The Fourth Amendment

I. THE FOURTH AMENDMENT SHOULD CONTROL MALICIOUS PROSECUTION CLAIMS INVOLVING PRETRAIL DETENTIONS WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE
Years ago this Court instructed that the Fourth Amendment should be used to analyze allegedly unconstitutional “detention[s] of suspects pending trial.” Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 125 n.27 (1975). Since then this Court has reaffirmed that the “detention of criminal suspects” is “governed by the provisions of the Fourth Amendment.” Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 274 (1994) (plurality opinion) (“The Framers considered the matter of pretrial deprivations of liberty and drafted the Fourth Amendment to address it.”).
In Albright, the Fourth Amendment was declared the proper vehicle for analyzing a malicious prosecution claim. In that case, the plaintiff Albright was arrested pursuant to a warrant on suspicion of selling a substance that looked like an illegal drug. Albright posted bond and was released on the condition that he not leave the state without permission. The trial court eventually dismissed the charges against him “on the ground that the charge did not state an offense under Illinois law.” Albright, 510 U.S. at 268-69 (plurality opinion).
Albright sued the arresting officer and others under Section 1983. Because he was never incarcerated, “Albright may have feared that courts would
The reasoning of that decision is to give people arrested without warrants the same basic “protection against unfounded invasions of liberty and privacy” that the Fourth Amendment extends to those arrested with warrants. Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 112. When people are arrested without warrants and then incarcerated for an extended period without probable cause, it is just as “essential” that the Fourth Amendment provide protection as when such detentions occur pursuant to warrants. Id. at