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Cops: Even conservative courts are limiting your searching authority.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

Neither the Fourth Circuit nor the Virginia appellate courts are known as liberal hotbeds. That makes this week all the more sweet with the following two Fourth Amendment appellate victories from those courts:  Neely v. U.S., __ F.3d _  (4th Cir., April 29, 2009), confirms that defendant Neely only consented for the cops to search his vehicle's trunk, but gave no consent to search any other part of his car. The court confirmed that the objective reasonableness test applies to police interpretation of consents to search. Here, the totality of circumstances did not show that Neely had given permission to search anything other than his trunk.  Neely also rejected the prosecution's alternative argument that the police had reasonable articulable suspicion to pat down for a weapon...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on May 01, 2009 (boomark / email).