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

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

KS: Officers watching a school search did not make it a law enforcement search

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Officers' merely standing by as school official told defendant to empty his pockets was not a police search. The school official had reasonable suspicion that defendant was stoned at school. State v. Burdette, 2010 Kan. App. LEXIS 16 (February 19, 2010). The court's introductory paragraph: This is an appeal by a student convicted of having marijuana in his pockets while he was at school. Two sheriff's deputies were in the room when an acting principal asked Jordan Kelly Burdette to empty his pockets. In Burdette's view, this turned a search by school authorities into a law enforcement search. Since law enforcement searches need probable cause and there was no probable cause here, Burdette claims the district court should have suppressed the marijuana produced from his pockets...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on February 22, 2010 (boomark / email).