Case Study Of Manuel V. City Of Joliet

Colton Slaymaker
Dr. Holcomb
State and Federal Government
26 September 2017
Manuel v. City of Joliet During a traffic stop on March 18, 2011, in Joliet, Illinois, Elijah Manuel was pulled over for failing to signal. Police officers searched Manuel and found a vitamin bottle containing pills. The officers conducted a field test to check for illegal substances and came back with a negative result, suspicious still, they arrested Manuel and took him back to the station where an evidence technician ran another analysis of the pills in the vitamin bottle, once again, it came back negative. The evidence technician, however, claimed in his report that one of the pills tested positive for “probable presence of ecstasy.” One of the arresting officers also stated that based on his “training and experience,” he “knew the pills to be ecstasy.” In response to these claims and based on false information, another officer filed a complaint charging Manuel with the possession of a controlled substance. Again, relying on false information, a county judge found probably cause to detain Manuel awaiting trial. Manuel was held in pretrial detention for about seven weeks, during which time the Illinois Police Lab found tested the pills once again and found that they did not contain the presence of any controlled substance. Quite a while after being released, Manuel sued the City of Joliet for malicious prosecution. However, it being so long after his case,

The primary question in the case of Manuel v. City of Joliet is if Manuel can make a claim based on the Fourth Amendment