Texas-Book-Gun Law Armed And Educated - Flipbook - Page 39
searches of private homes. Justice Thomas wrote for the Court,
“neither the holding nor the logic of Cady justified” the warrantless
search and seizure inside the private home. Id.
EXAMPLE:
A police officer observes Dylan vomiting out of the passenger
window of a moving vehicle. The officer can lawfully conduct a
traffic stop of the automobile to determine whether he needs
medical attention. While he is conducting the stop, he determines
that both Dylan and the driver are intoxicated and arrests him for
public intoxication and the driver for driving while intoxicated.
F. Traffic stops
The most common encounters with the police are traffic stops. The
police have the ability to make a traffic stop for any violation that
they witness. It is commonly said that a police officer could follow
any car for 10 minutes and observe some traffic violation that would
allow him to stop a car. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case
of Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393 (2014), held that the police
can make a traffic stop or other temporary detention based upon
information provided by an anonymous person. This ruling could
profoundly impact Fourth Amendment law in the future.
VIII. THE FIFTH AMENDMENT
A. What are my rights against self-incrimination?
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual
from being compelled to be a “witness against himself,” among
other rights. This means the state cannot force a person to make
statements or testify in court, especially when they are against their
own self-interest or are incriminating.
28 | CHAPTER TWO
