Category Archives: Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment: How It Impacts Us In School
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By: Rachael Plummer

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The Fourth Amendment: How It Impacts Us In School - Video

Facebook user data in bulk was sought last year by the New York County District Attorney's office and a court directed it to produce virtually all records and communications for 381 accounts, the company disclosed Thursday.

The social networking giant is now asking the court for the return or destruction of the data as well as a ruling on whether the bulk warrants violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and other laws. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of property.

The company said that since last July it has been fighting a set of sweeping search warrants issued by the Supreme Court for New York County that demanded that it turn over to law enforcement nearly all data from the accounts of the 381 people, including photos, private messages and other information.

Facebook was also prohibited from informing the targeted persons, who included "high schoolers to grandparents, from all over New York and across the United States," and electricians, school teachers, and members of the country's armed services.

Of the 381 people whose accounts were covered under the warrants, 62 were later charged in a disability fraud case, Facebook's deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby wrote in a post on Thursday.

The request from New York is described by the company as the largest it has received, "by a magnitude of more than ten."

The social networking company last Friday asked the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court to force the government to return the data it has seized and retained.

The government's own investigation confirms "that most of the Facebook user data seized by the Government is irrelevant to the charges alleged, and the search warrants are overbroad and constitutionally defective," the company wrote in the court filing.

After Facebook filed the appeal, the government unsealed the warrants and all court filings, which has enabled Facebook to notify the people whose accounts were affected about the warrants and its ongoing legal efforts, Sonderby wrote.

Facebook's appeal focuses on whether it has the standing to challenge the warrants, whether the warrants, which authorized collection of large amounts of personal information and communications without an "apparent connection to the crimes under investigation, or procedures requiring the return of the seized information" are in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and whether the gag provisions of the warrants violate the Stored Communications Act and the First Amendment.

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Facebook tries to recover bulk user data seized by New York law enforcement

On March 3, at 10 a.m., the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Los Angeles v. Patel, a fascinating case about the proper structure of a Fourth Amendment challenge.

Los Angeles has an ordinance that requires hotels to maintain certain records about their guests and to produce those records for police officers upon request which is to say, the officer need not necessarily have a warrant or any particular suspicion. Hoteliers claim this regime violates the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Oddly, though, the hoteliers have chosen to challenge the ordinance on its face. They do not allege that any particular search was unreasonable; indeed, they do not present the facts of any particular search at all. Los Angeles contends that this facial challenge is improper: In its view, a Fourth Amendment challenge must be an as-applied challenge. (Los Angeles has the great good fortune to be represented, in part, by our own co-Conspirator Orin Kerr; the Los Angeles brief is available here.) The case thus presents the question of whether a Fourth Amendment challenge can be purely facial or must be as-applied.

On the surface, this is merely a technical question about proper pleading of a Fourth Amendment case. But on another level, this case is of enormous theoretical importance far beyond the Fourth Amendment. I have argued that this vexed distinction between facial and as-applied challenges is actually a window into the basic constitutional structure of judicial review.

In that regard, I have filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Manhattan Institute(with MIs Jim Copland), arguing that a Fourth Amendment challenge must always be as-applied. Here is the summary of argument:

A Fourth Amendment challenge is inherently an as-applied challenge for the simple reason that the Fourth Amendment binds the executive branch and restricts the paradigmatic executive action of searching and seizing.

Courts have not always been perfectly clear about the distinction between facial and as-applied challenges, and this case presents a perfect opportunity to clarify the distinction. What a close reading of the cases reveals is that this distinction simply turns on who has allegedly violated the Constitution. A facial challenge is a challenge to legislative action. An as-applied challenge is a challenge to executive action.

The Constitution empowers and restricts different officials differently. A constitutional claim is a claim that a particular government actor has exceeded a grant of power or transgressed a restriction. But because different government actors are vested with different powers and bound by different restrictions, one cannot determine whether the Constitution has been violated without knowing who has allegedly violated it. The predicates of judicial review inevitably depend upon the subjects of judicial review. Courts sometimes write, euphemistically, of challenges to statutes or ordinances, thus obscuring the subjects of constitutional claims. But the Constitution does not prohibit statutes and ordinances; it prohibits actionsthe actions of particular government actors. Thus, every constitutional inquiry properly begins with the subject of the constitutional claim. And the first question in any such inquiry is the who question: who has allegedly violated the Constitution?

The who question establishes the two basic forms of judicial review: facial challenges and as-applied challenges. In the typical constitutional case, the legislature will make a law, the executive will execute it, and someone will claim that his constitutional rights have been violated. The first question to ask such a claimant is who has violated the Constitution? The legislature, by making the law? Or the executive, by executing the law?

