Short Circuit 272 | Elizabeth Warren and Jackets

The Stash-it-at-Your-Mom's House Case

The podcast delves into a case from the Fifth Circuit, United States v. Ramirez, involving a conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The case revolves around a search and seizure issue. The defendant, Ramirez, tossed his jacket over a fence onto his mother's property during a police stop. The police retrieved the jacket and found a gun inside. The majority opinion concludes that the search of the jacket violated the Fourth Amendment and the evidence of the gun should have been excluded. The majority analyzes the case under both the reasonable expectation of privacy and property rights frameworks, ultimately ruling that Ramirez did not abandon the jacket and therefore had a protected property interest in it. The dissenting judge believed Ramirez had abandoned the jacket, citing the jacket's landing on a trash bin and the accessible location of his mother's property. The outcome sets an important precedent for the protection of property rights and the reasonable expectation of privacy.