G. Criminal Defense Minus the BoR? Imagine a lawyer is defending a client who was charged with a crime after police showed up wi
thout a warrant, walked right into the client’s home, and found drugs after searching every nook and crannie in the house. Today, the lawyer would make an argument based on the 4th Amendment. But what if there had never been a compromise, and no bill of rights was ever added to the Constitution? Use what you learned in this lesson to craft a defense based on the Constitution alone.
"Your Honor, our evidence proves the defendant is guilty of drug possession. Officers found the drugs in the back of the defendant’s messy sock drawer!"
"Your Honor, this was an outrageous invasion of my client’s rights! The Constitution protects my client from this sort of behavior because..."
The client suffered an unwarranted police invasion and this is outrageous because it disobeys the Fourth Constitutional Amendment.
We can reach this conclusion because:
The defense attorney could claim that the home invasion without filing a search warrant violates the Fourth Constitutional Amendment.
This amendment states that no search or seizure of evidence of a crime can be carried out in the suspects' homes, without a search and seizure warrant being presented.
In this case, the lawyer could claim that the police violated a client's citizen's right by breaking into and searching the house for drugs.
While this is true, there are some cases where the Fourth Amendment can be ignored and law enforcement officers can break into homes looking for evidence of serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, for example.
Therefore, even using this fourth amendment to defend the client, he could not claim that the police acted incorrectly.