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Volokh Conspiracy: Los Angeles v. Patel and the constitutional structure of judicial review

Bar Exam Rap: Criminal Procedure - Fourth Amendment

By: avakathryn

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Bar Exam Rap: Criminal Procedure - Fourth Amendment - Video

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the US
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the US and how are these rights are being violated by police officers and courts and what are the punishment for such crimes based of Title 18, U.S.C....

By: George Almodovar

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The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the US - Video

Holiday Document Dump Time Again
NSA reports detail decade #39;s worth of privacy violations U.S. SUPREME COURT RULES 8-1 THAT CITIZENS HAVE NO PROTECTION AGAINST FOURTH AMENDMENT VIOLATIONS BY ...

By: THElNFOWARRlOR

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Holiday Document Dump Time Again - Video

Virginia man gets thrown into the crazy house for simply complaining about his cable TV
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution states that no one can enter your domicile and seize anything or anyone without your or the court #39;s pe...

By: TomoUSA

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Virginia man gets thrown into the crazy house for simply complaining about his cable TV - Video

CHEYENNE - A federal judge earlier this month dismissed part of a claim filed by a local man who was shot by police in 2011.

The claim, filed in September, said Matthew Carabajal's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable seizures and excessive force protections were violated during the incident.

Carabajal's minor son, who was an infant in the car with him when shots were fired, also was named as a plaintiff.

The lawsuit names the city of Cheyenne and its police department as defendants along with officers Pat Johnson, Joshua Thornton, Matthew Colson and Michael Sutton in their individual capacities.

The defendants in October filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl granted part of the defendants' motion on Dec. 15 and denied the rest.

The judge dismissed without prejudice Carabajal's claim against the city, an alternative claim alleging 14th Amendment violations and all claims filed on behalf of his son.

Dismissing the claims without prejudice means they could be refiled at a later date.

The defense had argued that the claim as it related to Carabajal's son should be dismissed because he was not injured or deprived of any constitutionally protected right.

Carabajal's response to the motion to dismiss, filed last month, noted the alternative 14th Amendment claim, which was dismissed, was included in the lawsuit "for precautionary purposes only ... in case, for some reason, the court dismisses plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claims."

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Man shot by police gets part of claim dismissed

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) December 26, 2014

Last week, the US Supreme Court delivered another blow to 4th Amendment civil liberties. In Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. __ (2014), the Court, for the first time, allowed the police to benefit from not knowing the law. Federal criminal defense attorney Hope Lefeber explains the ruling and discusses its implications.

According to court documents, Heiens car was stopped after a North Carolina patrol car noticed the car only had one working brake light. Believing two working brake lights were required, the officer pulled the car over and ultimately discovered cocaine inside. Petitioner was charged with attempted trafficking in North Carolina state court. Petitioner moved to suppress the search because state law only required vehicles to have one working brake-light. He alleged, therefore, that the officer stopped him for conduct that was fully legal. The trial court denied the motion. (Docket No. 13-604, Nicholas Brady Heien, Petitioner v. North Carolina). Heien then pleaded guilty to two counts of trafficking, while reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress.

On appeal the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed. After careful analysis of the North Carolina statute governing brake lights, the Court of Appeals concluded the stop violated the Fourth Amendment, explaining that "an officer's mistaken belief that a defendant has committed a traffic violation is not an objectively reasonable justification for a traffic stop". The Court of Appeals then held that evidence from the search had to be suppressed under the exclusionary rule. The Supreme Court of North Carolina then reversed the Court of Appeals, holding that the officer's mistake of law was objectively reasonable, and, therefore, the search was justified and constitutional.

The United States Supreme Court affirmed. The Court had long accepted that an officers mistake of fact would not violate the Fourth Amendment. See Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 183-86 (1990). The Court had little difficulty in extending the same courtesy to an officers mistake of lawas long as it was a reasonable mistake. To be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them fair leeway for enforcing the law in the communitys protection. As such, the majority held that a police officer's reasonable mistake of law can indeed provide the individualized suspicion required by the Fourth Amendment to justify a traffic stop based upon that understanding.

Ms. Lefeber explains that this is an extraordinary intrusion into our Fourth Amendment rights, as a police officer can now justify a stop and search in any case and it no longer matters whether the person stopped violated any law, let alone a traffic violation.

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Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Hope Lefeber Discusses Supreme Court Case Holding That Police Officer's Mistaken ...

Man gets involuntary psychiatric hold after calling cops about cable theft in Virginia
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution states that no one can enter your domicile and seize anything or anyone without your or the court #39;s permission. Tell that to Gordon...

By: TomoNews US

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Man gets involuntary psychiatric hold after calling cops about cable theft in Virginia - Video