Answer each question that belongs to the scenario below : One page per scenario . 1. A local police department suspects that three individuals, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, are growing marijuana on their property and selling it around town. The officers, though, do not have probable cause to obtain a warrant. As a result, the officers begin discussing some creative avenues for acquiring information about these individuals and their activities. A rookie officer who majored in Political Science in college offers three options: 1) looking through trash left outside of the suspects’ home; 2) flying over the suspects’ backyard and using standard binoculars to search for marijuana plants; and 3) using a newly developed piece of equipment that can scan the suspects’ house and detect the presence of large quantities of organic plants. 1. The Supreme Court’s decision in Kyllo v. United States has implications for which option? Why? 3. The Supreme Court decision California v. Greenwood has direct implications for Option 1, Why? 4. Which of these options is most likely to be deemed unconstitutional? Why? 2. Three college students are travelling from upstate New York to Florida for spring break. In Buford, Georgia, they come to a stop at DUI checkpoint. An officer approaches the driver’s side window, determines that the driver is sober, and tells the college students to head on their way. However, a second officer, suspicious of the out-of-state license plate, attaches a GPS locator to the car’s rear bumper just before the students drive off. Police conduct surveillance on the car’s movements for the next week, and after determining that the car went to Florida—movements that the officers deem consistent with drug trafficking—the Buford police determine that they will stop this vehicle the next time it enters their jurisdiction. Sure enough, as the car enters Buford on the college student’s trip home after a week in Florida, it is pulled over by an officer. As the driver hands the officer a driver’s license, the officer says that he smells marijuana in the car and initiates a search of the vehicle. Inside a zipped backpack on the backseat, he finds contraband and makes an arrest. 5. Discuss the constitutionality of a DUI checkpoint and an officer’s act of visually inspecting the inside of the car. 6. Discuss the constitutionality of the act of placing a GPS locator on the rear bumper of the car and conducting surveillance on its movements. 7. Assume that the traffic stop on the student’s return trip had in fact been a valid one. Further assume that an officer legitimately smells marijuana. Discuss the constitutionality of the seizure of the contraband. Three college students who attend a public university share an apartment in Collegetown, USA. Police have heard that three members of the local college’s varsity swim team live there and have all recently failed university-administered drug tests. Police show up at the apartment hoping they can acquire to consent to enter. As they approach the apartment, police see that the landlord is standing outside the door. Police ask the landlord to let them in. The landlord, who is a lawyer, refuses, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Chapman v. United States. Irritated, police instead knock on the door. A student who is exiting the apartment allows the police to enter. While the police are standing in the common area, a resident of the home exits his apartment and tells police to leave, but immediately before his door completely close the police observe marijuana plants and drug paraphernalia inside the resident’s home. The police then rush into the resident’s apartment and seize this evidence. They then place resident under arrest. 8. Was the landlord’s refusal to grant police access to the apartment appropriate? Why? 9. Discuss the validity of the consent of the student who allowed the police to enter the common areas in the home. 10. Discuss whether the seizure of the contraband from the point of view of the police was valid? How? 11. Discuss the argument that you think arrested resident’s lawyer will make as to why evidence seized should be suppressed.
