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Invading privacy as well as "barking up the wrong tree"

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’s vehicle based exclusively on the alleged odor of cannabis, and second, whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to overturn the defendant’s conviction. The ºìÐÓÊÓƵ’s Criminal Reform Legal Project and State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ºìÐÓÊÓƵ of Tennessee filed an amicus brief arguing first, that after Tennessee’s legalization of hemp in 2019, an officer’s 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’s conviction.

Wildfires raging across Greater Los Angeles have revealed that our county and cities are not only under-resourced to combat natural disasters but also ill-prepared to protect people in custody.