Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al
The rule of law pertaining to the Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al case is discussed below. The proceedings of the case raised two critical questions that had public importance. The rule of law requires that every individual and any organization to be subjected to the constitution and persons are allowed to be above the rule of the law. The issue of whether to allow the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) to violate the Constitution of the United States is complicated because the frisks and stops are unconstitutional. The U.S government does not take a stand of whether the NYCD frisk and stop practices are constitutional or not. If the Plaintiffs claim that the NYCD has violated their rights, there are constitutional standards that will favor his claims (Nahal, 89).
The U.S had to file a statement of interest in case the court needs to be assisted on the remedy issue surrounding the case. The United States wants to assist the court and this will favor the outcome since there is a high probability that the NYCD requirements to stop their frisk practices will be very unlawful. The court consolidates the phases of liability and remedy in the proceedings and this has made it to request for post-trial briefings concerning the case despite the fact that liability was not determined.
The interests that lie within the United States in protecting the policies within the constitution will be affected if the court will implicate the New York City Police Department to stop the frisks. The search is our case may have been conducted in a way that it violated the right of the petitioner as outlined in the 4th and 14th amendments of the constitution.
The 4th amendment protects individuals from unreasonable and unnecessary searches and confiscations. The 14th amendment of the United States constitution offers a guarantee of equal protection under the law. The two amendments favor the petitioner and protect him from unlawful conduct of the police. There is a likelihood that NYCD will be found guilty of conducting unlawful search warrants to the petitioner (Nahal, 89). This is what makes the United States to file a statement of interest so that it can defend the court because of the judgment that is likely to be offered.
The government will enforce the misconduct of the police as provided in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which allows the AG to file lawsuits that will seek the court orders that will work towards reforming police departments that engages in violation of human rights. Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 prohibit any kind of discrimination that is based on the grounds of gender, race, sex, color and ethnicity.
Exceptions pertaining this case
The exceptions that would be applicable to the fourth amendment of the United States constitution are: frisks, searches with consent, plain feel, automobile exception, exigent circumstances and open fields, and incident to arrest, abandoned property and public place exception. For the case above the only applicable exceptions include searches incident to arrest, searches with consent and the automobile exception.
Under the search under consent exception, a person can grant a permission to be searched without a warrant and the same person can withdraw that permission any time. Therefore, in order for a person to be searched he or she must provide consent.
After the arrest has been made on a person, that person is subject to full search by the authority involved. With this consent it is considered appropriate for the arresting officer to conduct a full search to the person arrested at the scene of crime. However, the search must be conduct immediately and should be limited to the wingspan (area in reach of the person arrested) of the involved individual.
If the search is punishing or disturbing, the search will be held valid only if the process was conducted in a reasonable manner (Phillip, 23). This implies that there was a clear suggestion prior to the evidence that would be found, and there were pressing circumstances. Anything possessed by the arrestee under their instantaneous control is considered as a subject of search and seizure without even providing a warrant to arrest.
Concerning the exigent circumstances exception, the officer conducting arrest possesses a developed probable that evidence could only be found in a different place from where the arrest is taking place and does not have time to get it, may perform full search without a warrant. However, for exigent to be valid, the subjected situation must involve danger of physical harm exposed to the officer or other individuals, driving while intoxicated, evidence destruction, and in a condition where an individual requires recue (Phillip, 23).
For the automobile exception to be applied it is assumed that since automobiles are mobile, it is considerable to consider them as an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant clause. Under this situation, the search would be carried out if the government officer happens to suspect and had a strong believe that the vehicle encompasses contraband or there is an evidence of crime without a warrant.
Closed cases in support
Daniels, et al. v. City of New York, et al
This case is closely related to the case of Daniels, et al. v. City of New York, et al a case that was filed by CCR to challenge the New York police stop and frisk and profiling policy after it was determined that the new york police stopped and frisked the blacks more than the whites. The case of Daniels, et al. v. City of New York, et al was given a fair hearing and verdict delivered. The settlement argument it was required that NYPD, the defendant, maintains a transcribed racial profiling policy that conforms to the constitutions of both US and New York and to offer stop-and-frisk statistics on a quarterly base. An analysis of the data revealed that NYPD had continuously been continuing with unconstitutional suspicious stop and frisk (Tanenhaus, 98). The Floyd case also finds no evidence of the need to make the unreasonable stop and frisk that is highly unconstitutional. It also focuses on establishing and stopping the obvious racial discriminations in deciding who gets stopped and searched by the New York police.
