The VLW Blog

A drug defendant’s statements to a private security guard need not be suppressed, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court said last Friday, reversing a Richmond federal district court’s suppression order.
Virginia’s system of state regulation of private security guards through Virginia Code § 9.1-146 does not necessarily mean the guards were acting as state agents when they [...]

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A persistent police officer who decided to enter a darkened house to investigate suspicious circumstances is vindicated as an appeals court accords him immunity from a lawsuit by homeowners who claimed they were startled by the officer’s intrusion.
The decision by a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the ruling of U.S. [...]

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An 8-to-1 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court today held it was an unconstitutional intrusion for school officials to search a 13-year-old girl’s bra and underpants for a suspected prescription drug.  “[T]he content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion,” wrote retiring Justice David Souter for the majority.
By a 7-to-2 vote, however, [...]

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How fast is the turnaround in car-search law? Just this fast, as the 4th Circuit yesterday made a U-turn and vacated a cocaine conviction out of Roanoke federal court.
In an unpublished opinion in U.S. v. Majette, the 4th Circuit said an “evidence-producing automobile search incident to the arrest of Tony Majette for a driving offense [...]

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Prosecutors are disappointed to find former friends Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in the majority yesterday with a case that limits when police can search the car of someone arrested at a traffic stop.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Arizona v. Gant that  police need a warrant to search the vehicle of someone they have [...]

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Arlington County Circuit Judge Joanne Alper ruled that there was no 4th amendment violation when, without a warrant, police attached a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s van and followed his travels around the community.
According to the Arlington Connection, the judge will allow the GPS tracking data as evidence against a man charged in a [...]

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Lawyers who follow the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals know the Richmond-based court is not generous with published opinions.
According to a cover story in the June 2008 ABA Law Journal, the court, which has been short-handed for years, issued the lowest percentage of published opinions of all federal circuits in 2006 – 6 percent [...]

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For suspects who weren’t sure, you have no privacy interest in the way you smell.
The Virginia Court of Appeals didn’t have to hold its nose to embrace the “plain smell” doctrine, which gives cops the right to go into your pockets if you smell like marijuana.
“While some have questioned our willingness” to embrace the doctrine, [...]

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Our DC-based colleague over at Lawyers USA, Kim Atkins, was down at the U.S. Supreme Court today, listening to argument in a case from Portsmouth, Virginia v. Moore.
It’s a search case that has already been through the Supreme Court of Virginia, where the defendant prevailed.
But 18 attorneys general from other states have backed [...]

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Home is not where your Nintendo is, according to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Two men who sold cocaine together in Huntington, W.Va., were more than business partners. Joshua Gray and Terrence Askew hung out together at Gray’s apartment, watching TV and playing video games. Askew even kept a change of clothes and a [...]

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