The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution is a powerful shield that provides numerous protections for individuals who find themselves entangled in legal matters. It serves as a robust defense against unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement, offering a reassuring layer of protection for your rights.
Whether it's the police, the FBI, or Drug Enforcement Agencies, any law enforcement entity can potentially infringe on your rights under the Fourth Amendment. However, in Los Angeles, these rights are robustly protected.
To navigate this legal landscape, you'll need a skilled attorney who can effectively leverage the Fourth Amendment to defend you in a criminal case, instilling confidence in your legal representation.
What Are Some Of The Defenses That Can Be Used?
One big thing that the defense can do is argue that someone has violated your rights against unreasonable searches and your privacy if they just came into your home, searched it, and found evidence.
We have a lot of cases where the police, for various reasons, are just going into people's homes, finding guns, drugs, and various other things, and then trying to charge the person with a crime.
A good criminal defense attorney will first look at whether the police are lawfully in the home. That will be determined by whether or not they have some justifiable reason for entering.
Suppose they can get probable cause that there is criminal activity afoot inside the home. They're likely to find some sort of criminal activity in the home, and it's right then versus months before.
In that case, they can usually get a search warrant signed by a Judge or Magistrate to search the home. Depending on whether there's danger—whether there are guns or drugs or some other information that they have—they might be able to do a night-time search.
One of the strategies we employ is challenging the legality of the search warrant. If we can demonstrate that the warrant was obtained unlawfully, it can significantly weaken the prosecution's case. There are various angles we can use to challenge a search warrant, and a skilled attorney will explore all of them.
One angle is to say that the warrant on its face was not good enough for the Magistrate to sign it. In other words, if you read the facts of it, you would say, okay, that doesn't get you in the house.
You don't have any viable information, concrete and reliable, that says there's going to be some sort of criminal activity or the fruits of some sort of criminal activity. You need to have that to get into the home. So, that's one of the big things that we do when we challenge a search warrant. We will look at the face of the warrant.
Also, often, we do not have the Motion to Quake the warrant. Another Motion that can be filed is a Motion to Traverse the warrant.
When we're doing a Motion to Traverse the warrant, we're actually saying, hey Judge, look behind the warrant. We've got some information here that the law enforcement should have given you. They didn't give you all the details of what's going on with this case, and therefore, once you see the real details.
They intentionally omitted certain things; you're going to say then no, this warrant is no good because you can't just include all the stuff that makes it look like something is wrong without including everything. You have to put the warrant in context. You have to include all the details and all the facts so that the Magistrate can make a good faith judgment on it.
How about challenging a search for a vehicle or a person? The police can't just stop any vehicle and search it, and they can't just stop any person and search them. They are going to need reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot and that the person that they are stopping or the car that they are searching can bear some fruit for them.
They are actually going to have to come up with some evidence – may be a police officer saw something, a hand-to-hand transaction. Maybe they saw a bag full of cash or a bag full of drugs.
They need something concrete to show that if they can stop a person and search them, they can search somebody's car. So, a lot of times, we file Motions to challenge the search of a person.
We're filing Motions to challenge the stop of the person or even the search of a person's car. This is a free democracy, and the police cannot just run rampant. They are going to have to get the goods on somebody.
They are going to have to have articulable facts to show that the person got themselves into a crime. Then, if they are able to search them or the car now, they are going to find some sort of criminal activity and be able to charge a criminal case against them.
It can't just be a hunch or a guess. They need something clear and specific, and if they don't have it, a good criminal defense attorney will write it for them.
I get the clients in. We go over everything. You give me all the details, and then with all the details, I go through all the paperwork—the discovery, the videotapes, whatever they have—and then I'll make a judgment call on whether a Motion should be filed and, if so, what type of Motion will be filed.
I'm going to be straightforward and honest with you. If you don't have a chance to win your Motion, we're not going to file one. If you do have a chance, we'll file it, we'll litigate it viscously and vigorously, and we'll do everything we can to get whatever they found suppressed and your case dismissed.
