05/01/2021
In law school I was a happy recipient of the gavel/book award in criminal law, only because I was interested and always have been focused on criminal law and procedure. Today I want to post a short mnemonic to assist in the study of law enforcement searches. Government searches have two major categories, searches with warrants and warrantless searches, today the mnemonic concerns warrantless searches. This is not a detailed course in the area of searches, each area that I will mention has many cases and indeed books written about that one subject matter. However, this is a mnemonic to assist in remembering the categories of warrantless searches which allow you to break down, identify and analyze warrantless searches more easily.
Anyway, since I am in Georgia, the peach state, I developed a memory aid, IS A PEACH. This mnemonic allows you to easily recall each and every valid warrantless search category:
I; Incident to a lawful arrest,
S; Stop and frisk,
A; administrative searches,
P; plain view,
E; Exigent circumstances,
A; Automobile,
C; Consent,
H, Hot pursuit.
Now that we have the mnemonic, is a peach, to jump to a category it will be much easier to learn the case law allowing for each exception to the warrant requirement. Later I will post major court holdings and seminal cases that developed and carved these exceptions to the warrant requirement over centuries of law. I look forward to discussing these exceptions with everyone in detail. Please don't hesitate to ask questions and inquire further. Thanks so much for your time and interest. Godspeed!
