United States v. Harris, No. 06-3045, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 3731 (D.C. Cir. Decided February 22, 2008) Officers from the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department executed a search warrant at the home of Dale Ann Harris, where she lived with her children.  When the police made entry, they found Harris and two other women inside the apartment; all were handcuffed and detained.  Officers searched the kitchen and found jars, vials, tin foil, and spoons which contained suspicious liquid that smelled like phencyclidine (“PCP”).  Later testing revealed that one jar and three vials contained a total of 34 grams of PCP, which [...]

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution requires that the police have a warrant to enter a suspect’s home to seize evidence.  It follows that one of the principles of the Fourth Amendment is that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumed unreasonable.i  However, the United States Supreme Court has carved out certain exceptions to the above rule.  For example, generally, police may enter a home without a warrant based on consent, when in hot pursuit, in order to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence, to prevent escape, and to protect someone in the residence from imminent [...]

Over the past decade the Unites States Supreme Court has decided three cases dealing with law enforcement checkpoints involving car stops by police officers without individualized suspicion to believe that the operator of the vehicle had done anything wrong. In Michigan v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990),i the Court approved of Sobriety Checkpoints where the police were acting pursuant to set guidelines that limited police discretion as to which vehicles would be stopped. The checkpoints in Sitz also provided motorists with notice of the checkpoint. The Court reasoned that there was a substantial government interest in removing impaired drivers from the [...]

Law enforcement officers are trained in the academy that there are only three legal ways to enter a person’s home: with consent, with a warrant or with exigent circumstances.  Recently, the Court of Appeals of Georgia decided a case which illustrates the above rule. In Hicks v. State (GA), the police were called to Hick’s residence in response to a “shots fired” call.  According to Hick’s neighbor, Hicks fired two shots from a shotgun toward that neighbor’s house.i  The police arrived to the neighbor’s house approximately fifteen minutes after the dispatch and were told that Hicks had done the same thing a [...]

In 1997, the United States Supreme Court held, in Maryland v. Wilson, that it is reasonable for officers to order passengers in a lawfully stopped automobile to exit the vehicle.i  The court reasoned that there must be a balance during a traffic stop between the need of the police to maintain officer safety and the Fourth Amendment rights of passengers.  The court concluded that a passenger is only minimally inconvenienced, and basically, the most significant change in the passenger’s circumstance is that they will be outside rather than inside the vehicle. Given Maryland v. Wilson, the question has now become, “May the [...]

There exists a serious threat to law enforcement, which can compromise the high ethical standards and values our profession has achieved during the past several decades. This threat is typically referred to as “Noble Cause Corruption.” Traditional corruption is defined as the use of one’s official position for personal gain.  The personal gain can be economic or otherwise, such as sexual favors. As a profession, we have long understood this type of abuse of power and, when discovered and investigated, those involved are arrested. A less obvious but perhaps even more threatening type of misconduct in law enforcement is Noble [...]