Search and Seizure

The Bush administration warned Congress and the public that we had to allow federal agents to do surreptitious "sneak and peek" searches in order to fight terrorism. Funny how that worked out.

This press release from the group Vote Hemp describes an absurd situation in which confused Capitol Hill police seized legal hemp fibers that a lobbyist had planned to use to help alleviate such confusion.

Albany, New York, sheriff's deputies suspected Tunde Clement was carrying drugs when he got off a bus from New York City in March 2006. They searched his backpack. Nothing. They strip-searched him. Nothing. Then the took him to a hospital, forcibly sedated him, and shoved a camera up his butt. Now, the county and the hospital are paying for their misdeeds.

Cops who confiscate legally permitted marijuana or plants from patients and growers in California could pay out the nose for their violations of the constitution, a California appeals court has ruled in the first decision of its kind. That just might rein in some of those renegade, recalcitrant departments who want to ignore a law they don't like.

There has been some concern that the US Supreme Court would let an Arizona school district get away with strip-searching a junior high school girl while looking for some ibuprofen tablets. It didn't.

If you're headed out to go clubbing or see a concert in South Australia, be forewarned: The cops just might walk up and have a drug dog check you out.

Did an Arizona school administrator go too far in subjecting a 13-year-old girl to a strip search in a quest to track down alleged contraband Ibuprofen? The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that asks just that Tuesday.

The cops can't search your car after they arrest you unless they have a warrant or probable cause, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Police say that aggressive drug raids are good at protecting police, but two dramatic officer deaths that were caused by those tactics suggest the opposite. So do the statistics -- only three law enforcement officers died conducting drug raids last year. At least that many citizens were killed, and who knows how many dogs.

When investigating a DC area cocaine dealer, police installed a GPS tracking device on his vehicle without bothering to obtain a search warrant. Now two leading civil liberties groups are urging a DC appeals court to rule such actions a violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.