Jay-Z’s 99 Problems vs. The Fourth Amendment

Line-by-line analysis of the second verse of 99 Problems by Jay-Z, from the perspective of a criminal procedure professor.

The calculation Jay-Z has to make is whether, knowing that the car contains concealed contraband, he’s better off trying to flee or hoping that the police won’t find the drugs during the stop. This may be the hardest choice perps face (until they have to decide whether or not to cooperate), but there’s only one answer: you are always better off having drugs found on you in a potentially illegal search than you are fleeing from a potentially illegal search and getting caught.

And turns out there a quite a few ways to get the search declared illegal.

JAY-Z’S 99 PROBLEMS, VERSE 2: A CLOSE READING WITH FOURTH AMENDMENT GUIDANCE FOR COPS AND PERPS (PDF) →

(via Jeremy)

Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

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