The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circumstances at least, be considered to follow directly from the constitutional language, such as the Fifth Amendment's command that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, on the matter of whether wiretapping of private telephone conversations, obtained by federal agents without a search warrant and subsequently used as evidence, constituted a violation of the target’s rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that the Constitutional rights of a wiretapping target have not been violated. This decision was overturned by Katz v. United States in 1967.
Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 6–2, that the use of a drug-sniffing police dog during a routine traffic stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, even if the initial infraction is unrelated to drug offenses.
Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), was a Supreme Court case holding that the installation and use of a pen register by the police to obtain information on a suspect's telephone calls was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and hence no search warrant was required. In the majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun rejected the idea that the installation and use of a pen register constitutes a violation of the suspect's reasonable expectation of privacy since the telephone numbers would be available to and recorded by the phone company anyway.
Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360 (1959), was a United States Supreme Court case interpreting the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263 (1967), was an important decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which was argued February 15–16, 1967, and decided June 12, 1967.
Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301 (1958), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that one could not lawfully be arrested in one's home by officers breaking in without first giving one notice of their authority and purpose.
Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the traditional, common-law-derived "knock and announce" rule for executing search warrants must be incorporated into the "reasonableness" analysis of whether the actual execution of the warrant is/was justified under the 4th Amendment. The high court thus ruled that the old "knock and announce" rule while not a hard requirement, was also not a dead letter.
Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, in which the Court held that “a search and seizure [was] equivalent [to] a compulsory production of a man's private papers” and that the search was “an 'unreasonable search and seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”
Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the application of the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for searches that intrude into the human body. Until Schmerber, the Supreme Court had not yet clarified whether state police officers must procure a search warrant before taking blood samples from criminal suspects. Likewise, the Court had not yet clarified whether blood evidence taken against the wishes of a criminal suspect may be used against that suspect in the course of a criminal prosecution.
Commonwealth v. Matos, 672 A.2d 769 (1996), is a Pennsylvania State Supreme Court case which further developed Pennsylvania Constitutional Law as affording greater privacy protections than those guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, where police possess neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion, contraband discarded by a person fleeing a police officer are the fruits of an illegal seizure. The case departs from the ruling of California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621 (1991), which held that fleeing suspects cannot be considered seized for purposes of the U.S. Constitution. It is a part of a family of state case law concerning the phenomenon of "new judicial federalism." Pennsylvania criminal defense attorneys may cite the case as part of a motion to suppress physical evidence where the defendant discards drugs, weapons, or other contraband while fleeing police.
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), was a unanimous United States Supreme Court decision that "declared that any traffic offense committed by a driver was a legitimate legal basis for a stop."
Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93 (2005), was a unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows detention of an occupant in handcuffs while a search is being conducted, and that it does not require officers to have an independent reasonable suspicion before questioning a subject about their immigration status.
Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U.S. 717 (1961), full title Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth Street, Kansas City, Missouri, is an in rem case decided by the United States Supreme Court on the seizure of obscene materials. The Court unanimously overturned a Missouri Supreme Court decision upholding the forfeiture of hundreds of magazines confiscated from a Kansas City wholesaler. It held that both Missouri's procedures for the seizure of allegedly obscene material and the execution of the warrant itself violated the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments' prohibitions on search and seizure without due process. Those violations, in turn, threatened the rights protected by the First Amendment.
Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483 (1964), is a United States Supreme Court decision involving the Fourth Amendment. It was a criminal case appealed from the California Courts of Appeal after the California Supreme Court denied review. The case extended the situations under which search warrants are required as they reversed a robbery conviction made on the basis of evidence obtained in violation of the holding.
In Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. 435 (2013), the United States Supreme Court decided that a cheek swab of an arrestee's DNA is comparable to fingerprinting and therefore, a legal police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976), was a United States Supreme Court that held that bank records are not subject to protection under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case, along with Smith v. Maryland, established the principle of the third-party doctrine in relation to privacy rights.
Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that prison inmates have no privacy rights in their cells protected by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court also held that an intentional deprivation of property by a state employee "does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment if an adequate postdeprivation state remedy exists," extending Parratt v. Taylor to intentional torts.
Amir Ali is an American civil rights attorney and law professor who has argued multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and testified before Congress. He is regarded as an expert in constitutional law and criminal procedure, including issues related to sentencing and habeas corpus, the right to counsel, police misconduct, and government accountability.
