Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and 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.
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.
A body cavity search, also known simply as a cavity search, is either a visual search or a manual internal inspection of body cavities for prohibited materials (contraband), such as illegal drugs, money, jewelry, or weapons. Body cavities frequently used for concealment include the mouth, vagina, and rectum. It is far more invasive than the standard strip search that is typically performed on individuals taken into custody, either upon police arrest or incarceration at a jail, prison, or psychiatric hospital. Often the procedure is repeated when the person leaves the institution.
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard of proof in United States law that is less than probable cause, the legal standard for arrests and warrants, but more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch'"; it must be based on "specific and articulable facts", "taken together with rational inferences from those facts", and the suspicion must be associated with the specific individual. If police additionally have reasonable suspicion that a person so detained is armed and dangerous, they may "frisk" the person for weapons, but not for contraband like drugs. However, if the police develop probable cause during a weapons frisk, they may then conduct a full search. Reasonable suspicion is evaluated using the "reasonable person" or "reasonable officer" standard, in which said person in the same circumstances could reasonably suspect a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; it depends upon the totality of circumstances, and can result from a combination of particular facts, even if each is individually innocuous.
"Stop and identify" statutes are laws in several U.S. states that authorize police to lawfully order people whom they reasonably suspect of committing a crime to state their name. If there is not reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a crime, is committing a crime, or is about to commit a crime, the person is not required to identify himself or herself, even in these states.
United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that customs agents may remove the gas tank from a vehicle crossing the international border in an effort to look for contraband.
Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352 (1983), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of vague laws that allow police to demand that "loiterers" and "wanderers" provide "credible and reliable" identification.
In United States criminal law, the border search exception is a doctrine that allows searches and seizures at international borders and their functional equivalent without a warrant or probable cause. Generally speaking, searches within 100 miles of the border are more permissible without a warrant than those conducted elsewhere in the U.S. The doctrine also allows federal agents to search people at border crossings without a warrant or probable cause. The government is allowed to use scanning devices and to search personal electronics. Invasive bodily searches, however, require reasonable suspicion.
United States v. Arnold, 533 F.3d 1003, is a United States court case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not require government agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching laptops or other digital devices at the border, including international airports.
United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975), was the case in which the Supreme Court determined it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment for a roving patrol car to stop a vehicle solely on the basis of the driver appearing to be of Mexican descent. A roving patrol car must have articulable facts that allow for an officer to have a reasonable suspicion that the person is carrying illegal aliens beyond their ethnicity. The Court handed down a 9–0 decision that affirmed the Circuit Court's ruling in the case.
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.
Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291 (1973), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a murder conviction notwithstanding a challenge that the evidence upon which guilt was based was obtained in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The court held that in view of the station-house detention upon probable cause, the very limited intrusion of scraping the defendant's fingernails for blood and other material, undertaken to preserve highly evanescent evidence, did not violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined "seizure" occurs when an officer uses displays of authority to detain a person.
United States v. Cotterman,, is a United States court case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that property, such as a laptop and other electronic storage devices, presented for inspection when entering the United States at the border may not be subject to forensic examination without a reason for suspicion, a holding that weakened the border search exception of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Bailey v. United States, 568 U.S. 186 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning search and seizure. A 6–3 decision reversed the weapons conviction of a Long Island man who had been detained when police followed his vehicle after he left his apartment just before it was to be searched. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, and Antonin Scalia filed a concurrence. Stephen Breyer dissented.
House v. Napolitano is a United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts case involving David House, a known supporter of Chelsea Manning and co-founder of the Manning Support Network, who brought action against Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security(DHS), Alan Bersin, Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection(CBP), and John T. Morton, Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) for the search and seizure of his electronic devices by federal agents at the border. Defendants moved to dismiss, and the court denied the motion on First Amendment and Fourth Amendment grounds. House subsequently reached a settlement with the government in May 2013, to return or destroy all information obtained from the investigation.
Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case which analyzed whether police officers may extend the length of a traffic stop to conduct a search with a trained detection dog. In a 6–3 opinion, the Court held that officers may not extend the length of a traffic stop to conduct a dog sniff unrelated to the original purpose of the stop. However, the Court remanded the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to determine whether the officer's extension of the traffic stop was independently justified by reasonable suspicion. Some analysts have suggested that the Court's decision to limit police authority was influenced by ongoing protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194 (2002), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified the applicability of Fourth Amendment protections to searches and seizures that occur on buses, as well as the function of consent during searches by law enforcement. During a scheduled stop in Tallahassee, Florida, police officers boarded a Greyhound bus as part of a drug interdiction effort and interviewed passengers. After talking to two of the passengers and asking if they could "check [their] person", officers discovered the two passengers had taped several packages of cocaine to their legs. At trial, the passengers argued that officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures because the police engaged in coercive behavior and never informed them that their participation in the drug interdiction efforts was voluntary.
United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675 (1985), was a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified how long police are permitted to stop vehicles as part of an investigatory stop before it violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
