Essay On The Fourth Amendment

The statement, “The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” is one of the most controversial statements in Criminal Procedure. The amendment’s purpose is to secure individuals’ rights to privacy within their houses, papers, and defends them against unreasonable searches and seizures. However, to what extent does the law preserve a person’s privacy? The Law of Search and Seizure and the Search Warrant, give the government strict to stipulations as to how they are able to rightfully obtain information that is presumed to be private. Although Searches, Seizures and Warrants seem to have simple guidelines, they are each intricate categories. It is common for a search to be defined as any action by government officials, which involves seeking for indication of a violation of law. Nonetheless, according to the Court’s cases, a search ensues when there is a physical invasion into one of the “constitutionally protected areas” which can be associated with the Fourth Amendment: persons, papers and effects (Whitebread and Slobogin, 120). Silverman vs United States (1961) exemplify how searches have conditions. Evidence officers gathered by eavesdropping on
There are three tiers within the category of seizures, arrest, investigatory stop and a consensual encounter. Both arrest and investigatory stops occur under the Fourth Amendment; however, arrest require justification by probable cause, while investigatory stops only require the mere validation of reasonable suspicion. On the other hand, consensual encounters have impose no restraints of liberty being that it is not ruled by the Amendment, meaning that it requires nothing to have a conversation with an individual. Seizures are more complex than a government official asking an individual a few questions. Before a conversation can be defined as a seizure, the person must no longer agree to