Charges against a Virginia man who was subjected to a warrantless search and seizure will be dropped after a full panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the search violated in the Fourth Amendment in ...

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

  A highway patrolman “disregarded the basic tenets of the Fourth Amendment” when he unlawfully detained a man after issuing him a ticket for speeding, resulting in the man’s arrest and subsequent conviction for trafficking cocaine, a narrowly divided North ...

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

Drunkards often look like they could use a helping hand, and part of a police officer’s job is to aid those in need of help. Unfortunately, boozers also often stumble onto the wrong side of the law, especially when they ...

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

U.S. v. Graham (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-094-16, 66 pp.) (Motz, J.) No. 12-4659, May 31, 2016; USDC at Baltimore, Md. (Bennett, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: On rehearing en banc, the 4th Circuit says the government did not violate defendant bank ...

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

Attorneys for a man convicted on multiple drug offenses has argued to the state Court of Appeals that the police violated his Fourth Amendment rights in using cellphone data to locate him. Paul Perry was arrested Dec. 12, 2012, in ...

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

State v. Elder (Lawyers Weekly No. 15-06-0588, 9 pp.) (Paul Newby, J.) Appealed from Mecklenburg County Superior Court (Linwood Foust, J.) On appeal from a divided panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals. N.C. S. Ct. Holding: Although, in a ...

Tagged with: DVPO Fourth Amendment

State v. Jackson (Lawyers Weekly No. 15-06-0589, 9 pp.) (Robin Hudson, J.) Appealed from Guilford County Superior Court (Christopher Bragg & A. Robinson Hassell, JJ.) On appeal from a divided panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals. N.C. S. Ct. ...

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State v. Brennick After a state trooper investigated a crash site and travelled to the hospital, two and a half hours had passed since the accident, and the trooper knew that, if he drove to get a warrant, by the time he got back to the hospital, defendant would likely be in surgery and unavailable for a blood draw; all the while, the alcohol in his blood would be dissipating.

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

State v. Verkerk A firefighter didn’t have probable cause to stop defendant, so he couldn’t make a “citizen’s arrest” under G.S. § 15A-404(b). The trial court did not definitively conclude that the firefighter was a governmental actor when he stopped defendant.

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment

Santos v. Frederick County Board of Comm’r Local law enforcement officers can’t detain individuals solely based on known or suspected civil immigration violations, but that rule wasn’t clearly established law when defendant deputies arrested a Salvadoran dishwasher after questioning her outside her workplace, and the 4th Circuit says the deputies have immunity from her civil rights claim for violation of her Fourth Amendment rights.

Tagged with: Fourth Amendment