest. The correct inquiry is whether the use of force was objectively reasonable under the circumstances from the point of view of a reasonable officer on the scene.

Flash Light - US v. Lee

Use of a search light to determine contents of a boat on the high seas does not constitute a search under the 4th Amendment

Ariel Observations - Florida v. Riley

When police use an aircraft at a legal vantage point, anything they can see with the naked eye, does not violate the 4th amendment.

Flashlight - Texas v. Brown

Where a police officer, standing on public property, uses a flashlight to obtain a view of the Defendant's property, will nonetheless be a plain view and will, therefore, not be a Fourth Amendment Search

Cars on the Road - US v. Knotts

an individual travelling upon the public highways has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another. They have a diminished reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her car, since cars frequently move about in open public space, where they might easily be seen and peered into by passerby

California v. Greenwood - 3rd Party Doctrine

garbage at the side of the street is readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, and other members of the pubic, moreover - left the trash for a third party to collect.

Wire Tapping and Agents - Hoffa v. US

however strongly a D may trust an apparent colleague, his expectations in this respect are not protected by the 4th when it turns out that the colleague is a government agent regularly communicating with the authority

Frisk under Terry

once an officer has stopped someone based upon reasonable suspicion, he may conduct a cursory, brief, limited "pat down" of the person's outer clothing, in search of a deadly weapon, only if the totality of the circumstances would justify a reasonable person in believing that the person is a danger to the officer or others.

Dog Sniffs and Luggage - US v. Place

sniff tests by trained drug dogs were considered sui generis because they are unlikely to indicate anything other than the presence or absence of drugs. prolonging the seizure - police actions must use reasonable available, least intrusive means (90 minutes was too long for a wait)

Miller v. US - 3rd Party Doctrine

there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in information one voluntarily turns over to third parties that is then revealed to police. When a person knowingly exposes something to the public, that person assumes the risk that the government will discover it and use it against them

Beepers- US v. Karro

there was a search but not from the fact the police installed the beeper on the barrel while it was in the seller's possession - one who purchases property assumes the risk that the seller has permitted the police to install a tracking device on it. police continued actively monitoring the beeper while it remained in several residences - learning intimate details of the interior that could not otherwise have been learned without physical intrusion. The surveillance here was tantamount to physical intrusion into places where the Ds had reasonable expectations of privacy.

Deadly Force and High Speed Chase - Scott v. Harris

use of force to end a chase that presents a threat to public safety, even when the use of force poses a risk of serious harm to the fleeing suspect, does not violate the Fourth Amendment.