CSI Case Law is the 2023 course built for officers who process and protect crime scenes. The course is a focused application of Fourth Amendment doctrine and Miranda doctrine to the specific challenges of crime scene work, anchored to recent case law that real officers actually need to know.
The course is organized around three major themes. The five-question search and seizure framework as it applies to crime scenes, broken into five lessons covering private actors versus government agents, protected areas (curtilage, homes, digital property), whether a search or seizure occurred under Katz and Jones, CREW (Consent, Recognized Exception, or Warrant), and the integration of all four questions into a working framework. The crime scene authority doctrines: consent in two parts, warrants and the search warrant preference, exigency and the Emergency Aid Exception (Brigham City v. Stuart), freezing homes in anticipation of a warrant, coroner and arson investigations with their specialized statutory authority, dealing with witnesses, and detaining occupants under Michigan v. Summers. And Miranda in the crime scene context, including the public safety exception from New York v. Quarles.
After completing this course, you will be able to run the full framework on any crime scene, identify the protected areas, articulate CREW for every action, distinguish emergency aid from forensic processing, use consent and warrants correctly, work alongside coroners and fire investigators without misusing their authority, handle witnesses cleanly, detain occupants under Summers, and preserve admissible statements through correct Miranda application. You will leave with the toolkit that turns crime scene work into convictions that hold up at trial.
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