Fourth Amendment

The Eighth Circuit upheld a conviction for receipt of child pornography because Google was not acting as a government agent when it uncovered files of child pornography in the defendant’s email accounts.

The Second Circuit held that a defendant’s stop was unconstitutional where it was based on the officer receiving an email with a photograph of a suspect who only shared general characteristics with the defendant and the photo did not involve any criminal activity. The Court also held that the attenuation doctrine did not apply because the officers’ misconduct was purposeful or flagrant due to the extreme lack of reasonable suspicion.

The Court reversed the district court’s grant of suppression based on an unlawful protective sweep. The Court held the sweep was justified where, even though officers had acted on an anonymous tip and had already arrested the visible suspects and found no contraband, the existence of multiple vehicles and people at the scene, the observation of a suspect attempting to flee, and the immediacy and brevity of the sweep to the defendant’s arrest supported the sweep.

Sitting en banc, the Court held that a defendant’s alleged abandonment of privacy or possessory interest in the object of a search or seizure does not implicate his Article III standing or the court’s jurisdiction, and the government waives the issue if it fails to argue abandonment.

The Court held that the district court did not err in refusing to consider the defendant’s untimely motion to suppress, since the defendant’s failure was based on a strategic decision. Moreover, the sentencing court did not err in refusing to grant a downward departure for acceptance of responsibility where the defendant challenge his factual guilt throughout the proceedings and at trial.

The Court affirmed the district court’s finding that officers’ warrantless search of a home was justified under the “emergency aid exception.” The Court held that the officers had a reasonable belief that a dog’s whimpering inside the house was a human in need of emergency aid based on their initially responding to a 911 regarding gun shots, the defendant’s belligerent behavior prior to his arrest, and the officers’ belief that someone else may have been in the house.

In an 8-1 opinion, the Supreme Court held that an officer has reasonable suspicion justifying a traffic stop when he runs a vehicle’s license plate and learns that the registered owner’s license has been revoked or suspended. The Court held that it is reasonable for an officer to assume that the vehicle’s driver is the registered owner, even where the registered owner’s license has been suspended, because the data shows that many individuals who have suspended licenses continue to drive anyway.

In a matter of first impression involving the use of ShotSpotter, GPS-enabled technology that detects gunfire, the Court held that there was reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle emerging from an area where gunfire was detected based on the short lapse of time between the detection and the stop, the vehicle’s proximity to the area, the behavior of the occupants, and other circumstances.

The Court affirmed the defendant’s conviction, holding that the good faith exception applied to law enforcement’s search of two separate addresses despite only identifying one address in the search warrant. The Court noted that the lack of signs distinguishing the two addresses and their proximity made it reasonable for the officers to treat the two addresses as one.

The Court affirmed the defendant’s conviction, holding that a traffic stop was not unlawfully prolonged where the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle and asked questions about the driver and passengers’ reasons for travel and destination, and new reasonable suspicion was created based on “implausible elements” and contradictory answers in the driver and passengers’ responses to the questioning.