Name:

Lecturer:

Course:

Date:

Fourth Amendment

           From 1765 to 1991, there have been 27 amendments that have been ratified in the United States constitution. The amendments come about after the congress propose them this is after two-thirds of both houses consider them as necessary, this amendment changes only require that these changes do not, “affect the first and fourth clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article: and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate” (Mount). The first 10 ratifies amendments are associated with the freedoms that the citizen exercise, among them freedom of the press, freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The discussion below will center on the search and seizure in the fourth amendment.

           To begin with, the fourth amendment was developed in England; it was a response to various forms of abuses that were being witnessed which provoked revolution(Anastaplo). According to Anastaplo, the amendment was then refined in the United States and it provides that, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”. A predecessor to this amendment is stipulated in the 1780 constitution of Massachusetts(Anastaplo). The amendment guarantees our safety against unreasonable search and seizures, the reasonable principle, unfortunately, its meaning is being misunderstood this is because of the technology which necessitates sharing of the information with third parties. Additionally, the same technology is leaving us more prone to the lack of privacy which is held by the amendment.

           According to Feder racial profiling is targeting individuals for detention based on their ethnicity or race under the belief that a particular group of people more often are involved in unlawful behavior. The type of profiling has been evaluated on whether it is a violation of the amendment, sufficient grounds to conduct a search must be available and do not rely on a hunch, this was the grounds the search was upheld to be justified in Terry v. Ohio. However, in the case of United States v. Brignoni-Ponce the race issue was addressed as a reason for increased criminal activity suspicion this is because the police only relied on the ancestry of the occupants to conduct a search. The factory was against the requirements needed to conduct an investigatory stop, some of the requirements are motor vehicle aspects, evasive acts and erratic behavior by people under surveillance and the traffic patterns. There are also other cases where the uses of race have been upheld in conduction the searches, in the case of United States v. Martin-Fuerte where the border agents searched the motorists based on their Mexican ancestry; the reliance on the factor was significant for enforcement of the law. Also, the courts held the use of race in the case of United States V. Weaver where they searched a black guy at Kansas City, the search was based on information obtained that well-dressed black guys served as couriers of cocaine to Kansas (Feder).

           Moreover, they have been critics on the reliance of the race in the traffic stop, where people of a specific race are detained for traffic violations in order to conduct a more generalized search. The constitutionality of the issue has been addressed in Whren v. the United States where two motorists were charged on with drugs offense after they had been pulled over for traffic violations since they paused at a stop sign for some time, took off at a high speed and did not signal when turning. The court upheld that the fourth amendment was not violated, the ruling was also upheld in the Atwater v. City of Lago Vista (Feder).

           In addition, apart from racial profiling, they are also other circumstances that necessitate searches; the result of the advancement in the technology that has necessitated data mining and recording. According to Ramirez, in the Erosion of Smith v. Maryland case, Smith was jailed for 6 years after being found guilty of harassing McDonough through a phone call after she had identified him as the culprit following an attack on her one evening. The warrant to search Smith household was granted after an officer had identified his car as the one described by McDonough and after running the plate he requested the telephone company to install a pen register to record the numbers that Smith dialed from his home. After the pen register recorded a call from Smith residence to that of McDonough a search was issued that led to Smith’s arrest. After Smith was convicted an appeal was presented that stated that whether the use of the pen register constituted a search within the fourth amendment, the response was no. The reason the ruling was upheld is that no one should expect privacy when they voluntarily involve the third party, in this regard the phone company was the third party. Also, the ruling was also based on that even in the case that Smith had some subjective expectation the pen registered only the number dialed and no private information associated with the call.

           From the above illustration, the third party doctrine is playing a big part in denying people protection as stipulated by the amendment, today people have voluntarily shared out information with companies, unfortunately, this information is not liable to the fourth amendment protection. According to Ramirez the recent case of Carpenter V. United States, Carpenter was arrested for aiding robbery after a suspect named him as an accomplice, after these claims the authorities obtained warrants from the judge to access the previous information on Carpenter from two telephone companies. The data from the companies was used to convict him of six criminal counts but before the trial, he suppressed the evidence from the cell-site claiming that it violated his fourth amendment since the warrant was granted with no probable cause. While the sixth circuit and the district court denied the claims and claiming the evidence as business records from the third party the Supreme court reversed pointing out that Carpenter had a reasonable privacy expectation. The reason the Court supported Carpenters claim is that the records had been taken over a long period of time hence, his privacy expectation was violated, also the third doctrine was deemed to be of no valuate since the data from the company had not been provided by Carpenter voluntarily like in the case of Smith.

           According to Ramirez, the amendment is supposed to protect people from government invasion of private details, this in relation to the metadata stored by the companies, has resulted in the evaluation of when the search begins. Looking at the data from companies if the search begins when a person’s reasonable expectation is infringed upon for metadata it is at stage three when the data corrected is analyzed. In the case of Carpenter, her privacy expectation was infringed by the government not when they acquired the data but after they analyzed his movement for the past four months. The reliance of data obtained from the companies that store private data have been discussed and can be credited to the modifications of the fourth amendment that stated that the data acquired after long-term use of the modern pen register was under the fourth amendment protection (Ramirez). Lastly, the user’s location and those of the other callers are protected hence in the case of Carpenter but not the users’ network in the case of Smith.

           The fourth amendment like all the other amendments have been upheld in some cases and denied this is because of the circumstance surrounding every case. While some people have made a case that some searches have been reliant on people’s races they have been held where the law enforcement is in jeopardy but is not a factor that has been relied on its own in other regards. As depicted in the discussion they are other circumstances that have necessitated the activity even in the conviction of people of other races. Lastly, modifications of the amendments are necessary since there have been various advancement that was not present when they were adopted.

Works Cited

Anastaplo, George. Amendments To The Constitution Of The United States: A Commentar. Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, 1992, pp. 68-75,

Feder, Jody. Racial Profiling: Legal And Constitutional Issues. Congressional Research Service, 2012, pp. 4-7, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL31130.pdf. Accessed 25 Mar 2020.

Mount, Steve. “The United States Constitution – The U.S. Constitution Online – Usconstitution.Net”. Usconstitution.Net, 2011, https://usconstitution.net/const.html. Accessed 25 Mar 2020.

Ramirez, Geneva. “The Erosion of Smith v. Maryland.” Case Western Reserve Law Review 70.2 (2019): 489.

Ramirez, Geneva. “What Carpenter Tells Us About When a Fourth Amendment Search of Metadata Begins.” Case Western Reserve Law Review 70.1 (2019): 187.