A 2023 appellate case from Sacramento illustrates problems when an officer prolongs a detention during a traffic stop by asking about other possible criminal activity first, before discovering a subject’s Fourth Amendment probation waiver and finding incriminating evidence.
Scenario: potential school shooting threat. Parents of possible suspect are uncooperative as to their son’s whereabouts. How much force can you employ to detain them? Are you protected with qualified immunity if it goes sideways? A Sacramento appellate decision sheds light on the details in this tricky situation.
Video evidence tells a very different story than what this deputy and his partner wrote in their reports of a suspect’s chase and arrest. An appeals court decision in February allows the case to proceed to trial on the charged offenses.
In a January appellate decision, the court compared the intrusiveness of fixed cameras throughout a city capturing public movements and cellphone and aerial surveillance compiled while tracking an individual’s movements over a length of time. Big Brother aside, this could be a valuable tool for law enforcement.
A federal case decided in February delves into issues of conflicting consent to search a residence when tenants disagree, and perhaps more importantly, whether the one objecting is in the “immediate vicinity” of the residence for his objection to prevail.
Officers park behind and approach a man talking on his phone in his car, illuminating him with their flashlights. After some casual conversation, they discover he’s on parole, search and find a gun. The trial court ruled one way, the appeals court reversed. Was this a good search?
Blood draws from a DUI suspect may be performed only after obtaining either a search warrant, a valid express consent, or under exigent circumstances with probable cause. The Vehicle Code’s implied consent provisions under V.C. § 23612(a)(5) do not constitute an express consent. A DUI suspect being unconscious, by itself...
A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal decision from Dec. 2023 brings us an interesting discussion of warrantless law enforcement use of prescription-drug databases, tracking warrants and what’s needed for a wiretap that will hold up in court.
Two appeals in the last quarter of 2023 reinforce California’s prosecutions of Watson murders, second-degree murder charges in cases where repeat DUI offenders knowingly drive impaired after having been warned of the dangers. The courts affirm that the defendants’ actions show “implied malice” and conscious disregard for life.
A recent Nevada appellate ruling highlights the differences in what that state’s courts consider reasonable in deadly force cases vs. what California law requires. There’s reasonable, and there’s “reasonable and necessary.” You need to know this.
