This program delivers a deep, defense-oriented analysis of modern Fourth Amendment law, focusing on search and seizure issues that arise routinely in drug prosecutions and other criminal cases. It walks through the foundational questions every suppression motion turns on—what constitutes a search, what constitutes a seizure, and whose rights are implicated—while integrating recent federal developments that significantly expand opportunities for defense challenges. Rather than presenting doctrine in the abstract, the program emphasizes how courts actually analyze government conduct in real cases, including technological surveillance, electronic data, and evolving law-enforcement practices.

Criminal defense lawyers who watch this program will gain a practical framework for identifying suppression issues that are often overlooked or underdeveloped. The program explores warrant requirements, probable cause failures, overbreadth and particularity problems, and the many exceptions the government relies on—such as consent, plain view, exigent circumstances, and searches incident to arrest—and explains how those exceptions can be narrowed or defeated. It also highlights emerging arguments grounded in property-based and “positive law” theories, reminding lawyers to preserve alternative Fourth Amendment claims that can make the difference between suppression and waiver on appeal.

The program also equips defense attorneys with litigation-ready tools for motion practice and hearings. Lawyers will learn how to analyze the chronology and causation of police conduct, attack the good-faith exception, expose unlawful expansions of private searches, and challenge digital and technological intrusions such as cell phone searches, location tracking, and electronic surveillance. By synthesizing current case law with a defense-first perspective, this program strengthens suppression motions, sharpens cross-examination of officers, preserves appellate issues, and gives criminal defense lawyers concrete leverage to exclude evidence and reshape the trajectory of their cases.