Practical case law analysis, officer-safety guidance, and legal updates written for today's law enforcement professionals.
227 articles
A reckless driver parks, walks off, and is arrested for DUI ten minutes later around the corner. The answer runs through probable cause, not through the arrest, and Gant does less work here than you would think.
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Arrest on an arrestable offense, search incident to it, and let them go if nothing turns up. The Supreme Court closed this door in Knowles v. Iowa, and here is why the custodial arrest is the whole point.
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Miranda violations come in two flavors, intentional and unintentional. Courts want to see that you cleansed the unintentional ones. Here are the factors that do it, and the one move that does not.
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A Fourth Amendment waiver search turns up narcotics, and the officer asks what is in the bag. Is that a Fifth Amendment problem? The answer turns on arrest-like custody, not on the search.
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Officers knocked for 30 minutes intending to arrest, then forced entry on a community caretaking theory after a neighbor mentioned a sleeping pill. The case settled for $760,000. Anthony walks the doctrines step by step.
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Matlock gets you in on the protected party s keys. Randolph and Fernandez govern the objecting co-occupant. And the Ninth Circuit says a separate warrant would be superfluous when you already hold the court order.
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Plain view seizure is an argument if the entry was lawful. But Collins v. Virginia is the pushback, and the harder questions are why there was a call-out and a protective sweep on a reckless driver at all.
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She lives there, so she could have forced the door herself. And because she could do it, she can authorize someone with more brawn to do it for her. The officers were acting as her agent.
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No exception covers it. Not the motor vehicle exception, not community caretaking, and no judge is signing a warrant. The lockout kit was wrong, and so was the brass telling him to impound and get one.
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