The 4th Amendment reads:
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.
The Fourth Amendment has far-reaching effects in law enforcement as a whole, from Federal officer to local police each must adhere to the provisions of the fourth amendment to successfully prosecute cases.
Weeks v. United States 1914 (The Exclusionary Rule)
The exclusionary rule became the enforcement arm of the fourth amendment. The Supreme Court adopted the exclusionary rule in Weeks v. United States (1914), which stated that evidence which was obtained outside the parameters of the Fourth Amendment could not be presented in court.
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States 1920 and Nardone v. United States (1939) (Fruit of the Poisonous Tree)
In Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States (1920) and Nardone v. United States (1939), the Court ruled that leads or other evidence resulting from illegally obtained evidence are also inadmissible in trials. Justice Felix Frankfurter described this secondary evidence as the “fruit of the poisonous tree“, a term often used in legal proceedings today.
Searches on School Property
In 1985 the Supreme Court of the United States set a landmark principle for search and seizure on Public School property. It was remarkable in the fact it applied a completely different category where evidence in criminal proceedings could be searched for and seized by non-law enforcement officials and set a standard for reasonableness for this type of search. Although evidence could be seized, there was not a requirement for probable cause nor to obtain a warrant.
New Jersey vs. T.L.O. 1985 (Administrative Searches)
The most guiding principles of search and seizure upon the school premises are found in New Jersey vs. T.L.O. This is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States addressing the constitutionality of a search of a public high school student for contraband after she was caught smoking. A subsequent search of her purse revealed drug paraphernalia, marijuana, and documentation of drug sales. She was charged as a juvenile for the drugs and paraphernalia found in the search. She appealed the conviction on the search, claiming it violated her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–3 ruling, held that the search by the Piscataway Township Schools was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
The history of the case starts when a teacher at Piscataway High School in New Jersey, upon discovering respondent, then a 14-year-old freshman, and her companion smoking cigarettes in a school lavatory in violation of a school rule, took them to the principal’s office, where they met with the Assistant Vice Principal. When respondent, in response to the Assistant Vice Principal’s questioning, denied that she had been smoking and claimed that she did not smoke at all, the Assistant Vice Principal demanded to see her purse. After TLO was forced to hand over the purse, he observed a pack of cigarettes. Assistant Vice Principal Choplick kept searching through the purse because rolling papers were in plain view, and his search revealed a small amount of marijuana, rolling papers, a pipe, empty plastic bags, a large quantity of money in $1 bills, an index card that appeared to list students who owed TLO money, and two letters that implicated TLO in dealing marijuana. The principal then called the police and the girl’s mother, who voluntarily drove her to the police station. She was convicted of dealing and use of illicit drugs. She was expelled from the school and fined $1,000.
In response to the student’s claim, the school board argued that the Fourth Amendment does not apply in schools because school officials act in the place of parents while children are at school. The Court, however, held that school officials act as the representative of government, not as parental surrogates, thereby affirming the Fourth Amendment’s application to students in public schools. Even so, the Court ruled that the unique need to maintain a safe learning environment requires a lessening of the restrictions normally imposed for public officials to conduct searches. Therefore, school officials need not have probable cause to search students, only reasonable suspicion.
Reasonable suspicion exists if the search was justified at its inception and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the search initially. A search is justified at its inception if reasonable grounds exist to suspect that the search will reveal evidence that the student violated the law or school rules. A search is permissible in scope if the measures used are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the student’s age, gender, and the nature of the offense. Based on this standard, the Court held that the searches conducted by the vice principal were constitutional.
The Supreme Court of the United States, in a 6–3 decision issued by Justice White, balancing between the legitimate expectation of privacy of the individual, even a child, and the school’s interest in maintaining order and discipline, issued a ruling affirming the school official action. According to school officials, they do require a “reasonable suspicion” to perform a search.
Her possession of any cigarettes was relevant to whether or not she was being truthful, and since she had been caught in the bathroom and taken directly to the office, it was reasonable to assume she had the cigarettes in her purse. Thus, the vice-principal had reasonable suspicion to suspect a school rule had been broken, and more than just a “hunch” to search the purse. When the vice-principal was searching for the cigarettes, the drug-related evidence was in plain view. Thus, the reasonable search for cigarettes led to some of the drug related material being discovered, which justified a search (including the zippered compartments inside the bag) resulting in the discovery of the cigarettes and other evidence including a small bag of marijuana and cigarette rolling papers.
In New Jersey v. T. L. O. (1985), the Supreme Court ruled that searches in public schools do not require warrants, as long as the searching officials of the school have reasonable grounds for believing that the search will result in the finding of evidence of illegal or illicit activity.
Safford Unified School District v. Redding (2009)
However, in Safford Unified School District v. Redding (2009), the Supreme Court ruled that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment when they strip searched a 13-year-old girl based only on a student claiming to have received drugs from that student. The Court held that a strip search of a middle schooler violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution where the school lacked reasons to suspect either that the drugs (Ibuprofen) presented a danger or that they were concealed in her underwear.
Officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona received a report that 13-year-old Savana Redding had given a classmate four prescription-strength 400 mg ibuprofen and a 200 mg over-the-counter naproxen. Based on this suspicion, they first searched her belongings; then, believing that “students … hid contraband in or under their clothing,” had her strip to her underwear, “pull her bra out and to the side and shake it,” and “pull out the elastic on her underpants” to see what might fall out. The officials did not find any contraband on Redding’s person, and they did not contact Redding’s parents at any point during the investigation.
Justice David Souter, writing for an 8-1 majority vote, held that the strip search violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment rights, and wrote the opinion summarized below:
First, the court laid out the established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: school searches, to be valid, merely require “reasonable suspicion”, not “probable cause”; in terms of the knowledge required to meet that threshold, this calls for only a “moderate chance” of finding the expected evidence, not at “fair probability” or “substantial chance.”
Law enforcement searches require “Probable cause”: When searches are conducted by law enforcement officers, they must have “probable cause”: i.e., the facts and circumstances within his knowledge, and of which he had reasonably trustworthy information, must be “sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that an offense has been or is being committed, and that evidence bearing on that offense will be found in the place to be searched.