Search Result: U.S. Supreme Court Cases

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court made the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule binding on the states in the 1961 decision in Mapp v. Ohio, thousands of published decisions from state and federal courts have applied the exclusionary rule to thousands of searches and seizures. It's no wonder the 50-year tidal wave of exclusionary decisions has left confusion and misunderstanding in its wake. Here are five areas of the law that seem to suffer the most in translation.

Some myths that have sprouted from Miranda have shown so much inertia that the Supreme Court has had to keep coming back to try to knock them down. Here are five of the most persistent.

Findings from Graham v. Connor will certainly be considered in the deadly use-of-force decision in Ferguson, Mo. Which is why every American law enforcement officer should have a sound understanding of the Graham case and what it means.

Although law enforcement officers are given considerable leeway for reasonable mistakes, you don't get much slack for unreasonable mistakes that result from hasty reactions to bad information that comes from your own official sources.

Just when it looks like a rule is finally refined to the point of general understanding, the Supreme Court takes an unexpected turn, as it recently did on the subject of searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to his arrest.

If you aren't speaking and behaving at all times in public the way you want to appear when you're uploaded on YouTube, you could have some unpleasant surprises in store.

Whenever you see or hear a suspect doing or saying something an innocent person would not, your observations should go into your reports. The suspect's selective silence can sometimes indicate a consciousness of guilt.