THE FOURTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Like other amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights, it was written and ratified to protect the citizenry against overweening government, but none of those amendments is self-enforcing.

Much of the debate surrounding the enforcement of the Fourth Amendment has focused on the so-called exclusionary rule--on whether it is wise or constitutionally necessary. Under that rule, evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is ordinarily inadmissible in a criminal trial. A quick example will illustrate how the rule operates. If a p

The question in Dickerson v. U.S. case was this: If a police officer forgets to recite Miranda or a suspect talks to the police "voluntarily" before being advised of his rights, may the confession be admitted in court? At issue was Section 3501 of the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968, which says the failure to read the rights, is one of several factors in deciding whether the statement was made voluntarily. The statute, passed just two years after Miranda, can be construed as having been enacted to overrule Miranda. The U.S. government has never sought to enforce Section 3501, holding the Miranda rights to be paramount. And the constitutional validity of Section 3501 has never been answered by the Supreme Court, according to a case analysis for the American Bar Association by Alan Raphael, who teaches at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Indeed, a landmark 1996 Supreme Court ruling reaffirmed that police must advise suspects of their right to remain silent in a decision that linked Miranda rights to the Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

The case Katz v. United States (1967) dealt with the applicability of the exclusionary rule to the States. It resulted in a 7-1 vote. Katz was arrested for illegal gambling after using a public phone to transmit "gambling information." The FBI had attached an electronic listening/recording device onto the outside of the public phone booth that Katz habitually used. They argued that this constituted a legal action since they never actually entered the phone booth. The Court, however, ruled in favor of Katz, stating the Fourth Amendment allowed for the protection of a person and not just a person's property against illegal searches. Whatever a citizen "seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." "...[T] he Government's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner's words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."

They likewise do not believe that the transfer of the container constituted a seizure. A "seizure" of property occurs when "there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property." Although the can may have contained an unknown and unwanted foreign object, it cannot be said that anyone's possessory interest was interfered with in a meaningful way. At most, there was a technical trespass on the space occupied by the beeper. The existence of a physical trespass is only marginally relevant to the question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated, however, for an actual trespass is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation. Compare Katz v. United States, (1967) (no trespass, but Fourth Amendment violation), with Oliver v. United States, (1984) (trespass, but no Fourth Amendment violation). Of course, if the presence of a beeper in the can constituted a seizure merely because of its occupation of space, it would follow that the presence of any object, regardless of its nature, would violate the Fourth Amendment.

oliceman got a tip that a particular person was a drug dealer, the officer might launch an investigation to determine if the allegation was true. However, if he decided to break into the suspect's home without a search warrant, his effort would be for naught. Even if the officer found drugs on the kitchen table, that evidence would be useless because the suspect's attorney could demand that the trial judge bar its admission as being illegally obtained. Without that evidence, prosecutors would be unable to prove a crime had occurred.

In 1963, Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona for armed robbery, and for kidnapping and raping a slightly retarded 18-year-ol

Some common words found in the essay are:
Fourth Amendment, Supreme Court, District Court, Court Appeals, California Greenwood, Steele Roth, Katz United, ESCOBEDO ILLINOIS, Amendment Instead, Phoenix Arizona, fourth amendment, supreme court, miranda rights, search seizure, federal law, court appeals, exclusionary rule, expectation privacy, remain silent, read rights, search seizure garbage, warrantless search seizure, garbage left collection, received miranda warnings, unless police advised,
Approximate Word count = 3468
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)