Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

ME: Consent sought at safety checkpoint could only be understood to be for safety purposes; broad search suppressed

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

In a vehicle safety checkpoint stop, the officer asked defendant to pull over to a secondary checkpoint because he did not have his seatbelt on. Defendant was told it was a safety checkpoint. The request for consent to search would only be understood as a search for safety purposes, so the broad search of a shaving kit was suppressed. State v. Sargent, 2009 ME 125, 2009 Me. LEXIS 128 (December 17, 2009). Alaska declines to adopt a different standard that the Fourth Amendment for trash pulls. The defendant had no expectation of privacy in his trash because the Alaska Supreme Court in 1975 refused to adopt a different standard. Beltz v. State, (S-12775, December 18, 2009).* State's argument that defendant subjectively would have stopped anyway made it so that he was not "stopped" for Fourth Amendment purposes is rejected...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on December 20, 2009 (boomark / email).