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Searches and Seizures Courts' language discussing what's generally reasonable during a search or a seizure. Sections below deal with various sub-categories of this important topic, but this section contains the language that deals with policy, definitions and general considerations of the issue. Pages: ‹1› ‹2› ‹3› ‹4› ‹5› ‹6›
...[O]nce it is recognized that the Fourth Amendment protects people -- and not simply 'areas' -- against unreasonable searches and seizures, it becomes clear that the reach of that Amendment cannot turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure.
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It seems equally clear to me that the constitutionality of a police officer's show of force should be measured by the conditions that exist at the time of the officer's action. A search must be justified on the basis of the facts available at the time it is initiated; the subsequent discovery of evidence does not retroactively validate an unconstitutional search. The same approach should apply to seizures; the character of the citizen's response should not govern the constitutionality of the officer's conduct.
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This Court, as the dissent correctly observes, is not empowered to suspend constitutional guarantees so that the Government may more effectively wage a "war on drugs." If that war is to be fought, those who fight it must respect the rights of individuals, whether or not those individuals are suspected of having committed a crime. By the same token, this Court is not empowered to forbid law enforcement practices simply because it considers them distasteful.
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Our Nation, we are told, is engaged in a "war on drugs." No one disputes that it is the job of law-enforcement officials to devise effective weapons for fighting this war. But the effectiveness of a law-enforcement technique is not proof of its constitutionality. The general warrant, for example, was certainly an effective means of law enforcement. Yet it was one of the primary aims of the Fourth Amendment to protect citizens from the tyranny of being singled out for search and seizure without particularized suspicion notwithstanding the effectiveness of this method. [...] In my view, the law-enforcement technique with which we are confronted in this case -- the suspicionless police sweep of buses in intrastate or interstate travel -- bears all of the indicia of coercion and unjustified intrusion associated with the general warrant.
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This ["inconvenient, intrusive and intimidating," United States v. Chandler, 744 F. Supp. at, 335], aspect of the suspicionless sweep has not been lost on many of the lower courts called upon to review the constitutionality of this practice. Remarkably, the courts located at the heart of the "drug war" have been the most adamant in condemning this technique.
"If passengers on a bus passing through the Capital of this great nation cannot be free from police interference where there is absolutely no basis for the police officers to stop and question them, then the police will be free to accost people on our streets without any reason or cause. In this 'anything goes' war on drugs, random knocks on the doors of our citizens' homes seeking 'consent' to search for drugs cannot be far away. This is not America." United States v. Lewis, 728 F. Supp. 784, 788-789, rev'd, U.S. App. D.C. , 921 F.2d 1294 (1990). [...]
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