Developments In Federal Search And Seizure Law – 2014

The Oregon Federal Public Defender has issued the latest version of Developments in Federal Search and Seizure Law (available here), updated with cases right up to Judge Watford’s great opinion in the Johnny Nora case. The outline, which we have been using for over twenty-five years, began as a way of filtering out the thousands of bad search and seizure cases. We were interested in collecting the cases where Fourth Amendment interests were vindicated, a consolidation of our “the defendant only wins” file. The structure of the outline sets out the areas of search and seizure law with Counterpoint sections showing how defendants have prevailed in the face of law where individual privacy protections often feel like they are contracting to the vanishing point. The sections on what constitutes a search are updated with cases like United States v. Jones and Riley v. California that are pushing the edges of how we define protected areas. In general, the outline is intended encourage the analyses of chronology, incremental intrusions, and causation that are essential to putting together a winning suppression motion. We hope the outline provides a good starting point for researching motions and a ready resource for doing quick searches for the names of familiar cases with other relevant cases nearby.

Steve Sady, Chief Deputy Federal Public Defender, Portland, Oregon