Does the Fourth Amendment Allow Community Caretaking?
3/26/21
By: Michelle Youngblood
A baby can be heard crying inside a residence for hours, and no one seems to be around.
An elderly lady does not show up for a planned dinner, the neighbors haven’t seen her all day, and …
Narrow Victory for Law Enforcement and Commonsense in Kansas v. Glover
4/9/20
By: Peter Dooley
The scope of reasonable judgments that police officers can make during traffic-stops under the Fourth Amendment was recently widened, at least narrowly, by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 6th in their 8-1 decision in Kansas …
Supreme Court Revisits Interplay Between First and Fourth Amendments
11/29/18
By: Wes Jackson
Imagine you commit a minor crime and an officer approaches you. The interaction goes south when you call the officer a “pig” and remind him that your tax dollars pay his salary. He then arrests you. Were …
Antisocial Media: Court Critical of Cop Capturing Curious Citizen’s Cellphone
4/23/18
By: E. Charles Reed, Jr.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a police officer violates clearly established law by seizing a bystander’s cellphone at an accident scene in the absence of exigent circumstances.
With the rise of …
Home Run for Analysis of Use of Force During Medical Emergencies
10/31/17
By: Kevin R. Stone and Sara E. Brochstein
I’m bad at baseball. When I step in the batter’s box, I might as well have two strikes against me before the pitcher unleashes his first fastball. For me, it’s no big …
Search and Seizure in the Digital Age: Eleventh Circuit to (Re)consider Whether Cell Tower Data is Protected by the Fourth Amendment
9/18/14
By: Mark A. Begnaud
On September 4, 2014, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals voted to rehear the case of United States v. Quartavious Davis en banc. In the original opinion, the Court found that all cell-site data is …
Law Enforcement Officers Permitted To Take DNA Cheek Swabs From Arrestees
6/7/13
By: Ali Sabzevari
The United States Supreme Court has continued to expand the thought that bodily intrusions constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has applied the Fourth Amendment to police efforts to draw blood, scraping an …
Supreme Court Snuffs Warrantless Sniffs at the Stoop
4/9/13
By: Brian Dempsey
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court recently decided that a narcotics detection canine’s sniff at the front door of a suspected marijuana grow house is a search requiring probable cause and a warrant. (Florida v. …
Does the Fourth Amendment Allow a Forced Blood Draw After a DUI Arrest?
1/14/13
By: Sun Choy
The Supreme Court will answer this question in Missouri v. McNeely. It is well established that the Fourth Amendment allows a warrantless search under exigent circumstances. During the oral argument last week, the Court suggested that …
Supreme Court to Decide Whether Police Dog Sniffs Pass the Fourth Amendment “Smell Test”
11/2/12
By: Brian Dempsey
This past week, the United States Supreme Court heard two cases which are expected to clarify the Fourth Amendment limitations on police officers’ use of drug-sniffing dogs.
In the first case, Florida v. Jardines, the Supreme …