14.3 Search, Seizure & Suppression

Section 14.2 listed the Fourth Amendment among the constitutional protections. This section is the doctrine itself, because the blueprint names Constitutional rights and Evidence as separate Criminal line items and because the motion to suppress is the single most common criminal-defense filing a paralegal staffs.

What counts as a search

There are two independent tests, and either one can make government conduct a search:

• Reasonable expectation of privacy — from Katz v. United States (1967). The person must have an actual, subjective expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. Katz is the source of the line that the Fourth Amendment "protects people, not places."
• Physical trespass — revived in United States v. Jones (2012). Physically occupying private property to obtain information is a search, regardless of any privacy expectation. Attaching a GPS device to a vehicle qualifies.

A seizure of property is a meaningful interference with a possessory interest. A seizure of a person occurs when, in view of all the circumstances, a reasonable person would not feel free to leave or to terminate the encounter.

Fourth Amendment rights are personal. Under Rakas v. Illinois (1978), a defendant cannot suppress evidence obtained by violating someone else's rights. Modern courts fold this "standing" question into the substantive analysis: did this defendant have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the place searched? A passenger with no possessory interest in a car may not be able to challenge the search of its trunk but can challenge the stop itself.

Warrants

A valid warrant requires four things:

1. Probable cause — under Illinois v. Gates (1983), a totality of the circumstances judgment that there is a fair probability contraband or evidence will be found in the place to be searched. Informant veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge are factors, not rigid prongs.
2. Particularity — the warrant must describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. A warrant authorizing a search for "evidence of criminal activity" is a general warrant and invalid.
3. Oath or affirmation supporting the affidavit.
4. A neutral and detached magistrate.

Franks v. Delaware (1978) lets a defendant attack the affidavit itself: on a substantial preliminary showing that the affiant made a deliberate falsehood or acted with reckless disregard for the truth, and that the false statement was necessary to the probable cause finding, the defendant is entitled to a hearing.

Execution has its own rules — knock and announce, execution within the warrant's time limit, and a search confined to places where the described items could be. Once the named item is found, the authority to keep searching for it ends.

Warrant exceptions

The digital-device rules

Two decisions carry disproportionate exam weight because they carved digital data out of older doctrine:

• Riley v. California (2014): officers generally must get a warrant to search the digital contents of a cell phone seized incident to arrest. The physical phone may be seized; its data is different in both quantity and kind.
• Carpenter v. United States (2018): acquiring historical cell-site location information from a wireless carrier is a search, and generally requires a warrant rather than a lesser court order. Carpenter cut back the third-party doctrine for this category of data.

The exclusionary rule

The exclusionary rule bars evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment from the prosecution's case-in-chief. It is a judicially created remedy designed to deter police misconduct — not a personal constitutional right to a damages award. Wong Sun v. United States (1963) extends the bar to derivative evidence, the fruit of the poisonous tree.

Four doctrines cut it back, and they are the tested part:

• Independent source — the evidence was also obtained through a genuinely separate, lawful route.
• Inevitable discovery — Nix v. Williams (1984): the evidence would have been found lawfully anyway.
• Attenuation — Brown v. Illinois (1975): the connection between the illegality and the evidence has become sufficiently remote, measured by the time elapsed, intervening circumstances, and the flagrancy of the official misconduct. Utah v. Strieff (2016) applied it to a pre-existing valid arrest warrant discovered during an unlawful stop.
• Good faith — United States v. Leon (1984): objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant later found unsupported by probable cause. Extended to negligent police recordkeeping in Herring v. United States (2009) and to reliance on binding appellate precedent later overruled in Davis v. United States (2011). Leon does not save a warrant obtained by a knowingly false affidavit, one so lacking in probable cause that reliance is unreasonable, or a facially deficient one.

Where the rule does not reach: grand jury proceedings, civil deportation hearings, parole revocation, and impeachment of the defendant's own testimony. Illegally seized evidence excluded from the case-in-chief can still be used to impeach a defendant who takes the stand and denies it.

The suppression motion

Who files. The defense, by written motion, usually before trial under the jurisdiction's pretrial-motion deadline. Failing to file on time can waive the issue.

Burden allocation is worth memorizing because it flips:

• Warrantless search or seizure — the search is presumptively unreasonable, so the government bears the burden of proving an exception applies.
• Search under a warrant — the defendant bears the burden of showing the warrant or its execution was defective.

The hearing is an evidentiary proceeding before the judge, typically with the officers testifying. The rules of evidence are relaxed; hearsay is often admissible at a suppression hearing. The judge decides both the historical facts and the legal conclusions.

What the paralegal assembles. This is real, concrete work: the warrant and supporting affidavit, the return and inventory, the police reports and supplements, computer-aided dispatch logs and radio traffic, body-worn and dashboard camera footage with timestamps, booking records, the property and evidence log, chain-of-custody documentation, lab submission forms, and any prior statements. Build a timeline cross-referencing report narrative against the video clock — the discrepancies between them are where suppression issues live. Track discovery requests and any Brady or Giglio material the prosecution produces.

Chain of custody matters independently of suppression: every transfer of an item from seizure through testing to the courtroom must be documented, because an unexplained gap is an authentication attack under FRE 901 even when the seizure itself was lawful.

Worked path

Officers stop a car for a broken taillight, arrest the driver on an outstanding warrant, secure him in the patrol car, then search the passenger compartment and find a phone, which they scroll through at the scene. The paralegal builds the file: the traffic-stop video, the arrest report, and the phone extraction report. Two issues surface for the attorney. First, under Gant, the vehicle search after the driver was secured is supportable only if it was reasonable to believe the car held evidence of the offense of arrest — and the offense of arrest was an unrelated warrant. Second, under Riley, scrolling the phone's contents at the scene needed a warrant regardless. The paralegal drafts the timeline, indexes the video by timestamp, and pulls the warrant and return; the attorney decides what to argue.