Preview

Legal Memorandum Vs Case Brief Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
536 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Legal Memorandum Vs Case Brief Summary
PL1240
Week 2
December 22, 2013

The Legal Memorandum vs. Case Brief A case brief is a short summary of a reported case. Students write case briefs to summarize cases they have read for class to keep track of the large number of cases students are required to read and analyze. During legal research case briefs serve to help the researcher keep track of the cases read and analyzed and can serve as the foundation for legal arguments in trial briefs or other documents filed with the court. Basically, a case brief summarizes the components of cases. A memorandum is a legal argument and should contain legal citations that support the legal arguments of a certain case. It informs the reader about what the law is. Memorandums can also help develop a legal strategy with other attorneys. A case brief is a summary of a reported case where a memorandum supports a
…show more content…
Robinette Case Brief Ohio v. Robinette, United States Supreme Court 1996
JUDICIAL HISTORY:
A ticketed motorist, Robinette, is seeking to suppress marijuana and a methamphetamine found in his car when he was pulled over, technically freed to leave, but consented to a police search of his car, claiming that he would not have if he knew he could have declined.
FACTS:
Robinette was stopped for speeding in a construction zone, ticketed, and technically freed to leave, but consented police to a search of his car. He claimed he would not have if he knew he could have declined. The officer as, “Before you go, can I search the car.”
ISSUE:
Whether the fourth Amendment required that a lawfully seized defendant must be advised that he was “free to go” before his consent to search would be recognized as voluntary.
RULES:
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996) A traffic stop entails the Fourth Amendment seizure of the driver “even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.”

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The case Heien v. North Carolina came about on April 29, 2010 when an officer started “following a suspicious vehicle, Sergeant Matt Darisse noticed that only one of the vehicle's brake lights was working and pulled the driver over. While issuing a warning ticket for the broken brake light, Darisse became suspicious of the actions of the two occupants and their answers to his questions. Petitioner Nicholas Brady Heien, the car's owner, gave Darisse consent to search the vehicle. Darisse found cocaine, and Heien was arrested and charged with attempted trafficking.” After denial of his motion to suppress, defendant entered a guilty plea in the North Carolina Superior Court… the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed…The North…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Facts: This case raises questions concerning the Fourth Amendment and searches incident to a lawful arrest. On September 13th, 1965, three police officers arrived at Chimel’s residence in Santa Ana, California. They possessed a search warrant, which authorized Chimel’s…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 2002, Lemon Montrea Johnson was the passenger in the backseat of a car stopped for a traffic violation. Johnson was charged with; inter alia, possession of drugs and possession of a weapon by a felon. These items were discovered during a protective pat-down search of Johnson. Johnson was convicted by the trial court. Johnson argued that his conviction should be overturned because the trial court was in error by denying his motion to suppress the evidence. He argued that he had been unlawfully “seized” because being a passenger in a vehicle does not automatically constitute “seizure.” He furthered argued that even if he had been “seized,” that by the time Officer Trevizo searched him he was no longer “seized” as their conversation had become consensual. Furthermore, the evidence should not be considered because the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights and because the…

    • 4995 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Terry Vs Ohio Case Study

    • 2441 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The first sentence of Chief Justice Warren's opinion in Terry v Ohio, is as follows: "This case presents serious questions concerning the role of the Fourth Amendment in the confrontation on the street between the citizen and the policeman investigating suspicious circumstances.” According to Chief Justice Warren this issue had never been approached in the Supreme Court. Warren also stated “This case is dealing on the one hand with is frequently argued that in dealing with the rapidly unfolding and often dangerous situations on city streets the police are in need of an escalating set of flexible responses, graduated in relation to the amount of information they possess. For this purpose it is urged that distinctions should be made between a "stop" and an "arrest" (or a "seizure" of a person), and between a "frisk" and a "search." He believed this could be imposed because it was a minor inconvenience to the person being searched and was acceptable in order for effective law enforcement and secure the safety of the…

    • 2441 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Does the Fourth Amendment require that a lawfully seized defendant have to be advised that he is “free to go” before his consent to search would be considered voluntary?…

