Probable Cause Quotes

In Ferguson, there are witnesses who say Brown had his hands up when he was shot. That should be enough probable cause to go to trial to then determine if Officer Wilson is guilty or not. It is at trial that he can then defend himself and his attorneys can present their own witnesses and their own defense.

Circumstantial evidence is evidence.

The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the Revolution over!

There is no such thing as absolute proof. There is only evidence.

The Constitution defends all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes reasonableness depends upon threat.

At least three studies, in the U.S., Canada and Sweden, have linked glyphosate exposure to the disease, and in 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer found glyphosate to be a 'probable' cause of cancer in humans. California's state environmental protection agency has also declared it a probable carcinogen.

People in general have no notion of the sort and amount of evidence often needed to prove the simplest matter of fact.

To get a FISA warrant to spy on a suspected spy, the feds go before a super-secret court located in a sealed room in the Department of Justice. With no defense lawyers present, they need only show probable cause that the target is an 'agent of a foreign power' engaged in intelligence gathering against the United States.

I think we've made the collection haystack so big, no one's ever getting through the haystack to find the needle. What we really need to do is isolate the haystack into a group of suspicious people and spend enormous resources looking at suspicious people, people who we have probable cause.

It would not be permissible for you to build a home and not let law enforcement in if they had a search warrant. If they think there's a crime ongoing, they go to court and get a warrant, and they're permitted to come in your home under the Fourth Amendment.

Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.

Police officers must act quickly to seize wrongdoers and obtain evidence while protecting themselves and bystanders. It is easy to second-guess their search-and-seizure decisions in a secure courtroom.

I was once arrested for resisting arrest.

We don't have storm troopers that just knock on the door of every American citizen. We don't do that for any crime. But when we have evidence that a particular person has committed a crime, we send law enforcement to apprehend them.

I can't be under arrest now... I don't have time.

Quality-of-life policing is based on probable cause - an officer has witnessed a crime personally or has a witness to the crime.

A reasonable doubt is nothing more than a doubt for which reasons can be given. The fact that 1 or 2 men out of 12 differ from the others does not establish that their doubts are reasonable.

An arrest is not justified by what the subsequent search discloses.

Rule of law is based on probable cause.

Yet far from putting any meaningful constraints on law enforcement in this war, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the police license to stop and search just about anyone, in any public place, without a shred of evidence of criminal activity, and it has also closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the judicial process from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing.

It's OK if we wiretap Osama bin Laden. I want to know what he's planning - obviously not him nowadays, but that kind of thing. I don't care if it's a pope or a bin Laden. As long as investigators must go to a judge - an independent judge, a real judge, not a secret judge - and make a showing that there's probable cause to issue a warrant, then they can do that. And that's how it should be done.

I was lecturing at the Columbia Journalism School of Education. I asked them about what was happening to the Fourth Amendment. I said, "By the way, do you know what is in the Fourth Amendment?" One student responded, "Is that the right to bear arms?" It's hard to believe these are bright students.

It must always be remembered that what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.

It all comes down to probable cause: If you think something's up, maybe you gotta take a look.

The Fourth Amendment is clear; we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, and all warrants must have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives - without probable cause and without a warrant.