Archive | automobile exception

Friday, June 22nd, 2018

Circuit Upholds Warrantless Search of Car, Remands for Resentencings to Consider Downward Departures and Concurrent Sentences

In United States v. Jones, the Circuit affirmed the district court’s refusal to suppress evidence seized during a warrantless search of a car parked in the common parking lot of a multi-family building.  The Circuit held Jones had no legitimate expectation of privacy in his car because it was parked in a driveway shared by tenants of two multi-family homes, not within the curtilage of his private home, and he did not have exclusive control over the driveway.  Op. at 13-15.

In United States v. Sawyer, the Circuit remanded the case for the second time, this time for resentencing in front of a new district judge.  The Circuit previously had vacated as substantively unreasonable a 360-month sentence for the offenses of producing and receiving child pornography.  In that opinion, the Circuit held that the “30-year sentence would have been appropriate for ‘extreme and heinous criminal behavior’ and the …


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Categories: automobile exception, child pornography, concurrent, curtilage

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Friday, June 1st, 2018

This Week’s Supreme Court Opinions

This week the Supreme Court issued two opinions, both of which seem relatively straightforward in their holdings.

In Collins v. Virginia, the Court held that the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment does not permit a warrantless search of a vehicle parked within the curtilage of a home. In Collins, police officers tracked a stolen vehicle to the address of the defendant’s girlfriend. There, parked in the driveway, an officer saw what appeared to be a motorcycle frame covered with a white tarp. The officer entered the driveway, uncovered the tarp, and confirmed that it was the stolen motorcycle.

Justice Sotomayor’s opinion, for an eight-member majority, is clear in its language and broad in its scope. The opinion swiftly concludes that the part of the driveway on which the motorcycle was parked was curtilage.  That portion of the driveway was enclosed on three sides, but open …


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Categories: automobile exception, curtilage, Fourth Amendment, MVRA

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Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Trailer Trashed

United States v. Navas, No. 09-1144-cr (2d Cir. March 8, 2010) (Leval, Wesley, CJJ, Gleeson, DJ)

In connection with a narcotics investigation, DEA agents watched the defendants unload a tractor-trailer at the Hunts Point Market. The defendants then drove it to a private warehouse, where they parked it, unhitched the cab, and lowered the legs in front of the trailer to stabilize it.

After further surveillance, the agents arrested the defendants, one of whom admitted that drugs were hidden in a rooftop compartment of the trailer. After receiving verbal consent to search the warehouse and its contents, but with no search warrant, the agents ripped open the roof of the trailer and discovered 230 kilograms of cocaine.

The district court suppressed the cocaine. It rejected the argument that the verbal consent to a general search of the warehouse extended to a physically invasive search of the trailer. The court also …


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Categories: automobile exception, Fourth Amendment, Uncategorized

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