NCJ Number
137735
Journal
American Journal of Criminal Law Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Dated: (Winter 1992) Pages: 219-266
Date Published
1992
Length
48 pages
Annotation
This article assesses the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions that bear upon drug law enforcement under the fourth, sixth, and eighth amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
Abstract
The anti-drug effort has altered fourth-amendment jurisprudence. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has endorsed some powerful law enforcement tools, for example, the use of sobriety checkpoints and drug detection dogs, the Court has explicitly declined to approve the Drug Enforcement Administration's drug courier profile. Moreover, the Court has outlined procedural safeguards applicable to those tools, which, if violated, will render the search a per se fourth-amendment violation. The Court has ruled that it is permissible for the government to freeze all of a defendant's assets believed to be the fruits of alleged criminality, even if it prevents the defendant from hiring a high-priced attorney. The Court affirmed the sixth amendment's guarantee of effective representation, but rejected the notion that this representation may be secured with the spoils of illicit ventures. The eighth amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, has presented the Court with some as yet unresolved tensions. Although the Court had the opportunity to reassess the parameters of the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, to wit, whether a Michigan statute providing a life sentence for possession of 650 grams of cocaine is per se unconstitutional, no majority has yet endorsed a standard that clarifies this jurisprudence. 428 footnotes