Sam McGovern

We live in a day and age where the media is full of tragic stories of police-citizen encounters gone wrong. As a former police officer, now lawyer, I’ve realized that society may never be able to weed out the bad cops hidden among the vast majority of good officers who...

While the Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches by the government, police have historically been allowed fairly extensive search justification in vehicles.[1] Several exceptions have been established by the Supreme Court, creating a body of law specific to searching vehicles. These warrantless search exceptions fall into categories that include probable...

Seizure is a critical constitutional topic in the context of driving a car because it normally initiates the citizen-government encounter. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”[1] “The Fourth...