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Supreme Court issues 4th Amendment decision

This morning the US Supreme Court issued a decision in Virginia v. Moore. Justice Scalia authored the majority opinion and was joined by seven other justices. Justice Ginsburg authored an opinion concurring in the judgment. The defendant was arrested for the misdmeanor offense of driving on a suspended license. A search incident to arrest resulted in the discovery of crack cocaine and the defendant was subsequently convicted of the drug offense. He challenged the search on the ground that under Virginia law, the arresting officer should have issued a citation rather than arresting him and the Fourth Amendment does not permit a search incident to citation. The Virginia Supreme Court agreed and reversed his conviction on the Fourth Amendment argument...continue to full post

Full post as published by Harmful Error on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).