Cars, Cops, & Stops: Fourth Amendment in Vehicular Context
48 Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2010 Last revised: 12 Jul 2010
Date Written: September 30, 2009
Abstract
This 48-page CLE (continuing legal education) brochure is titled “Cars, Cops, & Stops: Fourth Amendment in the Vehicular Context” and was last updated in 2010. It analyzes, in the vehicular context, both as to the vehicle and as to persons associated with the vehicle, Fourth Amendment warrant issues and Fourth Amendment exceptions to the warrant requirement. Topics include (1) “stop/detention” of a vehicle based on articulable suspicion that a felony has been committed, that a crime is about to be committed, or that a safety violation exists; (2) warrant execution; (3) consent search of a person and/or a vehicle; (4) frisk of a driver and/or passenger(s), plus searching the interior of the vehicle based on reasonable suspicion that the driver and/or a passenger is presently armed and dangerous; (5) search incident to a lawful arrest of the driver and/or a passenger, plus searching the interior of the vehicle as part of “search incident”; (6) search of the entire vehicle, under the “automobile exception,” based on probable cause to believe that fruits, evidence, and/or instrumentalities of a crime are in the vehicle; and (7) inventory search of the entire vehicle. The brochure includes a 15-point checklist.
Keywords: cars, automobiles, motor vehicles, Fourth Amendment, search and seizure, privacy, constitutional law, drivers, passengers
JEL Classification: K14, K19, K42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation