Argument: September 2010

Keywords: Constitutional Law - Criminal Procedure - Judicial Review - Search and Seizure

Question Presented: Whether police were justified in impounding and searching a vehicle when the driver was arrested at 4:15AM in a “high crime area” and the car’s owner could not be contacted.

Facts: Officers saw the defendants leave an after-hours party at a residential home at 4:15 AM, carry open bottles of beer into a car, and drive away. (Remarkably, parties at …

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Argument: September 2010

Keywords: Criminal Procedure - Search and Seizure

Question Presented: Whether college police improperly entered a dorm room without consent or a warrant, on reports of conduct that violated the residence policy but not the law.

Facts: Resident directors for a Boston College dorm brought two students to campus police with a report that defendant Daniel Carr was bullying them and boasted of having a knife, and …

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Argument: May 2010

Keywords: Constitutional Law - Criminal Procedure - Evidence - Search and Seizure

Question Presented: Whether a defendant’s conclusory motion to suppress evidence permitted him to challenge the reliability of a 911 call after the close of evidence; whether an anonymous statement that the defendant was waving a gun was sufficiently reliable to justify an investigatory stop.

Facts: Police received an anonymous 911 call that a person was loading a firearm and waving it in the air. The suspect was described as a black male wearing a gray …

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Amicus due April 19, 2010 - Argument: May 6, 2010

Keywords: Criminal Procedure - District Court - Search and Seizure - Warrants

Question Presented: Whether a district court clerk-magistrate may issue a search warrant for premises falling outside the district court’s jurisdiction, but within the district court’s county.

Facts: The Barnstable Police Department investigated the defendant and his family, who were allegedly running a drug distribution enterprise, from 1999 to 2007. By 2007, the defendant had moved to the …

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Amicus due February 16, 2010 - Argument: May 3, 2010

Keywords: Criminal Procedure - Expert Testimony - Search and Seizure

Question Presented: Whether a driveway technically belonging to three apartments, but actually only used by one apartment, is on that apartment’s curtilage; whether the judge had sufficient evidence that a field test for cocaine was widely accepted in other jurisdictions.

Facts: Police obtained a search warrant for the defendant’s home after a field test indicated that bags found in the defendant’s trash were dusted in cocaine. The defendant’s …

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Amicus due March 15, 2010 - Argument: April 2011

Keywords: Criminal Procedure - Search and Seizure

Question Presented: What steps must a police officer must take to verify the identity of a person inviting him into a residence, when entering for a protective purpose?

Facts: A police officer, looking for a motel manager in order to retrieve a dirty needle, knocked at the motel room where he knew the manager had lived three months earlier …

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