Fourth Amendment

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....

Mere momentary, short and limited weaving is not sufficient for a police traffic stop. Moreover, Virginia has not recognized a community caretaking ground to allow a police traffic stop (to assure the welfare of the driver of a car driving less than perfectly). Barrett, 250...

For decades, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit bucked the path of eight circuits now, by generally barring a Fourth Amendment lawsuit claim in federal court over unlawful pretrial detentions. Today the United States Supreme Court corrected that erroneous Seventh Circuit...

When I started doing criminal defense in 1991, I was reminded that drug cases often are won or lost by whether the drugs get suppressed. Seeking suppression of physical evidence is important in any criminal case alleging possession of contraband, and beyond, which is why...

Criminal arrestees should not expect Fourth Amendment protection of their conversations in police vehicles. Police sometimes will put more than one co-defendant-arrestee in the same police vehicle, to transport to the jail or police station. It may be tempting for the arrested co-defendants then to begin...

Behind the seemingly innocent exteriors of plenty of hotels lie illegal drug possession and illegal drug transactions. Unless the hotel is knowingly receiving payola for such activity, the hotel can be expected to seek police intervention to stop the activity. Abdul Lateef Salahuddin learned that...

Virginia's Court of Appeals asserted this week that it complied with Supreme Court case law when permitting a warrantless blood draw in a DWI case where the defendant was neither asked whether he would take the test nor refused. I disagree. Wolfe v. Virginia, ___...

Public intoxication arrests run rampant in Virginia. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I remember first witnessing a public intoxication (also known as drunk in public / DIP ) investigation and arrest when two courthouse sheriff's deputies called out for the suspect to "blow, blow, blow"...

Today, the Virginia Court of Appeals adopted the police collective knowledge doctrine that already applies in federal courts. Edmond v. Virginia, ___ Va. App. ___ (Aug. 2, 2016). Under the collective knowledge, "an officer is justified in acting upon an instruction from another officer if...

Virginia has a sad state of affairs that allows magistrates -- who are not required to be law school graduates unless they are a chief magistrate -- to review and approve search warrant applications. Virginia non-chief magistrates only need to have bachelors degrees.