December 15, 1791 is when the 4th amendment was passed, this marked the beginning of controversy surrounding proper use of the 4th amendment. A controversial event was the Patriot Act, which was set in place after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, which granted the government permission to expand law enforcement in order to identify terrorism. An example of this controversy is the case of Steve Kurtz. Kurtz was an artist who did projects with basic biology. One day Kurtz called the police department to report the death of his wife, who died of congenital heart failure. When the police investigated the death, they drew suspicion to the biological equipment he had set up in his house, and when the FBI noted this, they detained Kurtz for twenty two hours. Even though they deemed the biological lab unrelated to the death of Ms. Kurtz, this still went to court and Kurtz and the professor who helped get the harmless bacteria were sentenced in court, causing outrage and confusion to the public. Another case related is the Brandon Mayfield wrongful conviction of the Madrid Bombings. Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim lawyer who lives in Washington, Oregon, was considered to have connections to the Madrid bombings after a…show more content… Kurtz, law enforcement decided to take Kurtz into custody over the death of his wife, Ms. Kurtz. The FBI was very quick to come to a conclusion on the cause of death for Ms. Kurtz, and concluded that Mr. Kurtz at home bio experiments were the reason for the death. In an article written by the Guardian it states, “The Joint Terrorism Task Force swooped in, detaining Kurtz on suspicion of bio-terrorism”. The detainment and harassment displayed to Mr. Kurtz, who kept in mind he was mourning the death of his wife, was very harsh considering the lack of evidence they had that any of his experiments actually caused the death. All of these actions by law enforcement carried out on Mr. Kurtz caused confusion around the case, so let’s talk about
