All to frequently, one of the things police officers do when they stop or arrest people in their late teens to early twenties is ask for their phone. The police officer then usually goes through the information on the phone. This happens to my students on a pretty frequent basis. What is most troubling is that the United States Supreme Court has held that police need a warrant to go through a person’s smart phone. Even if the police have arrested you, they still need a warrant to go through a person’s phone. In Riley v. California the Supreme Court’s ruling was 9 – 0 which is a rarity. The Court held that police must have a warrant to search...
Minor In Possession One of the criminal misdemeanors that occurs most frequently with people under 21, is a Minor In Possession ticket. A minor in possession ticket might be for possession of alcohol, marijuana, or some other controlled substance. The State of Michigan had a problem with it's MIP statute. A portion of the statute allowed police to make people under 21 years of age submit to a preliminary breath test(PBT) whenever the police suspected the individual may have been consuming alcohol. In 2007 a Federal judge in the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that that portion of Michigan's law was violation of the Fourth Amendment. Since that ruling the police in Michigan must have a search warrant to make...