4th Amendment Confusion

TJ Nicolella, Amber Altomare

Click HERE to view our documentary or watch below

Our documentary outlines some of the confusion and different interpretations of the 4th amendment and how that causes more problems than it solves.

          ​Amber and I chose this topic because it was something that has been coming up a lot in news these days. There have been stories of search and seizure incidents around Philadelphia and in places like airports and train stations. This topic even relates to me in some ways. Every weekend, if me or other people are outside past ten o'clock, cops will stop us and ask to search the bags we are carrying without giving us an explanation why. This project was great because it allowed us to be creative and make a video that explores different parts of the amendment that we wanted a provision for. Each person that looked into the same amendment had a very different outlook on the outlines of that amendment and talked about different things within it. The most challenging part was the editing of the video and finding actual C-Span clips that made sense for my video. The most interesting fact that I found when researching the fourth amendment was that I had the right to refuse searches if they breach my fourth amendment rights. There really needs to be no improvement to the project, but maybe add some checkpoints throughout the duration of the benchmark.
          We ran into trouble when attempting to find C-Span footage that would work well with our video because a lot of the downloadable footage was composed of two people debating with a moderator talking between them. Some things that went well include our ability to outline a valid problem within the amendment and how it could be interpreted in many different ways by different people. If I had to do this project again I would start much earlier than I did. I would also film some interviews about the topic of interest. Throughout this process, I learned that much of the language in the constitution is left to be determined differently by courts and in some cases is very outdated by today's standards.