{"id":6395,"date":"2012-05-28T20:57:33","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T06:24:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T06:24:53","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6395","title":{"rendered":"CA4: Search of outgoing prisoner mail was reasonable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Search of outgoing prisoner mail was valid as ongoing concern about defendant&#8217;s secreting stolen evidence. <a href=\"http:\/\/pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov\/opinion.pdf\/114717.U.pdf\">United States v. Cook<\/a>, 457 Fed. Appx. 285 (4th Cir. 2011) (unpublished):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[W]e find that the district court did not err in denying Cook\u2019s motion to suppress because the search of his outgoing mail by jail officials did not violate the Fourth Amendment. We have held that a prison official may constitutionally conduct a warrantless search of an inmate\u2019s outgoing mail so long as the search is \u201creasonably related to legitimate penological interests.\u201d Altizer v. Deeds, 191 F.3d 540, 547 (4th Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). As the U.S. Supreme Court has often observed, the investigation and prevention of ongoing illegal inmate activity furthers the legitimate penological objectives of prison security and inmate rehabilitation. See Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 411-12, 109 S. Ct. 1874, 104 L. Ed. 2d 459 (1989); Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 412-13, 94 S. Ct. 1800, 40 L. Ed. 2d 224 (1974); see also United States v. Workman, 80 F.3d 688, 698-99 (2d Cir. 1996).<\/p>\n<p>Here, jail officials\u2019 search of Cook\u2019s mail was part of an effort to prevent him from further secreting or trafficking in stolen goods. Because their actions were based on a reasonable belief that the correspondence in question contained information regarding such criminal activity, the search of Cook\u2019s mail was reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest and did not offend his Fourth Amendment rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The officer had reasonable suspicion to grab defendant\u2019s arm to talk to him. When defendant fled the officer had probable cause to arrest. United States v. Flint, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141224 (D. Utah December 8, 2011).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6395\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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-6395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}