Citizens appeal to court and law enforcement agencies to have their constitutional rights protected. It is axiomatic that strengthening the legal basis for the life of society and improving the mechanism to protect the rights of the individual require a rethinking of many established institutions of law. Nevertheless, legislative and theoretical constructions, including those fixed in the latest drafts of the current criminal procedure legislation, essentially repeat the existing definitions of the tasks of the criminal process or only slightly modify them. The given work will discuss how the development of laws made the responsibilities of a criminal investigator change and prove that his or her work is strictly regulated by human rights laws.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that the rights to protect a person, home, papers and property from unreasonable searches and arrests must not be violated, and a warrant should be issued on the basis of the sufficient evidence, affirmed by an oath or affirmance (Gurman, 2017). A warrant must contain a detailed description of the place to be searched and persons to be arrested (Apuzzo, 2015). When appealing against police actions, which are supposed to constitute an unconstitutional search or unconstitutional arrest, two issues must be resolved. The first is whether the police actions were a “search” or an “arrest” (Internal Revenue Service, 2016). If it was a search or an arrest, then the second question arises: was this action reasonable? Among other things, it should be taken into account whether the court sanctioned a search or an arrest in the form of a corresponding warrant.
A distinctive feature of the criminal procedure law of the United States is the absence of the system of investigative actions; therefore, it does not distinguish between an inspection and a search, having a special standard of the lawfulness of criminal investigative body interference into the private life of citizens (Lovett, 2015). According to this standard, a police officer can collect the information only about objects which are accessible to his or her immediate perception, since only such activities do not violate the reasonable expectations of citizens about the safety of their personal lives (Edwards, 2015). Thus, if a citizen admitted a policeman into his or her house, he or she cannot reasonably expect that the latter will not notice a gun hanging on the wall or powder of white color scattered on the table. However, he or she can reasonably expect that a government representative will not move the furniture, open the cabinet doors or perform other actions to increase the area of the view (Hadden & Brophy, 2013). In other words, a policeman cannot extend the search for traces of crime without the voluntary consent of the tenant without having a court warrant with him, except for the cases stipulated by the law of the USA
In conclusion, the work of a criminal investigator is strictly regulated by human rights laws. The tasks of the criminal process should be formulated through the indicated functional directions of the authorized bodies through the listed responsibilities of these bodies applying the norms of the criminal procedure law. In the current legislation, a criminal investigator is an official authorized to carry out a preliminary inspection within his or her competence.
References
Apuzzo, M. (2015). Follow the money: How FBI and IRS teamed up on Fifa. The Irish Times. Web.
Edwards, L. F. (2015). A legal history of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A nation of rights. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Gurman, S. (2017). Justice Department committed to prosecuting religious hate crimes, official say. Web.
Hadden, S. F., & Brophy, A. L. (2013). A companion to American legal history. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Internal Revenue Service. (2016). Criminal Investigation (CI) 2016 annual report. Web.
Lovett, C. (2015). Illinois gov. Bruce Rauner signs enhanced hate crimes law. LGBTQ Nation. Web.