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Lemon Johnson was a passenger in the back seat of a vehicle stopped for a mandatory insurance suspension. A police officer initiated a conversation with Johnson that was unrelated to the reason for the traffic stop. After asking him to exit the car, the officer conducted a pat-down search of Johnson because she was concerned for her safety upon noticing signs that Johnson may have been affiliated with a gang. During the pat-down search, the officer found a gun, which was used as evidence to convict Johnson at trial. Johnson argues that this evidence should have been suppressed because the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights: the officer had no reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was occurring, and therefore the pat-down search did not meet the standard articulated by Terry v. Ohio. In this case, the State of Arizona argues that police officers should have the right to conduct a pat-down search if there is a reasonable basis to believe the individual is armed and dangerous. Numerous organizations and all lower courts that have considered the issue have adopted this standard to increase officer safety. Johnson, however, maintains that expanding Terry in the way that Arizona proposes is unnecessary and would encourage discretionary pat-down searches in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

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This case, in which a police officer searched a stolen motorcycle on private property without a warrant, encapsulates a battle between two conflicting Fourth Amendment doctrines. Collins, arrested for receiving stolen property, argues that the police are forbidden from conducting a warrantless search of the area surrounding his home—the curtilage, which receives the same special constitutional protections as the home itself. Collins maintains that allowing the police to search his curtilage erodes Fourth Amendment rights and eliminates an important constitutional constraint on searches. Virginia counters that the officer’s search was justified by the automobile exception because, people have lowered expectations of privacy in their automobiles, which are heavily regulated property. Furthermore, as automobiles can be quickly moved out of a warrant’s jurisdiction, Virginia contends that requiring the police to wait for a warrant is impractical and would impede police investigations. How the Court decides on the constitutionality of the search will determine whether the automobile exception applies to vehicles on private property, or if that exception is superseded by the protections of curtilage.

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In August 2009, David Riley was pulled over in San Diego, California for having expired tags on his car and a suspended driver’s license. As per police department policy, the officer impounded Riley’s car and conducted a warrantless search of the car. The officer found two handguns that were later linked to a shooting that had taken place a few weeks prior. During the arrest, the officers confiscated and rummaged through the data on Riley’s smartphone without a warrant. Some of the data on the phone linked Riley to gang activity and the shooting and was entered into evidence at the trial, where Riley was convicted on three charges. Riley argues that allowing police officers to search through data on his cell phone without a warrant is an unacceptable intrusion on personal privacy. California argues that police officers need to be able to confiscate cell phones without first obtaining a warrant for safety reasons and to prevent destruction of evidence. The Supreme Court’s decision in this case will affect the balance between those two concerns and the scope of Fourth Amendment protection available to personal technology. 

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In 1996 the California Legislature adopted Penal Code section 3067, mandating that every prisoner eligible for release on state parole “shall agree in writing to be subject to search or seizure by a parole officer or other peace officer at any time of the day or night, with or without a search warrant and with or without cause.” Petitioner Samson is a parolee who was arrested for drug possession after a search that was instigated solely because of his parolee status. Samson argues that under the Fourth Amendment he enjoys a diminished yet reasonable expectation to privacy that is eliminated by California’s 1996 parole search condition, which Samson claims “confers unfettered discretion on law enforcement officers to conduct searches of parolees.” The Supreme Court will have to decide whether a parolee's diminished expectation of privacy makes parolees subject to searches where there is no suspicion at all of any wrongdoing.

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