Supreme Court Cases

On June 20, 2016, the United State Supreme Court released its decision in Utah v. Edward Strieff, Jr.,[1] wherein it held that evidence is admissible even where an officer makes an unconstitutional investigatory stop when, during the stop, the officer learns that the individual has an outstanding arrest warrant, arrests the individual, and seizes the incriminating evidence as a result of a search incident […]

On June 22, 2015 the United States Supreme Court ended the decade long debate of the appropriate use of force standard for pretrial detainees in Kingsley v. Hendrickson[1]. Previously the Fourteenth Amendment standard lay within a fractured body of case law, due to the United States Supreme Court’s refusal to address the split throughout the federal circuit courts. According to Irene Baker[2], courts and

On November 9, 2015, the United States Supreme Court released its decision in Mullenix v. Luna,[1] holding that an officer was entitled to qualified immunity after firing shots at a fleeing vehicle and killing the driver of the vehicle, moments before it ran over a spike strip placed in the roadway. The ruling is just another in a line of recent decisions by the

Eric R. Atstupenas, Esq.  Republished with the permission of Eric R. Atstupenas, Esq.,  Atstupenas Law Office The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in City of Los Angeles, California v. Patel, et al. that the provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that requires hotel operators to make their registries available to the police on demand is facially unconstitutional because it penalizes them for declining to

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rodriguez v. United States today that absent reasonable suspicion, police extension of a traffic stop in order to conduct a dog sniff violates the Fourth Amendment. An officer observed a motor vehicle veer onto the shoulder of the road and then jerk back onto the road.  The officer stopped the vehicle for a state law violation, prohibiting travel

The United States Supreme Court held, in Carroll v. Carman,[1] that a police officer was entitled to qualified immunity because the law was not clearly established as to whether officers may utilize an entryway, other than the front door, when entering a property and conducting an inquiry under the “knock and talk” exception to the warrant requirement. On July 3, 2009, the Pennsylvania State

Court adjourned at the end of July and its time to learn what they left us to work with! The United States Supreme Court term ended and they delivered opinions on recent case law that impacts the way officers should conduct themselves in the field. The following are four cases decided in the last term for law enforcement legal updated training. Prado Navarette v.

In its decision issued just yesterday, the United States Supreme Court delivered the ruling that, barring any exigent circumstances, officers must obtain a warrant to search a cell phone seized in a search incident to a lawful arrest. For the past year or two, we have been very vocal in law enforcement training when addressing the issue of searching cell phones incident to arrest,