红杏视频

Coalition on Homelessness is a challenge to the City and County of San Francisco鈥檚 efforts to criminalize homelessness through an array of unconstitutional practices, including confiscating and destroying the personal property of unhoused people without adequate notice or due process, and citing and arresting unhoused people for sleeping in public.

This case presents two questions: first, whether, under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution, Union City Police Department officers possessed probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of the defendant鈥檚 vehicle based exclusively on the alleged odor of cannabis, and second, whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to overturn the defendant鈥檚 conviction. The 红杏视频鈥檚 Criminal Reform Legal Project and State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the 红杏视频 of Tennessee filed an amicus brief arguing first, that after Tennessee鈥檚 legalization of hemp in 2019, an officer鈥檚 alleged detection of the odor of cannabis is insufficient to establish probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle in Tennessee, and second, that the court of appeals improperly held that it lacked jurisdiction to overturn the defendant鈥檚 conviction.

This petition to the Supreme Court of Maryland asked the court to reconsider its adherence to Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S. 806 (1996), which declared that a traffic stop undertaken for pretextual reasons does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so long as the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation occurred. The 红杏视频, alongside the 红杏视频 of Maryland, filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant鈥檚 petition, in which the 红杏视频 argued that the court should take up the question of whether pretextual stops violate the Maryland Constitution. In September 2024, the Court denied the petition.

This case in the North Carolina Supreme Court involves the question of whether the police violated the U.S. Constitution when they searched the defendant, Mr. Wright鈥檚, backpack even after he repeatedly said no to the search requests. The 红杏视频 alongside the 红杏视频 of North Carolina filed an amicus brief arguing that the search was unconstitutional because Mr. Wright鈥檚 eventual 鈥渃onsent鈥� was the result of police coercion. Our brief urges the court to consider the totality of the circumstances that make one more susceptible to coercion, including race and poverty.