Criminal Procedure
I. PROBABLE CAUSE
A. A warrantless search is unreasonable per se. A search with a warrant is presumed reasonable.
B. For PC to exist it must be based on:
1. Facts and circumstances
2. Within the arresting officers’ knowledge
3. And of which they had reasonably trustworthy information are sufficient in themselves
4. To warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that an offense has been or is being committed.
C. Staleness: the age of the information used to obtain probable cause is important. A delay may render probable cause stale. Important facts to consider in determining whether probable cause has dissipated, rendering the warrant fatally stale, include the lapse of time since the warrant was issued, the nature of the criminal activity, and the kind of property subject to the search.
D. This is formed through the totality of the circumstances. In the context of information received from an informant, look at the veracity of the informers past dealings and their basis of knowledge (still balance by totality of circumstances)
E. You do not need PC to stop a pedestrian, but you do need reasonable articulable suspicion to justify conducting a pat down, and articulable facts based on that pat down to justify an search into the suspects clothes.
F. An officer may conduct a search of the arrestee incident to arrest to search for weapons and destructible evidence. For a search incident to arrest to be valid the arrest must be lawful (based on PC).
G. In order for a search warrant to be valid, the affidavit must contain sufficient detail to suggest that evidence of a crime will be located at the area to be searched. Such information includes, the location of the area to be searched, how the information was obtained (through officer investigation/observation, through an informant and if the informant is reliable) etc.. Bottom line, the affidavit must contain specific information containing the totality of the circumstances used to develop the PC.
H. If an officer discovers new information that negatively impacts PC after a search warrant has been issued, then the officer must return to the magistrate to reevaluate PC.
1. Note Cases
a. State v. Hills: where the circumstances fairly suggest that the informant well knew that any discrepancies in his story might go hard with him, that is reason for finding the information reliable.
b. Suppose the informant is not being but a dog.
i. US v. Florez
1. The dog’s reliability must be proven. In summary, where adequate and comprehensive records are maintained on a particular narcotics dog, and include results of controlled alerts made in training, as well as actual alerts in the field, the dog’s reliability could be sufficiently established either through the records themselves or testimony from the dog’s trainer who maintained the record
sis for the arrest.
1. An arrest may satisfy the Fourth Amendment if there was probable cause to arrest the suspect for the precise offense the officer cited or, lacking that, for a closely related charge. In order to rely on a closely-related charge, the officers must show that the charge can reasonably be based on the same set of facts that gave rise to the arrest and that the charge offered as justification is one that would have recommended itself to a reasonable police officer acting in good faith at the time the arrest was made. The justification for the arrest cannot be an ex post facto extrapolation of all crimes that might have been charged on a given set of facts.
g. Whether statements from an ordinary citizen at the scene of a crime are per se reliable?
i. Yes, absent specific reasons for police to doubt his or her truthfulness, an ordinary citizen, who provides information to police at a crime scene or during an ongoing investigation, may be presumed reliable without subsequent corroboration.
h. Whether persons found at a crime scene are subject to police investigation through probable cause?
