{"id":5247,"date":"2011-04-14T07:45:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T10:34:19","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T10:34:19","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5247","title":{"rendered":"CA4: Being under prior investigation for drugs adds nothing to reasonable suspicion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defendant\u2019s actions when seen in a stopped car did not amount to suspicious circumstances. The officer\u2019s learning that defendant was under investigation for drug trafficking did not lessen his Fourth Amendment rights, and it added nothing to the reasonable suspicion calculus. United States v. Foster<\/a>, 634 F.3d 243 (4th Cir. 2011):<\/p>\n

The Government then points to Detective Ragland\u2019s conversation with Sergeant Darnell, which seemed to confirm that Foster was under investigation for drug trafficking, to show that a reasonable officer would have had some grounds to believe that Foster was engaged in drug activity. However, a person\u2019s Fourth Amendment rights cannot be lessened simply because he or she is \u201cunder investigation\u201d by the police. Just as an officer\u2019s knowledge of a suspect\u2019s past arrests or convictions is inadequate to furnish reasonable suspicion; so too is knowledge that a suspect is merely under investigation, which is an even more tentative, potentially innocuous step towards determining criminal activity. Cf. Sandoval, 29 F.3d at 542 (\u201c[E]ven knowledge of a person\u2019s prior criminal involvement (to say nothing of a mere arrest) is alone insufficient to give rise to the requisite reasonable suspicion.\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}