Police officers have sirens, flashing lights, badges, and handcuffs, so they can pull you over or arrest you whenever they want, right? Wrong. Under the law, people in the United States have rights that protect them from the unreasonable actions of police officers, and officers must act within the confines of the law. However, this does not mean that officers do not abuse their authority and violate the law – and the rights of the public. 

When police violate your rights, it can have a significant impact on a subsequent criminal case if you face charges. You should seek help from a criminal defense attorney who can identify whether the police violated your rights at a traffic stop and how to use that violation as part of your defense.

No Justification for a Traffic Stop

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects you from unreasonable search and seizure, which includes unreasonable detention or arrest. Because of this protection, police must have justification to pull you over – specifically, reasonable suspicion that you have violated the law in some way. It could be as simple as failing to signal for a turn, but there has to be some violation. If an officer has no reason to believe you violated the law, the traffic stop itself violates your rights.

Too often, however, officers will act with racial bias or will pull people over late at night on the off chance they may be intoxicated (without observing any signs of impaired driving). Many traffic stops may be unlawful and may violate your Fourth Amendment rights.

Unreasonable Search of Your Vehicle

An officer can conduct a search of your vehicle if they have a search warrant, if they have probable cause to believe there is evidence of a crime, or if you consent. You always have the right to deny a search request and if you do so, an officer who stopped you will need to demonstrate probable cause for the search (since they usually will not have a search warrant for a vehicle they just pulled over).

Probable cause is a higher standard than reasonable suspicion and must be based on factual information. Officers cannot simply say they had a hunch you had drugs in the car – they must show reason on which to base their suspicions. If police officers arrest you, they can perform a search incident to arrest, but they cannot search closed compartments of your car or anywhere that would not hold evidence of your offense. You would be surprised how many vehicle searches violate a driver’s rights, and any evidence stemming from the unlawful search should be suppressed.

Failing to Read Your Rights

If police arrest you or simply tell you that you are not free to go, you are considered to be in police custody for the purposes of the law. If police want to ask questions of someone in custody, they must first read the suspect their Miranda Rights. These rights include the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present under the Fifth Amendment. It is a violation of the Constitution if police ask you any questions in custody without informing you of these rights.

Police Brutality

Police cannot use force whenever they want to. The law allows officers to use a reasonable amount of force to make an arrest or defend themselves from imminent harm. When determining what amount of force is “reasonable,” officers should consider the circumstances, including:

• The severity of the suspected offense
• The potential threat of the suspect to the community
• Whether the suspect was trying to resist arrest or flee

When the circumstances do not warrant using force – such as when a suspect is not resisting – officers who use force engage in unlawful police brutality.

In recent years, much attention has been focused on the unjustified use of deadly force by police. There are specific circumstances under which police have the right to use force they reasonably know will cause severe or fatal bodily harm. Such circumstances include when a suspect poses the threat of serious harm to the officer, or when a suspect who creates a threat to others is fleeing. Police are not allowed to shoot at someone who is running away if they do not pose a threat. Unfortunately, you only need to read the news to see that officers can use unjustified and unlawful force and deadly force against citizens.

Your Rights after Police Misconduct

If police officers violate your rights, you can seek relief in various ways. First, if you are facing criminal charges after a traffic stop arrest, a skilled criminal defense lawyer can examine how to use any police misconduct as part of your defense. Some examples include:

• If police pulled you over without reasonable suspicion, any information, evidence, or arrests stemming from the traffic stop are unlawful
• If police illegally searched your car, any evidence they found should be suppressed from your case
• If police failed to read your Miranda rights, any answers you gave to their questions should be suppressed

Often, raising constitutional violations can result in the dismissal of your charges. You need an attorney who understands how to identify when police violated your rights.

If you were the victim of police brutality, you have the right to file a lawsuit under federal law, 42 U.S. Code § 1983. You can seek damages for physical injuries, monetary losses, and emotional distress stemming from the brutality. Family members who lose loved ones due to police brutality also have the right to sue for their losses.

Our Knoxville Criminal Defense Lawyer is Here to Help At Barnes Law, we regularly represent criminal defendants who had their rights violated by police. We know how to raise violations as part of a comprehensive defense strategy. We defend against every type of criminal charge, from traffic offenses to violent crimes.

To get a criminal conviction at trial, a prosecutor must present enough evidence to convince a judge or jury that the defendant is guilty of the specified offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Because this is the highest burden of proof in the U.S. justice system, it often requires a substantial amount of evidence to meet. Law enforcement can provide evidence from investigations and the prosecutor can present the evidence in court.

