Search And Seizure

The Supreme Court put a new limit on police searches of cars Tuesday, saying that "countless individuals guilty of nothing more serious than a traffic violation" have had their vehicles searched in violation of their rights. In a 5-4 decision, the justices set aside a 1981 opinion that had given police broad authority to search cars whenever they made an arrest.

Law enforcement officers may take a DNA sample from anyone arrested on a felony charge without running afoul of the suspect's right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The challenge brought by a group of Californians arrested for alleged felonies but never convicted upheld a 2004 amendment to the state's laws governing DNA collection and use. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals compared taking an oral swab from a suspect with fingerprinting arrestees, a decades-old booking practice consistently upheld by the courts as a legitimate identification aid. "We assess the constitutionality of the 2004 amendment by considering the 'totality of the circumstances,' balancing the arrestees' privacy interests against the government's need for the DNA samples," said the opinion written by Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. "DNA analysis is an extraordinarily effective tool for law enforcement officials to identify arrestees, solve past crimes, and exonerate innocent suspects," wrote Smith, who was named to the court by President George W. Bush, in an opinion joined by a visiting Tennessee judge appointed by President Reagan.

A person stopped on the street by police, questioned and ordered to produce identification has not been seized but is merely engaged in a "consensual encounter," according to an Orange County ruling left standing Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court dismissed without comment or dissent an appeal of a ruling by a state Court of Appeal in Orange County upholding the October, 1986, arrest for cocaine possession of Servando Lopez on a Santa Ana street.

A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that school districts across California have inconsistent policies regarding a school's ability to search the contents of a student's cellphone, often encroaching on a student's right to privacy. The ACLU of California said searches have become a bigger, and more common, issue as cellphones have become pervasive among students. The report's authors -- Brendan Hamme and Hector O. Villagra of the ACLU of Southern California -- contend that searching phones could be a serious invasion of privacy, considering the amount of personal data a device could contain, including financial information, photos, videos and text messages with intimate conversations.

A team of federal agents that raided the home of Ferdinand E. Marcos' son-in-law and business confidante seized a vanload of paintings, sculptures and antiques believed stolen from the Philippines by the deposed dictator, federal officials said Tuesday. The raid, carried out in Woodside, Calif.

A federal judge in San Francisco struck down the Reagan Administration's plan for a random drug-testing program for the nation's 3,800 National Weather Service meteorologists. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Schnacke said the testing plan was overly broad and violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.

The U.S. Customs Service cannot impose drug tests on its 9,000 employees while the issue is being appealed, a federal appeals court ruled. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a government request to block a lower court order banning drug tests of customs workers pending the appeal. The appeals court will hear arguments in the case the week of Feb. 2, a court spokesman said. Customs is appealing a Nov.

Miami-Dade County has sued the state, contending it violated the U.S. Constitution when it cut down healthy trees believed to be exposed to citrus canker. The suit, filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, said that Florida violated the 4th Amendment's search and seizure rules by letting workers enter yards and take the trees without a warrant. The suit cited a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case that barred building inspectors from checking fire code violations without a warrant.

A divided Florida Supreme Court declared random drug searches of commercial buses unconstitutional, saying the practice invited comparisons to Nazi Germany and communist countries. The court, in a 4-3 decision that overturned six drug convictions, said the practice violated state and federal constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure, even though the goal--stopping the flow of illegal drugs--was admirable.

It is, as the Doctor might say, a nasty little tale. It's a story of naked lust or maybe vicious treachery. Either way, it's tawdry to the bone. The doctor, a.k.a. Hunter S. Thompson, is the eccentric bestselling author and guru of gonzo journalism who has been a cultural icon to political junkies and college students for 20 years with his commentaries and tales of wild living and drug abuse.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that a prosecutor improperly searched thousands of files in a tax preparer's office while looking for illegal immigrants who had committed identity theft. In a 4-3 decision, the court termed the search a violation of privacy and upheld a lower court's order to throw out evidence against a defendant who had sued. "A taxpayer has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her tax returns and return information, even when that information is in the custody of a tax preparer," Justice Michael L. Bender wrote in the court's opinion.

Investigators searched several properties owned by a client of accused kidnapper Phillip Garrido on Wednesday, seizing a computer and other items, a Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman said. Garrido, 58, and wife Nancy, 54, were arrested Aug. 26 and remain jailed in El Dorado County on kidnapping and rape charges in connection with the 1991 kidnapping of 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, with whom Garrido allegedly had two daughters. Investigators searched three properties in Pittsburg, Bay Point and Pleasant Hill near the city of Antioch, Calif.

The new U.S. military commander in Afghanistan will limit the use of airstrikes in order to help cut down on civilian casualties, his chief spokesman said Monday. In a "tactical directive" to be issued in coming days, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has ordered new operational standards, including refraining from firing on structures where insurgents may have taken refuge among civilians unless Western or allied troops are in imminent danger, said spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith.

The Supreme Court put a new limit on police searches of cars Tuesday, saying that "countless individuals guilty of nothing more serious than a traffic violation" have had their vehicles searched in violation of their rights. In a 5-4 decision, the justices set aside a 1981 opinion that had given police broad authority to search cars whenever they made an arrest.

Did a sheriff's deputy violate the constitutional rights -- and derail the professional golf career -- of a Rancho Palos Verdes man when she raided his home in search of evidence to convict his parents of pimping and prostitution? A U.S. District Court jury thought so two years ago when it ordered Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Angela Walton to pay $80,000 in damages to Kim L. Johnson and $100 to his aunt, Sun Min Lee, who was subjected to what the court then deemed an unreasonable intrusion.

A private company will use drug-sniffing dogs to search Los Angeles County juvenile probation camps and halls beginning in March, marking the first time the Probation Department has turned to a non-law enforcement agency for such searches. County supervisors on Tuesday approved using $100,000 in county court services reserve funds to hire Interquest Detection Canines.

A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that school districts across California have inconsistent policies regarding a school's ability to search the contents of a student's cellphone, often encroaching on a student's right to privacy. The ACLU of California said searches have become a bigger, and more common, issue as cellphones have become pervasive among students. The report's authors -- Brendan Hamme and Hector O. Villagra of the ACLU of Southern California -- contend that searching phones could be a serious invasion of privacy, considering the amount of personal data a device could contain, including financial information, photos, videos and text messages with intimate conversations.

Ruling that a Santa Ana couple had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their back yard, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday that police conducted an improper search and seizure of two automobiles that they owned. The judges, sitting in Pasadena, ruled 2 to 1 that the city violated 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure because it did not obtain warrants to search the property. Dale and Linda Conner were awarded $71,000 in damages.

The U.S. Supreme Court has again undermined the only realistic protection against illegal searches and seizures: the ban on using tainted evidence at trial. The 5-4 decision in an Alabama case is doubly ominous for California, where misguided ballot initiatives have forbidden state courts from adopting stricter standards for the use of illegal evidence than federal courts require. The justices upheld drug and gun charges against Bennie D.

Los Angeles police officers face significant restrictions on how they search and detain people under a settlement announced Thursday in a long-running case involving the rights of the homeless on skid row. The agreement comes 18 months after a federal judge found that the Los Angeles Police Department was unconstitutionally searching homeless people in the skid row area as part of Chief William J. Bratton's crackdown on downtown crime.