The+4th+Court+Cases

__Amendment 4 (2)__

__Weeks v. United States__: Weeks, the defendant, was charged with nine counts including the use of mail for transporting illegal coupons or tickets representing chances or shares in a lottery or gift enterprise. He was fined and imprisoned. Weeks was arrested by a police officer at work, without a warrant. Other police officers went to Weeks house, without a warrant, and took various papers and articles which they turned over to the United States marshal. They proceeded to go back to the house with the marshal, without a warrant, and took more envelopes and letters found in the drawer of a chiffonier. This was ruled as a violation of the 4th amendment because the 4th amendment was supposed to embody the idea deep in the roots of English law that “a man’s house was his castle and not to be invaded by general authority to search and seize his goods and papers”. The Court then reversed Weeks conviction and remanded it.

__Mapp v. Ohio__: One night, seven police officers broke into and searched the house of a woman named Dolly Mapp in Cleveland, Ohio. They were searching for a man by the name of Virgic Ogletree,who they believed had information of the bombing, who they believed was hiding inside the house. When the officers got to the house, Mapp called her attorney to get his suggestion to see if she should allow him in the house. Her attorney’s partner picked up the phone and advised her not to let them in. When she told them they were not aloud to come in, they waited outside for 4 hours. After this period of waiting, the officers broke the glass by the door and broke in. Dolly Mapp, in a frantic state asked to see a warrant. An officer pulled what appeared to be a blank piece of paper out really quickly without showing her what was actually on it. Dolly then snatched the parchment out of his hand and shoved it down her bosom. The officer then proceeded to put his hand down the dress to retrieve the suspected fake warrant. While inside the house, they did not find Virgic. However, the police did obtain some incriminating papers during the search and then left. This evidence was used to convict Ms. Mapp in the state courts. However, this evidence was not aloud to be used because of previous court decisions like the Exclusionary Rule.

__Katz v. United States__: Katz had been arrested for illegal gambling after he used a public telephone booth to “transmit gambling information” The FBI wire tapped the phone and recorded his phone conversation. The FBI argued that this was legal because they never entered the phone booth. The court ruled in favor of Katz. They stated that the fourth amendment protected the person as well as the person’s property against illegal searches. “Whatever a citizen seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.”

__California v. Greenwood__: The police believed that Billy Greenwood was dealing in illegal narcotics so they searched his trash bags out on his curb. After the police discovered paraphernalia linked with drug use in the bags they applied for a search warrant using their discoveries as probable cause. Greenwood was later convicted of drug-related charges. He claimed that the search was illegal and warrant-less. The supreme court claimed that the trash bags were left on the side of the street and therefore open to “animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.”

__Kyllo v. United States__: Danny Lee Kyllo was arrested for the growth of marijuana in his garage in a triplex. Agents used a plane to travel over his home with a thermal imaging device to scan the triplex to determine if the amount of heat emanating from it was consistent with the high-intensity lamps typically used for indoor marijuana growth. They took this case to the supreme court and Kyllo won because the search was unreasonable using the device that wasn’t even released to the public to scan his house before asking for a warrant to search his house.

__New Jersey v. T.L.O__: In 1985, the supreme court ruled on a case involving public school. In New Jersey v. T.L.O. 1985, a fourteen year old girl was suspected of smoking cigarettes in the school principal searched her purse and found marijuana. The girl was convicted in juvenile court. The people representing the girl felt that the warrantless search had been a fourth Amendment violation. They appealed her conviction. The case worked its way to the supreme court. The court said that school officials were responsible for maintaining a learning environment. This sometimes required relaxing fourth Amendment procedures. This meant children in public school had limited privacy rights. Consequently, the supreme court decidren that suspicions of wrongdoing by school official did not have to rise the level of probable cause. Schools only needed to have a reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed. Therefore, the court ruled that the search of the purse had been constitutional.

__Alabama v. White: Montgomery__: Alabama police received a telephone call from a tipster who had told them that a woman would be leaving a specific apartment in a complex at a specific time in a brown Plymouth station wagon. He also said that she would have an ounce of cocaine in a brown attache case. A patrol pulled her over asked for a search she agreed to let them search, they found the bag she gave them the combination to the lock and they found the cocaine. She lost her court case but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the decision stating that the officers did not have the reasonable suspicion required under the Terry v. Ohio (in 1968) to stop Whites car and that the seizure of the cocaine was a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights.