Fourth Amendment

Since the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment ruling in Chatrie v. United States, at least two federal courts have applied its reasoning to two different kinds of cell phone technology used by law enforcement. A district court in Mississippi held that a warrant for a “tower dump,” which collects information from every phone connecting to particular cell towers, was an unconstitutional “general warrant.” More recently, the Fourth Circuit held that the use of cell-site simulators, which obtain a cell phone’s location by impersonating a cell tower, constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.

In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court upheld a Terry stop of a defendant’s vehicle after officers approached the vehicle, two passengers fled the vehicle, and the driver began backing the car away after. The Court held that, in considering the totality of the circumstances, courts may not isolate individual facts, identify innocent explanations for each fact, and then remove them from consideration.

In a unanimous opinion, the Court upheld a warrantless entry into a defendant’s home, where officers found him with a gun and later charged him with assaulting an officer. The Court upheld the warrantless entry under the “emergency aid” exception to the warrant requirement, as the officers had an objectively reasonable basis that the defendant-occupant was seriously injured or imminently threatened serious injury. The defendant’s ex-girlfriend told police that he had threatened to kill himself, and officers arriving at his house received no answer and observed empty beer cans, an empty holster, and an apparent suicide note through the window.

In a 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court held that law enforcement obtaining Google “Location History” data amounts to a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, thus requiring a warrant. The Court held that law enforcement invades a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy when it seeks data that precisely tracks the person’s movements, similar to the cell-site location data in Carpenter v. United States. In this armed bank robbery case, police obtained a “geofence” warrant that allowed them to obtain location data for all devices near the bank at the time of the robbery and then employ a multi-step process to narrow the devices and obtain identifying information for their users. The Court remanded for the Fourth Circuit to determine whether the warrant met the particularity and probable cause requirements, including in executing the later steps, and whether the good faith exception applies.

In a Fourth Amendment case, the Tenth Circuit answered two questions: is an exterior motel walkway “curtilage,” and can an officer peek through a one-inch gap in window curtains without intruding on one’s reasonable expectation of privacy? In affirming the defendant’s conviction, the panel held that neither violated the Fourth Amendment, a holding that the dissent criticized as “expanding permissible surveillance and eroding privacy.”

Officers who found meth in a storage unit after “peeking” inside the unit violated the Fourth Amendment. The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence seized from a subsequent search of the unit and the defendant’s home pursuant to search warrants that the officers obtained using information from their earlier, warrantless search of the unit.

The Tenth Circuit reversed a district court’s denial of a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained after his backpack was searched by agents following his arrest on a Greyhound bus. While the agents had probable cause to arrest him and seize the backpack, they did not have the authority to search the contents of his bag without a warrant, and the plain view doctrine did not apply where the agent was rummaging around the insides of the backpack “in an exploratory manner.”

The Fifth Circuit vacated a district court’s denial of a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained from a traffic stop. The Court held that the district court erred in finding there had not been a “stop” since the officers’ flagging down the defendant’s car, ordering him out of the car, and demanding compliance with their commands established a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

Andres Manuel Alvarez was stopped by police because he matched the description of a “Hispanic male” who was in his general area and fleeing the service of an outstanding warrant on a “bicycle with large handlebars.” Though he was determined not to be the person they were looking for, Alvarez was found to have a […]

Alfonzo Lewis was convicted of drug offenses and challenged his arrest, jury selection, and other aspects of his trial on appeal. Lewis had initially been investigated by a federal drug task force that included state and local agents. After agents witnessed him leaving a house after a drug transaction, local law enforcement conducted a traffic […]