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Rights, Remedies, and Arrests: Virginia v. Moore

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

The Supreme Court today decided Virginia v. Moore, holding 8-1-0 that an arrest based on probable cause is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment even though the officer was not authorized by state law to arrest for that offense. David Moore was properly stopped for driving with a suspended license. The officers arrested him instead of citing him, as they were supposed to do, and the search incident to arrest revealed 16g of crack. The actual question in the case is the admissibility of the crack in evidence. The drastic, disproportionate, ill-advised remedy of exclusion of valid evidence once again spills over into the substantive law of the Fourth Amendment. The case really wasn't too difficult in light of two precedents. Atwater v...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).