©2011 Brian S. Batterton, Attorney, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) Hesrick v. State On March 10, 2011, the Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided Hesrick v. State [i], which serves as an excellent review of the “exigent circumstance” exception to the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.  The relevant facts of Hesrick, taken directly from the case are as follows: [O]n November 28, 2008, two officers with the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department were dispatched to the scene of a domestic dispute. Upon arrival, they encountered a man, Cody Hoffman, in the front yard. Hoffman was the person who had called the [...]

©2011 Jack Ryan, Attorney, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) Snyder v. Phelps What does the Westboro Baptist Church Case Mean to Law Enforcement? A new case from the United States Supreme Court has led some law enforcement officials to question what their course of action should be if they were to have a protest at a military funeral.  These questions arise from the United States Supreme Court decision in Snyder v. Phelps. [i] Over the last twenty years, the Westboro Baptist Church has conducted protests at more than 600 military funerals.  The congregation at the Westboro Baptist Church believes [...]

©2011 Chuck Washburn, Attorney, Legal Counsel, Instructor, PATCtech Digital Forensics (PATCtech.com) U.S. v Kramer, 2011 U.S. App. Lexis 2367, February 8, 2011, No. 10-1983 Is your cell phone comparable to a personal computer in the eyes of the law?  The United States Court of Appeals for the 8th circuit believes so. Neil Kramer pleaded guilty in District Court for the Western District of Missouri.  His charge was transporting a minor in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity with her. Kramer also acknowledged that he used his cellular telephone (Motorola Motorazr V3) to send text messages [...]

©2011 Jack Ryan, Attorney, Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (LLRMI.COM) Investigators and Prosecutors Must Look At Totality of Circumstances Surrounding Statement. In the first case this term impacting law enforcement operations, the United States Supreme Court further analyzed the reach of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause on statement’s obtained by law enforcement during initial investigations.   Investigators are all familiar with the so-called “dying-declaration” which is an exception to the rule which prohibits hearsay statements from being used in court.  The dying-declaration is a rule of evidence and not a Constitutional Rule.  Thus, a statement which may have been admissible [...]

©2011 Lou Reiter, Co-Director, Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (LLRMI.COM) At the Legal and Liability Risk Management Institute (LLRMI) we have been receiving requests from various law enforcement agencies, insurance pools and individual officers regarding social network usage.  We have developed a model policy to guide agencies in reasonable and necessary methods to use in the creation of their own approaches to this emerging issue.  LLRMI fully supports an approach to ensure that public safety agency employees know that their use of the social network could be subject to review by the agency during background and administrative investigations. Why [...]

©2011 Brian S. Batterton, Attorney, Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (LLRMI.COM) United States v. Basher (9th Cir. Decided January 20, 2011) When law enforcement officers think of the concept of “curtilage” and its application to the Fourth Amendment, houses, yards, and the “open fields” exception to search warrant requirement often come to mind.  However, the Fourth Amendment also applies to tents, just as it does other residences.[i] In light of the fact that a person has Fourth Amendment protection in his or her tent, the next issue would be whether they have Fourth Amendment protection in the area immediately surrounding the tent (the area that would be [...]