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Missouri v McNeely

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A Missouri police officer stopped Tyler McNeely after observing it exceeding the posted speed limit and repeatedly crossing the center line. The officer noticed McNeely’s bloodshot eyes, his slurred speech, and a smell of alcohol on his breath. McNeely performed poorly on a battery of field sobriety tests, and he declined to take a Breathalyzer test. When McNeely indicated he refuse a breath sample for testing, the officer took him to a nearby hospital for blood alcohol test. The officer explained to McNeely that under Missouri’s implied consent law, refusal to submit voluntarily to the blood test would lead to an immediate one-year suspension of his driver’s license and could be used against him in any future prosecution. The testing of the blood indicated that the blood alcohol level was significantly above the legal limit. McNeely had challenged the blood test evidence claiming that there should have been a search warrant before ordering a blood sample.…

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Case Brief - R. v. Hufsky

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Appellant refused, and was informed by the officer he was being charged with regusal to provide a breath sample, and informed him of his rights…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arizona v. Gant

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Respondent, Rodney Gant, was arrested for driving with a suspended license. Subsequent to the search of the Gant’s vehicle officers found cocaine in the back seat. At trial Gant moved to have the evidence suppressed denied that there was probable cause to search the vehicle, but did not decide to suppress the evidence. The court ruled the search to be that incident to an arrest. Respondent was found guilty and sentenced to three-year prison term.…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Other conditions on the searches incident to arrest exception include the use of force, the search of other individuals with the arrested individual, searching the vehicle of an arrest person, contemporaneousness and inventory searches "if a government agent has probable cause to believe the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime without a warrant" because "in the time it would take to get a warrant, the car, driver and contraband or evidence could be long gone" (Harr, Hess, 2006. p. 231). The 1981 case of Robbins v. California saw the justifications for searching without a warrant. Those specifications include that the mobility of vehicles produce exigent circumstances.…

    • 310 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, in the absence of probable cause that the…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Study pal

    • 959 Words
    • 9 Pages

    preserve testimony of witnesses who may not be available for trial, reduce the likelihood of perjury, and define and narrow the facts.…

    • 959 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abstract. Imagine, you are a police officer. You start your shift with a routine vehicle stop with what appears to be a broken tail light. Two hours later you are writing a report that includes; there was no broken tail light, only a taillight that is covered with colored tape. During the stop this car also was in question if it had anything to do with anyrecent previous crimes involving the death of an officer. This was not the case either. However, instead of letting the driver go, as there is no reason to detain her any further, the driver is unconscious in the hospital and upon waking will be arrested for having drugs and a gun in her vehicle that was found after the crash into the telephone pole. Mistakes like this do not have to…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    California, two men argued that their Fourth Amendment had been violated by the officers conducting the traffic stop. When the case was brought to the Supreme Court, the court determined that since their was an eyewitness account of reckless driving along with the smell of marijuana, the officers had enough reasonable suspicion to conduct a traffic stop and a vehicle search. Without the 911 callers description of the vehicle, someone else could have been pulled over or, if she had provided inaccurate information of the vehicle, the petitioners could have appealed to the court by stating that they were not the vehicle described, therefore were searched with no reasonable suspicion and should have the evidence thrown out of court. Since it appeared that the caller experienced no sort of impairment when describing the vehicle to the dispatcher, they were able to make an entirely legal traffic stop and vehicle search with no breach of the petitioner’s constitutional…

    • 1638 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    American Search Case

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages

    It was adopted as a response to the abuse of search warrants in the American Revolution. The debate of the definition of search has been challenged in many cases in the history of the United States and is brought up again in this case. The Supreme Court ruled that a search occurs only when a person expects privacy in the thing search and society beliefves that expectation is reasonable. This was decided in Katz v. United States in 1967. In Katz the Court ruled that a search had occurred when the government wiretapped a telephone booth. Now seizure is the other part of the 4th amendment. A Seizure of propert occurs when there is meaningful interference by the government with an individual's possessory interests. The exclusionary rule also falls under seizure. The exclusionary rule states that voluntary answers to questions given to officers are offered into evidence in a ciminal prosecution. The government may not detain and individual even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds, with few exceptions. The refusal to listen or answers does not answer these grounds. The invasion on people's privacy is only minimal and is usually only in speical cases. Some of these…

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cali

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages

    When Acevedo was being trialed in the lower courts they agreed with him when he pleaded that the police did not have the right to search his car without a proper warrant. It was then taken to the Supreme Court, he pleaded to keep the marijuana as evidence, since the police had not had a proper search warrant to go inside his car (Oyez Project). When the trial court denied his proposition, Acevedo pleaded guilty (Case Briefs). In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, the Court reversed the Court of Appeal and ruled that the "automobile exception" to the Fourth Amendment's general search-warrant requirement is broad enough to cover a situation where the police only have probable cause to believe there is evidence in a specific movable…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays