The Fourth Amendment in the Courts Over the years, courts have frequently been called upon to apply the Fourth Amendment to police conduct. While judges tend to emphasize that search and seizure decisions are decided on a case-by-case basis, a careful examination of the facts in each instance allows some principles to be discerned in the existing body of Fourth Amendment case law. The typical Fourth Amendment case arises when a defendant in a criminal case alleges that the police government seizure of evidence has violated his or her constitutional rights.
At a pre-trial hearing, called a motion to suppress, the defendant challenges the police actions, while the state the prosecutor defends the search as reasonable and not in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
If the evidence is deemed to violate the Constitution, then the Exclusionary Rule comes into play. The Exclusionary Rule is the remedy created by the U. Supreme Court for Fourth Amendment and certain other constitutional violations. This rule has always been controversial. Its critics argue that it only protects criminals. Its supporters argue that it serves as an effective deterrent to police misconduct, and that use of illegally obtained evidence would harm the integrity of the judicial system.
What is a Search? A careful reading of the language of the Fourth Amendment reveals that only unreasonable searches are prohibited. So the central question in many cases focuses on the reasonableness of the search. Before getting to the issue of reasonableness, however, the defendant must show that a search in fact occurred, and that the search was conducted by the government-most often by the police.
For example, if a neighbor comes into your house and takes your CD player, this is a crime; but it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment unless the neighbor was acting as an agent of the state. Although there was a search, there was no "state action. Supreme Court helped define the concept of search in the case of Katz v United States. Katz was subsequently convicted of eight counts of transmitting wagering information by telephone-in other words, gambling.
Katz objected to the introduction in court of a normally private conversation, arguing that the wire tap was analogous to a search and, therefore, the government should first have obtained a search warrant.
The Court agreed that the wire tap was a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Court held that a search is an intrusion into an area covered by a reasonable expectation of privacy in this instance, a private phone conversation. A search does not require a physical entry. The government can search with wire taps, X-ray machines, and telescopes. What is a Reasonable Search?
If the defendant proves both state action and the existence of a search, then the police are held to the Fourth Amendment's standard of reasonableness. The text of the amendment suggests that one way to meet this standard is to execute the search based on a warrant "supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons and things to be seized.
An additional way to interpret reasonableness is to weigh, in each case, the legitimate law enforcement interests of the government against the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. This case-by-case approach gives the government more flexibility and may make search and seizure law less predictable.
Such a balancing test also invites consideration of the importance of the state's interest in stopping crime and reducing violence. When is a Warrant Not Required? While there is a judicial preference for warrants in terms of separation of powers, warrants act as a check on the power of the executive branch by the judicial branch , the U.
Supreme Court has never required all searches to be supported by a valid warrant. In fact, a number of exceptions to the warrant requirement have been developed.
Among the most important in use today are:. These exceptions are judicially created categories designed to accommodate the legitimate needs of law enforcement as balanced against the individual's right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Searches falling into these categories are deemed reasonable, even though warrantless. However, the increase in violent crime and the parallel response of law enforcement in the last quarter of this century has made it very difficult to fit search and seizure cases into a neat analytic model.
That would mean requiring a valid warrant unless the search clearly fits into one of the recognized exceptions. The lingering question remains: what is reasonable? For example, a recent U. Supreme Court case involved a police officer who was patting down a suspect during a stop and frisk situation. Technically, there is no probable cause for a full-scale search at this point, because there is only a suspicion that a person is acting dangerously. What should happen if the police, in patting the person down for a weapon, come across an object that "feels" like an illegal substance-in this case, drugs?
Clearly, the police do not have to take the drugs to ensure their safety as they continue their investigation. But does the Constitution require them to turn a blind eye?
In , the U. Supreme Court created a new exception called the "plain touch" or "plain feequot; exception, by combining the rationales from the "plain view" and "stop and frisk" exceptions. Under this new exception, officers are allowed to seize evidence they may discover during a pat-down frisk, when it is immediately apparent to the officer that the evidence is connected to a crime. What is Probable Cause? While some cases raise the question of when a warrant is needed, others involve an even more fundamental aspect of the Fourth Amendment: What is probable cause?
In United States v Sokolow, the Court held: "The Fourth Amendment requires some minimal level of objective justification for making the stop Skip to main navigation. The Constitution, through the Fourth Amendment, protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The Fourth Amendment, however, is not a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only those that are deemed unreasonable under the law.
Whether a particular type of search is considered reasonable in the eyes of the law, is determined by balancing two important interests. On one side of the scale is the intrusion on an individual's Fourth Amendment rights. On the other side of the scale are legitimate government interests, such as public safety. The extent to which an individual is protected by the Fourth Amendment depends, in part, on the location of the search or seizure.
Minnesota v. Carter , U. Searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable. Payton v. New York , U. If an officer is given consent to search; Davis v.
United States , U. Robinson , U. Macon, U. When an officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude that criminal activity may be afoot, the officer may briefly stop the suspicious person and make reasonable inquiries aimed at confirming or dispelling the officer's suspicions.
In other words, there's no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the gun because it was in plain view. A good example of how this works comes from a U. Supreme Court case in which the court held that a bus passenger had a legitimate expectation of privacy in an opaque carry-on bag positioned in a luggage rack above the passenger's head.
The Court held that the physical probing by the police of the bag's exterior for evidence of contraband constituted a search subject to Fourth Amendment limitations. Bond v. Private security personnel have at times outnumbered police officers in the United States by three to one.
As a result, whether you're shopping in a supermarket or a pharmacy, working in an office building, or visiting a friend in a housing project, you might be more likely to be confronted by a security guard than by a police officer. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to searches carried out by non-governmental employees like private security guards who aren't acting on the government's behalf.
For example, assume that a shopping mall security guard acting on a pure hunch searches a teenager's backpack. Inside the backpack, the guard finds a baggie containing an illegal drug. The guard can detain the teenager, call the police, and turn the drug over to a police officer. The drug is admissible in evidence because the search was conducted by a private security guard acting on his own, rather than at the officer's direction.
If it turns out the police conducted an illegal search, does that mean the criminal case is over? Not necessarily, but consequences do exist.
If, upon review, a court finds that an unreasonable search occurred, any evidence seized as a result of it cannot be used as direct evidence against the defendant in a criminal prosecution. This principle, established by the U. Supreme Court in , has come to be known as the exclusionary rule. To this day, many commentators criticize the exclusionary rule on the ground that it unfairly "lets the criminal go free because the constable has erred.
According to this deterrence argument, the police are less likely to conduct improper searches if the resulting evidence can't be used to convict the defendant.
There are, however, exceptions to the exclusionary rule—for one, see Police Searches and the Good Faith Exception. Not only is evidence that's the product of an illegal search generally inadmissible in court, but so too is additional evidence derived from the initial evidence.
This principle is colorfully known as the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine. The "tree" is the evidence that the police illegally seized in the first place; the "fruit" is the second-generation product of the illegally seized evidence. Both tree and fruit are typically inadmissible at trial. For more, see Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.
Some defendants believe that if they can show that a search was illegal, the case must be dismissed. Not true. If a prosecutor has enough other evidence to prove the defendant guilty, the case can continue. Also, the illegally-seized evidence can generally be considered by a judge when deciding on an appropriate sentence following conviction and admitted in civil and deportation cases.
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