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.
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.
In criminal procedure law of the United States, an exigent circumstance allows law enforcement to enter a structure without a search warrant, or if they have a "knock and announce" warrant, allows them to enter without knocking and waiting for the owner's permission to enter. It must be a situation where people are in imminent danger, evidence faces imminent destruction, or a suspect's escape is imminent. Once entry is obtained, the plain view doctrine applies, allowing the seizure of any evidence or contraband discovered in the course of actions consequent upon the exigent circumstances.
A traffic stop, commonly referred to as being pulled over, is a temporary detention of a driver of a vehicle by police to investigate a possible crime or minor violation of law.
Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103 (2006), is a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that without a search warrant, police had no constitutional right to search a house where one resident consents to the search while another resident objects. The Court distinguished this case from the "co-occupant consent rule" established in United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974), which permitted one resident to consent in absence of the co-occupant.
United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974), was a Supreme Court of the United States case in which the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures was not violated when the police obtained voluntary consent from a third party who possessed common authority over the premises sought to be searched. The ruling of the court established the "co-occupant consent rule," which was later explained by Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177 (1990) and distinguished later by Georgia v. Randolph (2006), in which the court held that a third party could not consent over the objections of a present co-occupant, and Fernandez v. California (2014), where the court held when the objecting co-resident is removed for objectively reasonable purposes, the remaining resident may validly consent to search.
Warrantless searches are searches and seizures conducted without court-issued search warrants.
Consent searches are searches made by police officers in the United States based on the voluntary consent of the individual whose person or property is being searched. The simplest and most common type of warrantless searches in the United States are searches based upon consent. No warrant, probable cause or reasonable suspicion is required to perform a search if a person, or someone else with the proper authority, consents to a search.
Search incident to a lawful arrest, commonly known as search incident to arrest (SITA) or the Chimel rule, is a U.S. legal principle that allows police to perform a warrantless search of an arrested person, and the area within the arrestee’s immediate control, in the interest of officer safety, the prevention of escape, and the preservation of evidence.
Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963), was a case before the United States Supreme Court, which incorporated the Fourth Amendment's protections against illegal search and seizure. The case was decided on June 10, 1963, by a vote of 5–4.
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. The doctrine is not regarded as an exception to the Fourth Amendment, but rather to its requirement for a warrant or probable cause. Balanced against the sovereign's interests at the border are the Fourth Amendment rights of entrants. Not only is the expectation of privacy less at the border than in the interior, the Fourth Amendment balance between the interests of the government and the privacy right of the individual is also struck much more favorably to the government at the border. This balance at international borders means that routine searches are "reasonable" there, and therefore do not violate the Fourth Amendment's proscription against "unreasonable searches and seizures".
A common area is, in real estate or real property law, the "area which is available for use by more than one person..." The common areas are those that are available for common use by all tenants, (or) groups of tenants and their invitees. In Texas and other parts of the United States, it is "An area inside a housing development owned by all residents or by an overall management structure which charges each tenant for maintenance and upkeep."
Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266 (1973), was a United States Supreme Court case holding that the search of an automobile by the United States Border Patrol without a warrant or probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment. The vehicle was stopped and searched for illegal aliens twenty-five miles (40 km) from the Mexican border. The Court approached the search from four views: automobile search, administrative inspection, heavily regulated industry inspection, and border search. As to the validity of the search under the automobile exception, the Court found no justification for the search under the Carroll doctrine because there was no probable cause. As to the validity of the search under various administrative inspection doctrines, the Court found that the officers lacked an area warrant. As to the validity of the heavily regulated industry inspection, the Court found that the doctrine is not applicable to traveling on a state highway. As to the validity of a border search, the Court found that the site of the stop and the entirety of the road on which the stop occurred was too far from the border to be considered a border search.
Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452 (2011), was a decision by the US Supreme Court, which held that warrantless searches conducted in police-created exigent circumstances do not violate the Fourth Amendment as long as the police did not create the exigency by violating or threatening to violate the Fourth Amendment.
In United States Constitutional Law, a minimally intrusive/invasive warrantless search is a type of search that does not breach the boundaries of the property and is performed without any prerequisite search warrant. These searches are contested regularly in courts, and have been ruled for and against under different circumstances. The primary debate concerns the method in which the search is conducted, and also the area being searched. Issues concerning warrantless search and subsequent seizure are always of local concern, because they are a community law enforcement issue as well as a national law issue.
Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204 (1981), is a United States Supreme Court case which held that, based on the Fourth Amendment, a police officer may not conduct a warrantless search of a third party's home in an attempt to apprehend the subject of an arrest warrant, absent consent or exigent circumstances.
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.
Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. ___ (2016) was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the search incident to arrest doctrine permits law enforcement to conduct warrantless breath tests but not blood tests on suspected drunk drivers.
