Showing posts with label search and seizure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search and seizure. Show all posts

Questions Over Missing Cash After Warrantless Search

by Kumi Tucker.     A local attorney says Albany police broke the law when they went into her client's apartment without a warrant.  Her client says he is now missing thousands of dollars in cash.  Attorney Cheryl Coleman's client, Joshua Horne, was arrested on a drug charge in June. She says police took his keys and then used them to get    See video  ... MORE

Supreme Court Upholds Auto Stop With No Traffic Violation

by Marjorie Cohn. Ignorance of the law is no excuse -- that is, unless you're a police officer.  For the first time, in December, the Supreme Court upheld a traffic stop even where there was no traffic violation. The court, in Heien v. North Carolina, continued its steady erosion of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and    ... MORE

Federal Court Upholds Unconstitutional Car Search

No warrant required. Text of the Fourth Amendment. A federal judge decided earlier this month to accept evidence from an automobile search that a state court magistrate had declared unlawful. US District Judge Jerome B. Simandle insisted that there was nothing wrong in accepting the evidence deemed tainted by the New Jersey Superior Court.   ... MORE

DUI Checkpoints - Are They Legal & What Are Your Rights?

by Marc Saggese.       They go by a number of different names: DUI checkpoints, administrative roadblocks, mobile checkpoints, or as they are referred to by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, sobriety checkpoints. No matter the title, they all have the same effect: to allow the police to stop your vehicle for no articulable reason, ask   ... MORE

'Tis The Season For Government Roadblocks In California

Warrantless searches to help spend $93 million grant.  What to do if stopped by a cop. 'Tis the season for DUI checkpoints and the California Highway Patrol is reminding you to think twice while you're out late with your friends this holiday season. Between December and January, more than 200 law enforcement agencies are armed    ... MORE

Congress OKs Codification Of Warrantless Surveillance

Fourth Amendment fast becoming toothless. Congress last week quietly passed a bill to reauthorize funding for intelligence agencies, over objections that it gives the government "virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American", without warrant, and allows for indefinite storage of some intercepted material, including      ... MORE

Appeals Court Rips California DNA-Collection Law

by William Dotinga.      An arrest is not a conviction. For the second time in three years, a state appeals court in San Francisco found that a voter-approved mandate authorizing police to collect DNA from arrestees is unconstitutional. The 3-0 ruling by a panel of the First Appellate District stems from the arson conviction of Mark Buza, whom a jury     ... MORE

Another Federal Grant To Fund Warrantless Searches

Cops get seed money to troll for violators.  Taxpayers fund their own harassment. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has received a federal “Reducing Impaired Driving” grant, which will fund 150 sobriety checkpoints, 75 DUI task force operations, proactive DUI enforcement patrols through September 30, 2015, and at least 100 safety      ... MORE

Disapproving Judge Argues Against Warrantless Searches

by Mary Ellen Godin Record.   City police in Meridian, Connecticut would not comment on remarks made by a Superior Court judge Wednesday who called a police report about a warrantless drug raid “unbelievable” before adding, “I don’t want to live in this police state.” In open court, Judge Philip Scarpellino questioned why city     ... MORE

UK Gun Owners Subject To Warrantless Home Searches

Previews of coming attractions?     Registered gun owners in the United Kingdom are now subject to unannounced visits to their homes under new guidance that allows police to inspect firearms storage without a warrant. The new policy from the British Home Office went into effect Oct. 15, permitting police and constabularies to conduct surprise ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: The Government And Freedom

Don't trust your freedom to the government.      Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey gave an interview to "60 Minutes" during which he revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. He rightly distinguished what FBI agents do in their investigations of federal crimes from what the NSA does in its intelligence gathering, when the    ... MORE

NSA's Parallel Reconstruction Trumps Fourth Amendment

by Andrew Napolitano.       While the political commentators in the nation's capital are wrapped up in the debate over what to do about ISIS, and as one third of the Senate and nearly all members of the House campaign for re-election, the president's spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of   ... MORE

Mississippi Can Demand Bloodletting At DUI Checkpoints

by Steve Wilson.  Your public servants at work. Vampire movies, books and TV series are all of the rage these days. Guess the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol wanted to get in on the act. Over the long Labor Day weekend, the patrol ran a no-refusal DUI checkpoint in Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi. In a no-refusal checkpoint, a      ... MORE

Cop Pulls Car Over for Nonexistent Traffic Violation, Then Tows It To Search For Evidence Of Nonexistent Crime

by Jacob Sullum.   Drug war incentives strike Vermont. Last March, according to a lawsuit filed this month by the ACLU of Vermont, a state trooper pulled Gregory Zullo over for a nonexistent traffic infraction, then towed his car away so it could be searched for evidence of a nonexistent crime. Trooper Lewis Hatch stopped Zullo, a 21-year-old resident ... MORE

Jerry Davich: Do Sobriety Checks Trample On Our Rights?

 “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” Ben Franklin.  Are police-conducted sobriety checkpoints a necessary law enforcement tool to remove drunken drivers from our roads? Or are they an unreasonable search of our property and an unconstitutional invasion of our rights and privacy? Hammond Police Department Lt.     ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Death of Freedom in Our Schools

The final nail in the coffin.      Young Alex Stone didn’t even make it past the first week of school before he became a victim of the police state. Directed by his teacher to do a creative writing assignment involving a series of fictional Facebook statuses, the 16-year-old wrote, “I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care   ...  MORE