The verdict delivered in regard to this case was fair. A similar verdict should be delivered to the case of Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., to stop the New York from exercising discriminative stop and frisk. Delivering such a verdict or even tougher one will help stop the prevalent problem of discrimination in the New York. The lawsuit of this open case should follow the same procedures as this will possibly help in curbing the rampant discriminations that the civilians experience in the hands of the New York police.
Weeks v. United States
The facts of case are the circumstances of the case whereby Weeks who is plaintiff was arrested by officer at Union Station in Missouri. He was an employee of express company. He was arrested without search of warrant and arrested without warrant of arrest. Also with him officer took possession of papers and articles. This held letters and envelops were found in the drawer of a chiffonier. The documents were later were taken to marshal still without a warrant. The documents were used to convict Weeks of conveying lottery tickets via the mail. Weeks petitioned against the police for return of his personal possessions.
Ruling of the case
The case was held in the United States Supreme Court in which the court ruled that seizure of the private residence item without a warrant is a violation of Fourth Amendment. This ruling also held that the police officers is prohibited from securing evidence by any means that is restricted by the Federal exclusionary rule and pass it to their federal partners.
Closed case in against
TERRY V. OHIO
The brief fact summary in this case was that the petitioner who is John W. Terry was frisked by an officer. After the officer observed and suspected the Petitioner who seemingly casing a store for a likely robbery. The officer loomed the Petitioner for interrogative and definitely start to frisk him. Synopsis of rule of law states that an officer may frisk for weapons without a warrant of search, after suspecting the person to be dangerous or armed. The fact behind this case was that the officer has noticed regular movement of petitioner along the street.
The petitioner seemed to talk with an individual and another third party on a street corner and walked up and down on the same streets. Therefore the officer came into a conclusion that the petitioner was casing a store for a potential robbery. The officer thus decides to carry out investigation and approach the petitioner for some questions and decide to perform an immediate quick search before questioning. As a result of searching the officer get a concealed weapon and therefore the petitioner was charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
The main issue in this case was, whether is unreasonable to carry out a frisk for weapons without credible cause for arrest under the Fourth Amendment to the United States constitutional? The case was held by the supreme court of the America and the judges adjudicated that it is reasonable to carry out a search for any weapons on any one that the officer could suspect could be armed( Lichtenberg,79). Therefore it concluded that the officer was right and is he supposed to carry out search when he/she suspected an armed person. It was discussed that the facts of the case are very essential to understand the court’s willingness in allowing the frisks. The apprehensive activity was an armed robbery, violent crime and therefore it was incorrect for the officer to approach the petitioner without carrying out a search.
In the case of City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, a Los Angeles police officer pulled from his car Adolph Lyons for violating traffic rules. Although Lyons offered no resistance in the arrest, he was chokehold by the police (Tanenhaus, 142). However, Lyons was dismayed by the police officers’ act of trying to chock him. He further claimed that the police officers chokehold him not because of violating traffic rights but simply because he was of a different race and that the police exercised the law discriminatively.
The District court heard and determined the case whereby it found that the plaintiff had committed a material misinterpretation (Tanenhaus, 56). Did Lyons claim of the discriminative arrest by the police meet the threshold requirements that have been imposed by Article III of the Constitution?
The court found that Lyons claim could not be entertained. There was no solid evidence to prove that the police officer harassed Lyons on racial grounds. Additionally, the fact that he was chocked was not considered to be an immediate threat. The court ordered that, in order to establish an actual claim, Lyons had to prove that Los Angeles police always choked the blacks that they encountered over the roads and that the city had ordered its officers to behave in such a manner.
After considering the facts of the case, the court concluded that could not be compensated by the police officer and the city of New York for individual damages. Considering this verdict, the court should also consider the circumstances under which the NYPD exercises the stop and freak on individuals hence make a conclusion that will favor the police in the case of Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al.
Work cited
Zamani, Nahal. Advocating for Justice: Case Studies in Combating Discriminatory Policing. New York, N.Y.: Center for Constitutional Rights, 2011. Print.
Hubbart, Phillip A. Making Sense of Search and Seizure Law: A Fourth Amendment Handbook. Durham, N.C: Carolina Academic Press, 2005. Print.
Tanenhaus, David S. Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. Print.
Lichtenberg, Illya D., Alisa Smith, and Michael Copeland. 2001. "Terry and Beyond: Testing the Underlying Assumption of Reasonable Suspicion." Touro Law Review 17 (winter).
