The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution requires that searches and seizures be reasonable and that warrants be based upon probable cause. The text of the amendment applies only to federal officers and does not contain a remedy on its face for violations. Through the incorporation of the Fourth Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has applied the search and seizure provision of the Fourth Amendment to the individual states. The primary importance of the application of the Fourth Amendment to the states is the imposition of the exclusionary rule as a tool to control state authority and a remedy for Fourth Amendment violations. Using the exclusionary rule, the courts have the ability both to oversee the use of state power and to control that power by refusing to authorize outrageous abuses of it (Wayne R. LaFave, 1990)
In earlier interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court required state actors, such as police officers, always to show probable cause before seizing a person. The state actor could show probable cause to a neutral magistrate before making a seizure, and thereby obtain a warrant authorizing the seizure, or the state actor could make the showing after seizing a person when the person was on trail. Absent a showing of probable cause that the individual was engaged in wrongdoing at the time of the seizure, however, the seizure was found unconstitutional (Gregory Howard Williams, 1991).
Let’s discuss some of the cases in search and seizure provision like in Maryland v. Wilson, the Supreme Court addressed whether police officers can order an innocent passenger to exit a vehicle when the driver is lawfully stopped for traffic violations. The Court held that, as a matter of officer safety, police officers may order a passenger out of a lawfully stopped vehicle without having any particular reason to believe that the passenger poses a threat to the officer...........
