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“[A]t the very core” of the Fourth Amendment “stands the right of [an individual] to retreat into his [or her] own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” (Silverman v. United States (1961) 365 U.S. 505, 511.) This protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that is, a search without a warrant, extends to the curtilage of the home.  Curtilage is the areas immediately surrounding a home, such as porches, and other protected spaces where individuals maintain significant privacy expectations. Law enforcement searches of curtilage has been challenged, defined, and redefined by our courts for over 150 years.

Even in cases where there is a valid search warrant, a search of a home’s curtilage can render the search unlawful. The U.S. Supreme Court in the case Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013) held that after law enforcement brought a drug-sniffing dog to the front porch of a house – that dog immediately alerting to drugs, prompting law enforcement to obtain a search warrant for the home—resulted in an unlawful search even though a warrant was obtained. The evidence (drugsthat were discovered in the search upon warrant) was suppressed because taking the dog to the front porch to sniff for drugs was a violation of the “physical trespass test.” In other words, the court held that the dog sniff itself was a search, and because it occurred on the curtilage of the home, it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.  The upshot of the Jardines case is that law enforcements physical invasion into protected areas can itself trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny, regardless of whether there’s an expectation of privacy.

Recently, the Ninth Circuit in the case Tran & Chong v. United States (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2024) 112 F.4th 848, relied upon Jardines when it held that an unlawful search took place when law enforcement entered a residential driveway and peered into the garage on the property.

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Perhaps going down as one of the most inventive and also one of the stupidest insurance fraud crimes in recent memory, a group of scammers filed several insurance claims for damage to their three luxury vehicles.

The four scammers filed separate insurance claims, all to separate insurance companies, after they allegedly found their respective vehicle interiors destroyed by a bear while parked in the San Bernardino mountains. The vehicle owners even provided video footage of the bear inside their vehicles. As those of us who are visited the mountains of Southern California, we know that bears have been known to find their way into the vehicles in search of food. But one of the insurance companies was dubious of the video “evidence.” It just didn’t look like a real bear.

And, indeed, it was not. The California Insurance Department was alerted. The Insurance Department investigated and found the two other similar claims of bear damage on the same day and location.  The video footage was submitted to the California Department of Wildlife which agreed with the Insurance Department. The “bear” looked to the biologist investigating the footage like a human in a bear suit. And, indeed, it was.

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California Penal Code section 3055 provides that inmates who have been incarcerated for 20 years or more and are over the age of 50 or those incarcerated for 25 years or more and are over the age of 60 are eligible for what is called “Elderly Parole.” Even violent sex offenders and child molesters are eligible. The only inmates not eligible are those who were sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Those under 60 years of age are not eligible if they are serving a sentence for a second or third strike under the three strikes law. However, after reaching the age of 60, those inmates are also eligible.

An inmate who reaches eligibility for this program is entitled to a parole hearing. Among other factors, the Board of Parole Hearings considers the early release applicant’s physical condition, mental capacity, and the inmate’s social adjustment or lack thereof while incarcerated.  (California Code of Regulations, title 15, section 2449.43.)

The Elderly Parole program as it currently operates became effective on January 1, 2024; however elderly parole programs have operated in California for a decade.

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Low risk, minimum custody status inmates in California may be eligible to serve all or part of their incarceration as a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) employee. The program is known as the Conservation (Fire) Camp Program. Acceptance into the program is highly sought after by qualifying inmates. The Camp Program serves as a rehabilitation program with each camp offering rehabilitative and educational services as well as learning real world skills. There are Camp Programs in 25 counties across California.

Typically, inmates accepted into this program support California firefighters throughout the state. This inmate workforce performs critical support tasks in fire control.  Acceptance into this coveted position requires that the inmate have eight years or less remaining on their sentence, is physically fit and healthy, and does not have a disqualifying conviction. Among the disqualifying convictions is (obviously) arson.

A San Bernardino man, who was convicted of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, was one of the fortunate inmates who was selected for this program. Sadly, he is now charged with starting fires while working as an apparatus engineer for CAL FIRE.  This unfortunate event should not reflect on the Camp Program, but nevertheless, some are questioning whether the program remains viable.

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Here’s a recipe for the stupid criminal files:

Fill large packages – about watermelon size – with methamphetamine. Form each package into a watermelon shape and cover each package with a wrapper that is printed to look like a watermelon. Oh, don’t forget to slap an agricultural sticker on each package. Load the packages up in a watermelon truck from Mexico bound for California. What could go wrong?

In the annals of disguises that didn’t work, a truckload of 1,220 packages of methamphetamine wrapped in plastic painted to look like watermelon (well, sort of), was seized among real watermelons as the truck crossed from Mexico into the US at the Otay Mesa crossing. The total amount of methamphetamine seized weighed in at around 4,500 pounds. The haul is estimated to be worth $5 million.

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You’ve been stopped by the police for speeding. Can the officer search your vehicle without your consent? The answer is yes and no. Yes, the officer can search your vehicle, without your consent, if he or she has probable cause to believe your vehicle contains evidence of a crime. This is one of the so-called automobile exceptions to 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Let’s say the officer stops your vehicle and as soon as you roll down the window, a strong waft of cannabis smoke hits the officer’s olfactory senses. While recreational cannabis is legal in California, smoking it while driving is not. In this scenario, the officer can establish probable cause—that is a reasonable belief based on the fact of the strong smell of burning cannabis in the vehicle—that there is evidence of crime in the vehicle, to wit: burned cannabis.

