VEHICLE SEARCHES, CASE LAW, AND ORG CHARTS - 044

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau. Vehicle searches, case law and organizational charts.

I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode number 44 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. I'd like to thank gold shield patron Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, gold shield patron C.C. Jameson from ccjameson.com, and my two newest gold shield patrons, Larry Keeton and Vicki Tharp of vickitharp.com, for their support.

I'd also like to thank my newest coffee club patrons, Amanda Feyerbend and Thon Erb, as well as all of my longtime coffee club patrons for their support month after month. Please support all of these authors by reading their books and leaving reviews for them on your favorite bookseller's website. You can find links to all of their websites in the show notes by going to writersdetective.com/44.

And gold shield patrons get access to a secret Facebook group with two live streams with me per month, and direct access to me for help with their writing. So if you'd like to learn more about the gold shield patronage tier, or if you have your own author business, you should consider checking out Patreon. As a creator, Patreon is free for you, and allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micropayments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

Before we get into this week's content, I wanted to give a quick shout out to Amanda Feyerbend, who is not only one of my latest coffee club patrons. She also hit me up on Twitter today. And Amanda tweeted this to her followers, "I've spent the morning reading transcripts from Writer's Detectives podcasts. I print them out because I'm a visual learner and can take notes easier. If you write mysteries, definitely check them out. Lots of great info.

Thank you so much for the Twitter love, Amanda. Amanda is the author of The Pruitt County Mysteries and The Ideal Woman. And anyone that is serious enough to print out the transcripts of these episodes to do her storytelling homework definitely deserves some credit for that. You can find her work at amandafeyerbend.com. And that's F-E-Y-E-R-B-E-N-D. And I will link to Amanda's site in the show notes at writersdetective.com/44.

As a teacher myself, I understand the importance of reaching all learner types. And that's one of the biggest reasons why I use rev.com to create complete transcripts of every episode. As I talked about in episode 43, I also used rev.com to help me dictate portions of my upcoming book. Now, most of us talk faster than we can type. And if you're on a deadline, leveraging on the go time can be priceless. So if you'd like to give rev.com a shot, you can get $10 off your first order by going to writersdetectivebureau.com/rev, and that's R-E-V.

George Carroll and John Kiro were in George's car on a highway similar between Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan, when they were pulled over by law enforcement. And the cops searched the car and discovered gin and whiskey hidden within the upholstered seat backs. I should probably mention that this was during 1921, the start of the roaring 20's, but a year into prohibition. The United States nationwide ban on alcohol that lasted until 1933.

So what's this story got to do with modern policing? Well, the automobile was still a relatively new convenience back then. And George Carroll's attorney made the argument that the cops needed a search warrant to search for the alcohol hidden in George's car. The case was Carroll versus United States, or Carroll v. United States. And it was heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1925. The supreme court ruled that there was a necessary difference between the search of a building and the search of a vehicle. And that seeking a search warrant is not practical because the vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought.

But they also went on to recognize that it would be unreasonable for prohibition agents to stop every automobile on the road. Well, I guess I should have mentioned that old George, the whiskey runner, had previously been in negotiations with undercover prohibition agents to sell them some illegal liquor. That transaction never happened, but on the night he was stopped and searched by prohibition agents George was driving the same car and with the same business partner as when the undercover deal was being negotiated.

So in other words, the prohibition agents were able to articulate their probable cause for searching this particular vehicle for illegal alcohol. There've been various cases since 1925 that covered the legal complexities of warrant-less searches of vehicles and when a search warrant is required, like in Gant v. Arizona. But I won't bore you with all of those details because that won't help your story very much. But it's worth understanding that when a case is appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, it's not a matter of listening to a jury trial with witnesses and such all over again.

It's after a trial has taken place and one side files an appeal alleging that something unconstitutional occurred during the trial process. In George Carroll's case, he alleged that his fourth amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures had been violated. And up until that point there was no codified law, meaning no specific legal statute or section, nor any case law, meaning a previously decided court case, to give any guidance on the constitutionality of the circumstances.

So when the US Supreme Court ruled that if law enforcement has sufficient probable cause to get a search warrant for a vehicle, they do not need to get that warrant to search. They can just go ahead and do it. And that established a new rule across the entire United States. You may hear it referred to as case law or as a landmark case, or a landmark decision, or even the Latin phrase stare decisis, which means to stand by that which is decided.

It's also important to understand that case law can also be decided at the state level in state courts of appeals and a state Supreme Court. And then in US district courts and US courts of appeals. So when a legal precedent is set in these lower courts, it then applies everywhere within the jurisdiction of that court. Sometimes the reason for a case to be appealed to a higher court like the Supreme Court is because a decision in one court may directly contradict the decision in another similar case in a different jurisdiction.

