evidence

In an earlier blog post, I stated that the Supreme Court held that a warrant is required to put a GPS device on someone's car.  I was wrong.  Turns out, however, I was in the company of many people talking about the decision.

Apparently the justices of the Supreme Court like to have their cake and eat it too. Or, so it seems from today's opinion on identifications in criminal cases.

In an eight-to-one opinion, the Supreme Court of the United States today limited a criminal defendant's right to challenge an eyewitness's claim that he saw the defendant commit a crime. The case, Perry v. New Hampshire [pdf], involves a pre-trial procedure challenging an eyewitness identification through a motion to suppress.

Motions to suppress identification have the effect, if granted, of preventing evidence of an out-of-court identification from ever reaching a jury at a trial. At times, they may even have the effect of preventing an eyewitness from identifying a defendant during the trial as the perpetrator of the crime.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Supreme Court added to its list the case of Jardines v. Florida [pdf].

This means that the Supreme Court must decide whether using a drug-sniffing dog on the outside of a person's home without a warrant violates the right to be safe from unreasonable searches, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Brent Kendall of the Wall Street Journal summarized.