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American Government Lecture Five (view source)

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=== Fourth Amendment ===

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The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures of people and their personal property. Because all criminal prosecutions, state and federal, require gathering evidence, nearly all criminal cases implicate whether government officials (the police) had the right to gather the information.

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Search warrants the basic way that government officials obtain the right to search personal belongings. But search warrants are time-consuming to obtain (a judge needs to review and sign one), and first requires a proof of probable cause of wrongdoing in order to obtain one. Often searches or interrogations are done without obtaining a warrant first. And when a search warrant is obtained, it can still be challenged based on whether it was validly obtained, or whether the actual search exceeded the scope of the warrant.

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Often knowledge about the Fourth Amendment can make the difference between being sent to jail for years, or not being arrested at all. If a cop stops a teenager who is carrying a backpack, does the police officer have a right to search the backpack? If the teenager grants consent to the cop to search his backpack, then that ends the matter, and some cops are clever in obtaining consent. But if the teenager knows his Fourth Amendment rights and refuses to consent to search his backpack, then the cop will probably not search it because of the Fourth Amendment. If there is something illegal in that backpack, then that exercise of Fourth Amendment rights by the teenager can mean the different between going to jail and never being arrested.

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The U.S. Supreme Court decides only about 75 cases each year, but more than 10% of those cases decide or rely on Fourth Amendment cases. In the last Term of the U.S. Supreme Court, eleven of its decisions mention the Fourth Amendment.

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In the last Term the Court was sharply divided over whether police could secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect's car without a search warrant, and thereby monitor his movements by computer. The police could track exactly where the suspect went every day and night. Do you think the Fourth Amendment should be interpreted to protect against this government action, when done without obtaining a search warrant?

== Federal Cases ==

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