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.
A search warrant is a court order that a magistrate or judge issues to authorize law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person, location, or vehicle for evidence of a crime and to confiscate any evidence they find. In most countries, a search warrant cannot be issued in aid of civil process.
An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by a judge or magistrate on behalf of the state which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual or the search and seizure of an individual's property.
In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which police authorities have reason to obtain a warrant for the arrest of a suspected criminal or the issuing of a search warrant. There is no universally accepted definition or formulation for probable cause. One traditional definition, which comes from the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 decision Beck v. Ohio, is when "whether at [the moment of arrest] the facts and circumstances within [an officer's] knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that [a suspect] had committed or was committing an offense."
Search and seizure is a procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems by which police or other authorities and their agents, who, suspecting that a crime has been committed, commence a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence found in connection to the crime.
United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for a trained police dog to sniff of a person's luggage or property in a public place.
United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982), was a search and seizure case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. The high court was asked to decide if a legal warrantless search of an automobile allows closed containers found in the vehicle to be searched as well. The appeals court had previously ruled that opening and searching the closed portable containers without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, even though the warrantless vehicle search was permissible due to existing precedent.
In United States law, the Aguilar–Spinelli test was a judicial guideline set down by the U.S. Supreme Court for evaluating the validity of a search warrant or a warrantless arrest based on information provided by a confidential informant or an anonymous tip. The Supreme Court abandoned the Aguilar–Spinelli test in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983), in favor of a rule that evaluates the reliability of the information under the "totality of the circumstances." However, Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Oregon, and Washington have retained the Aguilar–Spinelli test, based on their own state constitutions.
United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90 (2006), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the constitutionality of "anticipatory" search warrants under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court ruled that such warrants, which are issued in advance of a "triggering condition" that makes them executable, are constitutional and do not need to describe that condition on their face.
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.
Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that "[a]lthough an affidavit supporting a search warrant may be based on hearsay information and need not reflect the direct personal observations of the affiant, the magistrate must be informed of some of the underlying circumstances relied on by the person providing the information and some of the underlying circumstances from which the affiant concluded that the informant, whose identity was not disclosed, was credible or his information reliable." Along with Spinelli v. United States (1969), Aguilar established the Aguilar–Spinelli test, a judicial guideline for evaluating the validity of a search warrant based on information provided by a confidential informant or an anonymous tip. The test developed in this case was subsequently rejected and replaced in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983).
Investigating Directorate: Serious Economic Offences and Others v Hyundai Motor Distributors (Pty) Ltd and Others; In Re Hyundai Motor Distributors (Pty) Ltd and Others v Smit NO and Others, an important case in South African law, was heard in the Constitutional Court on March 16, 2000, with judgment handed down on August 25. Chaskalson P, Langa DP, Goldstone J, Kriegler J, Madala J, Mokgoro J, Ngcobo J, O'Regan J, Sachs J, Yacoob J and Cameron AJ were the judges.
Civil procedure in South Africa is the formal rules and standards that courts follow in that country when adjudicating civil suits. The legal realm is divided broadly into substantive and procedural law. Substantive law is that law which defines the contents of rights and obligations between legal subjects; procedural law regulates how those rights and obligations are enforced. These rules govern how a lawsuit or case may be commenced, and what kind of service of process is required, along with the types of pleadings or statements of case, motions or applications, and orders allowed in civil cases, the timing and manner of depositions and discovery or disclosure, the conduct of trials, the process for judgment, various available remedies, and how the courts and clerks are to function.
Criminal procedure in South Africa refers to the adjudication process of that country's criminal law. It forms part of procedural or adjectival law, and describes the means by which its substantive counterpart, South African criminal law, is applied. It has its basis mainly in English law.
In Beheermaatschappij Helling I NV v Magistrate, Cape Town (2007), the applicants, who were, variously, Dutch and South African nationals, sought orders declaring:
Mistry v Interim National Medical and Dental Council of South Africa 1998 (4) SA 1127 (CC); 1998 (7) BCLR 880 (CC) is an important case in the South African law of medicine, constitutional law, constitutional litigation and criminal procedure.
In Investigating Directorate: Serious Economic Offences and Others v Hyundai 2001 (1) SA 545 (CC), an important case in South African criminal procedure, a search warrant had been issued in terms of section 29 of the National Prosecuting Authority Act in respect of certain premises. A large quantity of documents, records and data had been seized from those premises.
The Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) (“the Act”) is a piece of privacy legislation enacted by the Parliament of New South Wales the most populous state in Australia. It replaced the Listening Devices Act 1984 (NSW). The Act makes it an offence to record private conversations apart from in specific and defined circumstances. It makes provision for law enforcement officers to apply for warrants authorising the use of such devices and the circumstances in which judges of the Supreme Court of New South Wales might issue such warrants.
The right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure is well-recognised by the international human rights community. Section 21 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 incorporates this right into New Zealand law, stating that: "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, whether of the person, property, or correspondence or otherwise."
Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), was decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that limited which claims of Fourth Amendment violations could be made by state prisoners in habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. Specifically, a claim that the exclusionary rule had been broken would be barred if state courts had already given it a full and fair hearing. The decision combined two cases that were argued before the Supreme Court on the same day with similar issues, one filed by Lloyd Powell and the other, titled Wolff v. Rice, filed by David Rice.