Fourth Amendment

Fourth Circuit reverses itself: no warrant needed for historical cell site data

US v. Graham. In an en banc opinion, the Fourth Circuit overturned the panel’s decision in this case: A majority of the panel held that, although the Government acted in good faith in doing so, it had violated Defendants’ Fourth Amendment rights when it obtained the CSLI without a warrant. . . . We now hold that the …

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Email monitoring of deployed troops not subject to Fourth Amendment – Fourth Circuit

Aikens v. Ingram. Aikens, a N.C. National Guard member, sued under 42 USC 1983, claiming that two officers had violated his Fourth Amendment rights by monitoring his emails. At the time, Aikens was deployed, using a Department of Defense computer. The defendants allegedly monitored his emails in order to find incriminating correspondence that they could …

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Police can’t lie about having a search warrant – Fourth Circuit

US v. Rush. These excerpts say really everything you need to know: A law enforcement officer knowingly lied to Defendant Kenneth Rush by claiming that he had a warrant to search the apartment where Defendant was staying when no warrant in fact existed. . . . On appeal, Defendant argues that the evidence should have …

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N.C. Court of Appeals doubles down on warrantless searches of historical cell location data

State v. Hurtado. Unpublished. The Court of Appeals isn’t backing down from the position that warrantless searches of historical cell phone location data are not “searches” as protected by the Fourth Amendment. In this case, police arrested the Defendant after learning from a source about a large amount of heroin in his car. The source also …

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High court declines to hear cell-site data case – SCOTUS

I have previously written about the Fourth Circuit’s decision in US v. Graham, in which the divided court concluded that extended cell-site data could not be admitted without a warrant – and splitting from other circuits. I’ve also previously written about State v. Perry, in which the N.C. Court of Appeals concluded no warrant was …

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No Warrant Required for Two Days of Cell Site Data – NC Court of Appeals

State v Perry. In a decision reminiscent of the Fourth Circuit’s recent holding in US v. Graham (that access to extended cell site data requires a warrant), the North Carolina Court of Appeals has come to some… interesting conclusions. First, the Court of Appeals rejected an argument that cell site information sent to an officer by …

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Access to Extended Cell-Site Records Requires Warrant – Fourth Circuit

US v. Graham. The Fourth Circuit ruled that when the government inspects a cell phone user’s historical cell-site location information for an extended period pf time, it must get a warrant under the Fourth Amendment. The Circuit Court split with the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, which have said that no warrant is required, paving the way …

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