Two Students Caught Smoking: Terry Searched by Vice Principal Choplick - Essay Sample

Introduction

Two female students from Piscataway Township High School were caught smoking cigarettes by a teacher in the washroom. The teacher asked the girls to accompany him to the principal's office. The Vice Principle Choplick inquired about smoking, where one girl admitted to the accusation while the other, Terry, denied it. Choplick asked Terry to hand him over her purse and observed a pack of cigarettes. However, Choplick kept searching through her wallet, where he found what he was interested in seeing. He found a pipe, a large amount of $1 bills, rolling papers and a small amount of marijuana. He as well found a notebook with a list of students that owed Terry money and two letters from potential buyers indicating that Terry was dealing marijuana. The principal called the police to report the case, and later called the girl's mother. Terry was found guilty of using and dealing illegal drugs and was expelled from the institution, with an additional fine of $1,000.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Constitutional Question

Does the elimination decree apply to pursuits conducted by school officials in public schools?

Holding

The Fourth Amendment's exclusion of perverse pursuits and appropriations applies to pursuits conducted by the administrators of public schools, and the search of the student's purse was judicious. The vote count was 6 for New Jersey and two against the New Jersy.

Subject

The opinion of the Court Dissent

Privacy

"In every convincing sense, students within the school's settings have reduced anticipation of privacy than other members of the general population." 1 "The pursuit in this discussion comprised a detailed and minuscule investigation of the respondent's notebook, from where the content of private letters and papers were thoroughly searched." 4

Balance

"The court has secured the welfares of the student against the interests of the needs of the school's officials, which is to maintain discipline by distinguishing the qualitative variance between the constitutional remedies to which the students and adults are titled." 3 "Categories of impositions that are considerably less disturbing than complete searches or seizure may be reasonable in accord with a balancing test even if the warrant and probable cause are absent, so long as the balancing test provides enough weight to the privacy interests that will be trespassed." 3

Fourth Amendment Although the Fourth Amendment speaks in terms of freedom from unjust pursuits, the Amendment fails to give the justification of most searches to the decision of the court or government officials. The composers of the Amendment balanced the welfares involved and decided that pursuit is rational when it is supported by a jurisdictional warrant based on the possible cause of the search."2 Similar to every government official, a teacher must obey their conduct to the Fourth Amendment's protection of personal security and privacy rights [p354]." 1

Skills and Understanding "As shown by the case provided, the teachers have limited knowledge, or rather, layman's awareness of the types of crimes that frequently occur in the school settings. Some of these crimes include theft, drug use, violence against teachers and fellow students, and even the distribution of drugs." 9 "Teachers have no training or the day-to-day experiences in the complications of possible causes which are possessed by law enforcement officers. Thus the teacher is ill-equipped and quick to make a hasty judgment of the probable cause." 6

Level of threat "The particular need of an instant reaction to behaviors that threatens the safety of the school population, be it students, teachers, and workers, or practices that threaten the general education process justifies the action of the Court to exclude school searches from the probable cause requirements and a warrant, and the decision applies to the standard determined by balancing the relevant interest." "Terry did not threaten the general discipline of the school, instead,

The responsibility of the teacher "The burden of usual teachers is to enhance students' welfare and provide education to the students." 5 "The teacher should focus on teaching the curriculum of education and other education-related subjects, other than deciding whether students should smoke or not since the decision lies between their conscience." 6

Teacher's Job "Effective teaching is based on the ability of the teacher to establish discipline and maintain order in the school environment before they began to teach. Thus, control must be enhanced before education is provided." 6 "The job of a teacher is to teach and guide students to focus on their education rather than looking for evidence against a particular mischief-maker." 6

Protection against threat "The school must safeguard other students from mistreatment by other students, and defend the educators from ferocity by few students whose behaviors have encouraged national concern in recent years."8 Terry's misconduct is not illegal, and it had no connection to violence, and neither did it pose severe threats to the discipline of the school." 1

Reasonable "When there is a real ground that the search shall produce evidence that the student is violating or has dishonored the rules and regulations of the school, the pursuit of the student's personal belongings is reasonable." 11 "When a criminal act has occurred, and the evidence would be found in the place that is suspected, is the constitutional minimum of justifying a complete search regardless of whether it is conducted according to a warrant or within one of the exclusions to the requirement of a permit." 10

Violation of gender sensitivity "In a suspected criminal act, gender roles are not put into concern, especially if the suspect can damage the evidence that would have been used against them." "It is unjust for a male teacher to look into a girl's purse, regarding that Irene is in the most sensitive development stage, and might be significantly disturbed that a male teacher might come across other private belongings when searching her purse, which is a violation of her sensitivity as a female."

Fourth amendment "In accepting the indistinct, unmatched, and avoidable retreat from generally applicable Fourth Amendment standards, the court sculpts out a broad exemption to rules that the Court has developed over years of allowing for the Fourth Amendment difficulties." 5

Agreement "I agree with the standards presented by the Court and its application of the rule to this case. Therefore, I coincide with the Court's judgment." 11 "I insistently disagree with the decision of the Court to put away the constitutional probable-cause standard when evaluating the constitutional legitimacy of schools."11

Article Summary

The article Technology's Continuum: Body Cameras, Data Collection, and Constitutional Searches by Rebecca Wexler discusses the violation of public privacy in the hands of the police. This article considers the constitutional privacy constraints on police body camera recordings of homes, which is a space that has been traditionally given high privacy constraints (Wexler, 2018). The author states that the courts have become biased against applying constitutional privacy protections to police-recorded videos since the introduction of the new technology. The article suggests that the body cameras are collecting evidence without the consent of the suspect, or the court, which amounts to warrantless search. The author seeks to open a new policy that considers the constitutional protection of privacy results of the body cameras. Body cameras are tools that gather evidence from a suspect without their consent, without the traditional form of acceptance. Thus this is another form of warrantless search that infringes the privacy of the suspect.

References

Wexler, R. (2018). Technology's Continuum: Body Cameras, Data Collection, and Constitutional Searches. In Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice (pp. 89-105). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75987-6_6