Archive for the ‘Fourth Amendment’ Category

Police Mistakes Can Lead to Good Arrests, Court Says

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a police officer's mistaken idea of the law doesn't make an arrest and a search invalid, as long as the officer's understanding of the law was reasonable. The case evolved from a traffic stop in 2009, in which Nicholas Heien was pulled over on Interstate 77 in North Carolina by a county sheriff's deputy because one of his brake lights was out. After getting permission to search the car, the deputy found a baggie of cocaine, and Heien was charged with drug trafficking.

But it turned out North Carolina law did not require cars to have two brake lights. The state law said they must have "a" stop lamp on the rear and elsewhere referred to "the" stop lamp, meaning the deputy was apparently wrong about the law. Heien's lawyer backed by civil liberties groups said if a law wasn't being broken, there was no authority to arrest him or conduct a search. But by a 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court said the arrest and the search were valid, even if the officer was wrong about the law. The Fourth Amendment bars "unreasonable" searches and seizures, the court said. "To be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials," said the opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The lone dissenter, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said an officer's mistake about the law, no matter how reasonable, "cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary" to justify an arrest. The nation's courts were sharply divided on this issue, though most said if an officer is wrong, the arrest doesn't count.

Supreme Court opinion: Heien vs. North Carolina

Pete Williams

First published December 15 2014, 8:18 AM

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Police Mistakes Can Lead to Good Arrests, Court Says

Why nanny statists hate the Fourth Amendment – Video


Why nanny statists hate the Fourth Amendment
Why nanny statists hate the Fourth Amendment.

By: Chynoweth

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Why nanny statists hate the Fourth Amendment - Video

Dollree Mapp, figure in landmark Supreme Court decision in 1961, dies at 91

Dollree Mapp, who challenged a police search of her home, leading to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1961 that extended the exclusionary rule protecting citizens from illegal searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment, died Oct. 31 in Conyers, Ga. She was 91.

Her death, which was confirmed to news outlets by her family, was not widely reported until this week. The cause was not disclosed, but she had dementia for many years.

Tough and street savvy, Ms. Mapp spent much of her life on the margins of society and had trouble with the law on several occasions.

On May 23, 1957, plainclothes police officers who were looking for a suspect in a bombing knocked on her door in Cleveland. The explosion a few days earlier had been at the home of a Cleveland gambling figure, Don King, who later went to prison for manslaughter and still later became a well-known boxing promoter.

Ms. Mapp refused to let the officers enter her house without a search warrant.

They returned three hours later. She demanded to see the warrant and then grabbed the paper from an officers hand and stuffed it inside her dress.

In the ensuing struggle, an officer retrieved the paper while Ms. Mapp shouted, Take your hand out of my dress!

The police searched and ransacked Ms. Mapps house, finding what they believed to be gambling paraphernalia and pornography. Ms. Mapp insisted that drawings of nude women and books with such titles as Memoirs of a Hotel Man and Affairs of a Troubadour belonged to a previous tenant. Nonetheless, she was arrested and taken away in handcuffs.

She was acquitted of the gambling charges but, after only 20 minutes of deliberation, a jury found her guilty of possession of lewd and obscene materials. She was sentenced to one to seven years in prison. A man suspected in the bombing case was set free.

Ms. Mapp lost several appeals before her case, Mapp v. Ohio, was argued before the Supreme Court in March 1961. Much of the legal debate was over whether Ohios obscenity law violated the First Amendment.

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Dollree Mapp, figure in landmark Supreme Court decision in 1961, dies at 91

The Fourth Amendment Of The Constitution Is Under Attack – Video


The Fourth Amendment Of The Constitution Is Under Attack

By: Yawauniah Jerusalem

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The Fourth Amendment Of The Constitution Is Under Attack - Video

The Fourth Amendment ( goverment class Project) – Video


The Fourth Amendment ( goverment class Project)
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By: Duy Phan

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The Fourth Amendment ( goverment class Project) - Video