Tag Archives: probable cause

The nail-biting manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect on Apr. 19 led police from door to door in Watertown, Mass., looking for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. How were police able to search people’s homes without warrants?   No Warrant, but Still Need a Reason The Fourth Amendment, of course, requires police to have warrants supported by “probable cause” to conduct searches. But exceptions allow police to make emergency searches without warrants – and sometimes even without probable cause. The “exigent circumstances” …

While marijuana is legal in Colorado, it’s clearly not in Nebraska, where cops are reportedly enforcing that state’s laws by profiling drivers with Colorado license plates.    Cops Tell Dad What’s Up One family – a father and his three kids – spent two hours waiting while cops in Douglas County, Neb., searched their Colorado-plated car after pulling them over for going two mph over the speed limit.  “When we see a nice vehicle with Colorado tags, it instantly makes …

Fresh off his appearance on the Price Is Right, rapper Snoop Dogg has been charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. Earlier this month, Snoop—whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr.—was stopped by Texas border patrol agents, who alleged they smelled marijuana smoke emanating from his tour bus. Upon searching the vehicle, they found several joints. The local sheriff’s office then slapped the celebrity with the misdemeanor charge, which usually entails a mail-in fine of up to $500. Marijuana laws …

The US Supreme Court will review a Florida case where a drug-sniffing dog outside a person’s house detected the presence of illegal drugs inside. The lower courts threw out the evidence. The case started with a call to a local “crime stoppers” hotline that Joelis Jardines’s house was being used as a greenhouse for marijuana. Following Franky’s Nose The Miami-Dade Police Department received the hotline call on November 3, 2006. A month later, the police along with other state and …