Search and Seizure

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.

As violent intruders were battering down his door one night last January, Ryan Frederick picked up his rifle and shot through it, killing one. Now he's most likely going to prison for 10 years. Another misbegotten SWAT-style drug raid gone bad -- for everybody.

The US Supreme Court has chipped away at the Fourth Amendment yet again, this time in a case involving the frisking of passengers in vehicles stopped for traffic violations.

Is it okay for middle school authorities to strip-search a girl in search of a couple of Ibuprofen tablets? The Supreme Court will decide.

West Virginia's Kanawha County school board wanted to subject teachers to random, suspicionless drug testing, but a little thing called the US Constitution got in the way.

Earlier this month, DEA agents strip-searched 147 Chinese nationals arriving in Saipan on vacation. The government of the Northern Mariana Islands is most unhappy.

A lawsuit filed by a Long Island woman who was strip searched after being busted for a marijuana stem -- with the search allegedly watched by ogling male cops via video -- can go forward, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The use of drug dogs to search vehicles during traffic stops is becoming increasingly popular with police. But now, some Florida attorneys are challenging the reliability of the dogs because some have been shown to "hit" consistently on cars -- even when no drugs are on board.

The government must obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before forcing wireless service providers to divulge historical cell phone tower location information, a federal district court hearing a drug trafficking case has ruled.

There was a drug checkpoint on a Louisiana highway last week. Only one problem: they're illegal. Now the local cops are backtracking furiously and claiming it was really a legal highway safety checkpoint. And the drug dogs were there to help read drivers' licenses?