Let’s consider another scenario. The police encounter a group of known gang members in a parking lot. Several individuals are arrested for weapons possession. The car belonging to one of those individuals was parked in the parking lot where the police encounter occurred. Even though this individual (here, the defendant) was not in his car at the time, the police surmised they had probable cause to search the vehicle. And indeed, the law permits the police to search an unoccupied parked car if “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular

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A New Zealand couple’s vacation in Southern California ended in tragedy. The couple, a prominent businessman in New Zealand and his wife were visiting Newport Beach’s iconic outdoor shopping mall Fashion Island. There they were accosted by two men brandishing guns. Perhaps the two men didn’t intend their robbery to end in murder, but it did. One of the men put a gun to the businessman’s head while another dragged the businessman’s wife to into the street as he tried to pull away the shopping bags she was carrying from her. Another accomplice, the getaway driver pulled his car toward the man trying to grab the shopping bags. In the process, the getaway driver ran over the woman and dragged her body across the parking lot resulting in the woman’s death.

While not all murders are capital murder cases (that is, a murder charge eligible for the death penalty), the circumstance here makes the crime a potential capital murder case and indeed, all three men have been charged by the Orange County District Attorney with capital murder.

You may wonder how all three could be charged with capital murder when there did not appear to be an intent to murder the woman and her death was caused only by the driver.  The answer is special circumstances. The men are all charged with murder in commission of a felony (robbery) which is a special circumstances charge. This charge does not require the intent to commit murder but only that the underlying felony was intended. Furthermore, the special circumstances murder charge applies to anyone who aided or abetted the underlying crime that resulted in the murder.

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A law enforcement officer can perform a temporary investigative detention of an individual only when the officer can articulate specific facts, which considered in light of the circumstances, provides an objective reason to believe the individual is engaged, or about to engage, in criminal activity.  (A detention occurs when an individual does not feel that he or she is free to leave, as contrasted with a consensual police encounter in which a person can just walk away.)

Note that the officer’s reasons for believing a detention is warranted is an objective standard—the officer’s assessment must be such that a law enforcement officer presented with the same circumstances would reasonably suspect possible criminal activity. Thus, an officer who detained an individual on the suspicion that the individual was engaged in criminal activity simply because that individual is walking in a high crime area would not be objectively reasonable. But if that individual is also observed by the officer in what appears to be a drug transaction, a detention might be objectively reasonable.

Lawful detentions have often been a bone of contention between defense attorneys and the prosecution, and the courts have often taken a fairly hard line on the subject. For example, the courts have held that a lawful detention can be found simply on an individual’s attire, demeanor, evasiveness and other ambiguous circumstances. Whether a detention is lawful or not is important because a lawful detention often leads to a search of and if the officer discovers a crime (for example, find drugs or a weapon on the individual), any subsequent charges can be dismissed if the defendant’s criminal defense attorney files a successful motion to suppress evidence on grounds that the detention was unlawful.

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The Fourth Amendment provides that law enforcement cannot conduct a search of property or person without a valid warrant. Any warrantless search is unlawful and should law enforcement arrest you pursuant to that search, the arrest itself becomes unlawful.

However, there are exceptions where a warrantless search is permitted under the law. One of those exceptions is consent to the search. As I have discussed elsewhere, you are not required under the law to consent to a search, and it is usually a good idea not to. Unfortunately, consent searches are quite frequent because people are often frightened and intimidated by the officer’s request. But even a consent search may be unlawful if consent is not voluntarily given.

If you consent to a search and you get arrested due to contraband found in the search, the arrest is presumed lawful because you consented to the search. But what if you consented because the police “strong-armed” you into allowing the search or threatened you or acquired your consent by deception? Whether the consent is voluntary or not is oftentimes difficult to determine, but it is the prosecutions burden to show in light of the circumstances that the consent was voluntarily given.

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With the recent death of OJ Simpson, we are reminded of the police pursuit of OJ’s Bronco through Los Angeles and Orange Counties. While the OJ chase was a slow-speed chase, many police pursuits are high speed and dangerous. Some of these chases have ended in fatalities. Because they are so dangerous, police often terminate the pursuit in the interests of public safety. Fortunately, high speed chases will soon be a thing of the past.

In a marriage of low tech and high tech, police cruisers are being fitted with GPS launchers. The launchers, mounted to the front of police vehicles, hold GPS darts that when deployed stick to the target vehicle. The police need to chase a vehicle only long enough to be within range to deploy the dart. The dart is fired using laser assist. The dart’s sticky substance allows the dart to stick even if the target vehicle is wet or dirty.  Once the dart sticks to the evading vehicle, the police can track the vehicle’s movements and location. Currently the use of the darts is somewhat hampered because they have a limited range (about 20 to 30 feet).

Is this a violation of the Fourth Amendment warrantless search and seizure prohibitions? In 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement serendipitously placing a GPS tracking device on a vehicle without a warrant was an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment.

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