If it sounds tedious, time consuming and complicated, well, that's because it is. Carroll v. United States took from 1921 was the arrest, to the Supreme Court landmark decision in 1925. For the case of Miranda v. Arizona where we get the, you have the right to remain silent admonishment, Miranda was arrested in March of 1963 and the supreme court's decision was handed down in 1966, which resulted in Miranda being retried and convicted in 1967.

So as they say, the wheels of justice grind slowly. Oh and you may have noticed that when we were talking about court cases, where it's a plaintiff or complainant versus a defendant. Versus, when we're writing it is abbreviated as the letter V and then a period. So save the Vs period when you're talking about versus for a boxing ring.

Coffee club patron Rick Siem of ricksiem.com, and that's S-I-E-M, asked is there a difference between a department and a bureau? Well, Rick, I actually answered this in a blog post back in 2017. And since 99.9% of you guys listening to this haven't read it, we'll pretend I'm not just reading this off the blog page of my website. All right, here it goes.

As you create the bureaucratic world your police characters will work within, it's worth paying attention to the names of their larger agencies and the smaller investigative units within. The terms used to describe each group often indicates their size, purpose, responsibilities, and level within the larger agency.

The term department usually denotes the parent organization. The United States Department of Justice, The New York Police Department, The US Department of Homeland Security, The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, are all examples of this. The term office may also be used as a synonym for department, especially when the head of that organizational group holds a publicly elected office.

A sheriff is an elected official, and it's somewhat common to refer to a sheriff's department as a sheriff's office. Now, bureaus in divisions are often large subdivisions within a department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a bureau within the US Department of Justice. The criminal investigations division may be a division within a police department. And at the federal level the terms bureau, agency, administration, and service usually indicate an individual agency within a department.

The Transportation Security Administration, TSA, the US Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, are all individual agencies within the US Department of Homeland Security. The Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, the Bureau of Prisons and the US Marshal's Service are all agencies within the US Department of Justice. And a quick spelling alert, there is only one L in Marshal when we're talking about the United States Marshal Service. It's pretty common in state and local police agencies to create their own hierarchy where a division is comprised of several bureaus.

Examples could be a criminal investigations division, having a forensic bureau or a patrol division, having bureaus defined by geography such as a central bureau or valley bureau. Or a special operations division, having a narcotics bureau. The smallest investigative subdivisions are most often called units or teams. A detective assigned to work sexual assault cases might work in a unit called Special Victims Unit. The SVU may be one of a handful of units within a major crimes bureau.

The major crimes bureau would likely be one of several bureaus within a criminal investigations division. And similarly a narcotics detective may work on a narcotic street team within a Narcotics Bureau in the Special Investigations Division for the sheriff's office. Now artistic license grants you the ability to dream up any name you desire for these organizational subdivisions. But being aware that the terms department, division, bureau, unit and team are not necessarily synonyms, may be a subtle way to add some realism to your work. Understanding these delineations between groups may help you add conflict or explain why certain characters are or are not privy to pertinent information that will drive your plot forward.

And finally, I am recording this on May 31st, 2019, which is the last day of the month. Which means my APB mailing list members are about to receive their monthly list of curated links for crime fiction writers. Links like Steven Pressfield's amazing article on the absolute best way to use dialogue for exposition. And it's not in the way you may have expected. Or debunking myths about using a pen name, and the real life story of a human trafficking survivor.

And finally, I am recording this on May 31st, 2019, which is the last day of the month. Which means my APB mailing list members are about to receive their monthly list of curated links for crime fiction writers. Links like Steven Pressfield's amazing article on the absolute best way to use dialogue for exposition. And it's not in the way you may have expected. Or debunking myths about using a pen name, and the real life story of a human trafficking survivor.

So if you'd like to receive curated content for crime fiction writers just like you, consider joining the Writer's Detective APB by visiting writersdetective.com/mailinglist. When you sign up, look for an immediate confirmation email from me. And if you don't see it, be sure to check your spam folder. You'll need to click the link in that confirmation email to start receiving the APBs.

But when you do confirm, you will get the January and February APB sent to you immediately. And when you sign up, you'll also learn that I have a reference book for Crime Fiction Authors and screenwriters coming out very soon. But the secret that no one knows yet is that I just put it up for presale. Now, the big presale announcement will come on Monday with some help from my friend Joanna Penn. But if you'd like to get beta access to the book before its official release in August, be sure to click on the link when you join the mailing list, and I may just end up tapping you for some reader feedback in the coming weeks ahead. So access to all of that starts by visiting writersdetective.com/mailinglist.

Thank you so much for listening this week. Make sure you hit that subscribe button to get every episode of the Writer's Detective Bureau podcast auto-magically. If you enjoyed this episode, would you leave me a review? And if you didn't, will you share this podcast with someone who will? This podcast is created for you, so don't be shy and send me your crime fiction questions by going to writersdetective.com/podcast. Thanks again for listening. Have a great week, and write well.