Category: fourth amendment

Last week the United States Supreme Court in Fernandez v. California (February 25, 2014) clarified an issue left open in its ruling in Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103 (2006): […]

I’ve just completed a revision of my paper on the law of traffic stops. It covers both when an officer may make a stop and what an officer may do […]

CNET is reporting that an Ohio man went to a movie theater wearing Google Glass. Halfway through Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, an FBI agent approached him, flashed a badge, took […]

The court of appeals decided a case today concerning a fact pattern that arises frequently in drug cases. State v. McKinney began when an officer received a “citizen complaint” about […]

Law enforcement officers are making more and more use of video surveillance cameras, often mounted on utility poles. Sometimes these cameras are focused on streets or parks, as discussed in […]

In United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. __ (2012), and Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. __ (2013), the Supreme Court announced a new, or perhaps revived an old, understanding of […]

Whether the plain view doctrine makes sense in the context of computer searches, and if it doesn’t, what courts should do about it, are controversial issues. We don’t have any […]

The first two posts in this series (here and here) discussed opinions from state supreme courts in Arizona and Minnesota considering, post-McNeely v. Missouri, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013), whether a […]

Yesterday’s post discussed challenges to implied consent laws raised by defendants following the Supreme Court’s decision last spring in Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013). The post summarized the […]

The United States Supreme Court held last term in Missouri v. McNeeIy, 133 S. Ct. 1552 (2013), that the natural dissipation of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream does not constitute […]