Evidence can come in many forms, including:

• Physical objects
• Photographs
• Witness statements
• Video or audio recordings
• Digital data
• Scientific findings

The law in the United States does not allow all types of evidence to be submitted in court against a defendant, however. There are many protections for defendants in place and rules of evidence that dictate when evidence can be lawfully obtained and presented in court. When illegal evidence comes against a defendant, it can often lead to a wrongful conviction. For this reason, it is imperative to have a highly skilled criminal defense lawyer handling your case who knows how to get evidence “suppressed.”

Motions to Suppress

The suppression of evidence occurs when a judge rules that certain evidence should not be submitted at trial. In order for a judge to rule on such an issue, a lawyer must often file a motion with the court asking for a ruling. A motion to suppress is the catalyst that can lead to the keeping evidence out of your criminal case.

In order to succeed on a motion to suppress, your attorney must present sufficient factual information and apply specific laws to those facts to convince the judge that the evidence is illegal. Law presented in these motions can include case law, state or federal rules, or often, the Constitution of the United States. These motions must be persuasively drafted with sound legal analysis and reasoning.

The prosecution can respond to your motion to suppress with their own arguments in favor of the evidence. In some cases, the court will hold a motion hearing during which both parties will argue their case. The judge will then rule on whether the evidence should be suppressed or not.

The Importance of Evidence Suppression

Often, the suppression of the right evidence can lead a jury to acquit you at trial, or even to the dismissal of charges before a trial ever happens. A common example happens in drug-related cases. In order to convict you of drug possession, the prosecutor must usually prove that police found a controlled substance. They cannot simply tell the jury you had cocaine – instead, they should have the evidence tested and present test results as proof that the substance in question was cocaine.

If police officers obtained the drugs unlawfully – which is more common than you may imagine – a defense attorney can file a motion to suppress the illegally-obtained drug evidence. If the motion is successful, the prosecutor can no longer use that drug evidence to prove that you possessed drugs. This is often the main piece of evidence in drug cases and without it, the prosecution usually knows it cannot prove the drug charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, they may often dismiss the charges then and there. This is only one of many examples of how the suppression of evidence can prevent a conviction.

Common Reasons to Suppress Evidence

As part of the discovery phase of a criminal case, your attorney will obtain and analyze all the evidence the prosecution plans to use against you and how the evidence was obtained. An experienced attorney should be able to identify when there is reason to file a motion to suppress.

Some examples of evidence commonly suppressed include:

• Evidence obtained by an unreasonable search in violation of your Fourth Amendment rights
• Evidence obtained due to an unlawful traffic stop or arrest, which constitutes an unreasonable seizure in violation of your Fourth Amendment rights
• Confessions obtained without proper Miranda warnings in violation of your Fifth Amendment rights
• Confessions obtained by coercion or physical force
• Evidence that constitutes hearsay without a valid exception under the Federal Rules of Evidence
• Evidence that is not relevant to the case at hand
• Evidence that is unreasonably prejudicial to the defendant
• Evidence that is not reliable

The question of reliability often arises in criminal cases, as prosecutors often try to admit evidence based on questionable science. This can include evidence involving fingerprints, bloodstain patterns, eyewitness identifications, or DNA. For example, for decades, many people took the witness stand and claimed they were “experts” in analyzing blood spatter and giving their opinion on how the crime occurred. However, in recent years, scientific studies have cast substantial doubt on the reliability of blood spatter analysis and claim such “experts” led to many wrongful convictions. In this day and age, defense attorneys regularly question a prosecutor’s blood spatter testimony and seek for it to be suppressed.

In addition, defense lawyers know that forensic labs can make many mistakes that lead to unreliable testimony. This is common in DUI cases in which a blood test showed a defendant had drugs in their system or a blood alcohol content (BAC) over the legal limit. Labs may mislabel or switch samples, store them improperly, fail to record results right away, use uncalibrated testing equipment, and make many other mistakes that should render their testimony and the test results unreliable for admission at trial.

Contact a Knoxville Criminal Defense Attorney for Help Today

There are many, many other types of evidence that should be suppressed from criminal trials. The problem is that unrepresented defendants often do not realize when evidence against them is unlawful or how to go about getting it suppressed. Suppressing key evidence is only one of many defense strategies we regularly pursue at Barnes Law. If you were arrested or face criminal charges, you should not wait any longer to call a skilled Knoxville defense lawyer for a free consultation. The sooner Barnes Law starts working on your case, the sooner we can start building the most effective defense strategy for you.