Search and Seizure in Criminal Investigations

Search and Seizure in Criminal Investigations

Introduction

The crime rate in United States has varied over time. The crime rate in American generally rose after WWII and reached to peak between 1970s and 1990s. However, the criminal activities have started to decline after 1990s (Fosdick, 1920). The decline in crime rate is because of strong law and order in the country. The police force has significantly become strong. More and more criminals are being caught by the police because of the implementation of Search and Seizure. Search and Seizure is one of the hallmarks of Criminal justice system of U.S. Criminal activities accompanying global socio-economic transformation of our society has encouraged the search for new forms and methods of investigation and crime detection, to new theoretical developments that can have a positive impact on practice. One of the main ways of updating of scientific knowledge is the analysis and generalization of the practice. This allows us to know the laws of the processes under study and to create a theoretical model that would not only reflect the studied practice (investigative, expert), but also contributed to its improvement (Swanson, 2012). Thus, in this paper I am going to discuss how does search and seizure is applied during a criminal investigation. The purpose of this paper is to let readers know about various conditions of search and seizure under the light of fourth Amendment of U.S constitution and how is search and seizure being used during criminal investigation.

Many legal systems including common law and civil law use search and seizure. In the ongoing pursuit of criminals search and seizure is considered as an important exercise. Evidence for the prosecution of alleged criminals is produced with the help of searches and seizures. The police have the authority to search and seize. However people are protected against unreasonable police instructions and Arbitrary. In nations with federal government such as Mexico, Venezuela, United States, and Australia, federal government issues a legal document “federal document” that allows individuals to conduct a arrest, search, or seizure. Members of federal government or authorized respresentatives by feredal government execute federal warrants. For instance, in US, a police officer is allowed to arrest a person if he has an outstanding federal warrant. In US, certain rights are provided by US constitution to those people who are suspects in crime. The fourth amendment of US was specifically established to protect suspects against unreasonable search and seizure. Various other countries also have guarantee protections in their governing policy and principles such as English bill of rights and Canadian Charter.

Search and Seizure

Under the fourth amendment the search procedure is a mandatory search, carried out in a certain place, being in lawful possession of a certain person, in order to detect, seize and lock objects and documents that may be relevant to the case and wanted persons and bodies. The search is performed in a residential area on the basis of a court decision that under ...