Fourth Amendment
Exigent Circumstances Permit a Drug Search Despite Defective Warrant – VA
Exigent circumstances permit a drug search despite a defective search warrant, says the Virginia Supreme Court. Virginia v. Campbell, __ Va. __ (Dec. 14, 2017). As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know about exigent circumstances all too well.
Fourth Amendment Bars Ordering A Suspect’s Erection
Fortunately, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has this month confirmed that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution bars ordering a male criminal suspect to produce an erection.
A cop needs probable cause to say s/he will search
A cop needs probable cause to say s/he will search a suspect or the suspect's property. If the suspect responds by consenting to a search, handing over contraband or telling where the contraband will be found, the Defendant may still challenge whether the police officer...
Search warrants are the police tool for finding contraband in homes
One may consider his or her house to be her castle, but police often use search warrants and alleged exigent circumstances to disturb our privacy and serenity in that castle. One such approach is for police to get an excuse to enter a home (for...
Dissenting federal appellate judge bemoans the Drug War’s toll on the Constitution
Nearly two generations of Americans, born since 1980, knows of no life other than that under the drug wars spurred during the Reagan administration, complete with metal detectors and other intrusive searches in schools without particularized suspicion; draconian drug sentencing regimes involving lengthy mandatory minimum...
When Courts Protect Questionable Police Searches Through the Inevitable Discovery Doctrine
Often when I challenge police searches for lack of a search warrant or for other Constitutional infirmities, the prosecutor argues that the incriminating evidence would inevitably have been lawfully discovered by police if not first discovered in the questionable way with which the evidence in...
Virginia criminal defense – Three hour delay to arrest does not amount to stale probable cause
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution limits police authority to stop, seize, and search people and their property. Sadly, the United States Supreme Court over the decades has limited the strength of the Fourth Amendment in numerous ways, including the horrendous Terry v....
Virginia criminal defense — More on search limits on police following a positive drug dog alert
Using police drug sniffing dogs is fraught with unreliability. as further addressed here, here, and here. Despite this unreliability, Virginia law poses substantial hurdles to a criminal defendant's obtaining by a records subpoena data about the training and performance of the case's drug dog. Fortunately...
Criminal defense- The danger of following a police order to hand over contraband
What should a person do when a police officer orders the suspect to hand the cop an item (other than ordering a driver to hand over one's driver's license and registration) or to empty one's pockets? If complied with, that order amounts to a search...
Criminal defense – Exclusionary rule does not apply to finding contraband with un-Mirandized voluntary admissions
In 2004, the United States Supreme Court bitterly divided 5-4 (with a plurality of three justices and a concurrence of two more justices) in declining to apply the Exclusionary Rule to evidence obtained by police through voluntary but un-Mirandized admissions about the location of contraband....