How is an attack outline different from your master outline?
Your master outline stores everything you learned. Your attack outline tells you what to do next. The functional test: if you cannot answer a question from it in under fifteen seconds while a proctor's clock is running, it is still a master outline.
Criminal procedure rewards this format more than almost any other 1L or 2L course because the doctrine is genuinely sequential. You cannot analyze whether the good-faith exception applies until you know there was a Fourth Amendment violation, and you cannot know that until you decide there was a search or seizure at all. The exam fact pattern is usually a chronological narrative — stop, frisk, arrest, car search, station-house interrogation, lineup — and each event triggers its own sub-analysis. Your outline should be shaped like that narrative.
Practical form: one branch per page, questions as headers, answers as short bullets, case names as tags rather than as prose. Do not write out holdings. Write out triggers.
What goes at the top of the Fourth Amendment branch?
Three threshold questions, in this order, before you touch any exception.
First, government action. Private searches do not implicate the Fourth Amendment; a private party who becomes an agent or instrument of the state does.
Second, was there a search or a seizure? A search occurs if the government invades a reasonable expectation of privacy (Katz v. United States, 1967) or physically trespasses on a constitutionally protected area to obtain information (United States v. Jones, 2012; Florida v. Jardines, 2013). Load this node with your defeaters: open fields, abandonment, third-party doctrine and its limit in Carpenter v. United States (2018), aerial observation, dog sniffs of contraband, and the sense-enhancing-technology rule of Kyllo v. United States (2001). A seizure of a person occurs on submission to a show of authority or application of physical force (California v. Hodari D., 1991; Torres v. Madrid, 2021), measured by whether a reasonable person would feel free to leave or to terminate the encounter.
Third, standing — really, whose rights were violated. Rakas v. Illinois (1978) and Byrd v. United States (2018) belong here, not buried later. A defendant cannot suppress evidence obtained by violating someone else's rights.
How do you sequence warrants, exceptions, and stops?
After the thresholds, split into two lanes: warrant issued, or no warrant.
The warrant lane asks four things: probable cause under the totality test of Illinois v. Gates (1983), particularity, neutral and detached magistrate, and proper execution (knock-and-announce, scope, detention of occupants under Michigan v. Summers, 1981, as limited by Bailey v. United States, 2013). If the warrant fails, jump straight to United States v. Leon (1984).
The no-warrant lane is a checklist, and its whole value is that it is exhaustive. Make it a single scannable list you run top to bottom on every warrantless intrusion:
Under each exception, write only the scope limit, because that is where exam points live. Search incident to arrest reaches the arrestee's person and grabbing area (Chimel v. California, 1969), but not a cell phone's data (Riley v. California, 2014), and reaches a vehicle only if the arrestee is unsecured and within reach or the officer reasonably believes evidence of the arrest offense is inside (Arizona v. Gant, 2009). A traffic stop cannot be prolonged beyond its mission to run a dog (Rodriguez v. United States, 2015). The automobile exception does not extend to the curtilage (Collins v. Virginia, 2018). Hot pursuit of a fleeing misdemeanant is not automatically exigent (Lange v. California, 2021), and there is no freestanding community-caretaking exception for the home (Caniglia v. Strom, 2021).
Keep Whren v. United States (1996) as a standing rule in the margin: subjective officer motive is irrelevant to Fourth Amendment reasonableness, though it matters to an equal protection claim.
- Terry stop and frisk — reasonable suspicion, particularized and articulable (Terry v. Ohio, 1968; Illinois v. Wardlow, 2000; Florida v. J.L., 2000; Navarette v. California, 2014)
- Search incident to lawful arrest
- Automobile exception (probable cause, mobile vehicle)
- Plain view (lawful vantage, lawful access, immediately apparent — Horton v. California, 1990; Arizona v. Hicks, 1987)
- Consent, actual or apparent (Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 1973; Illinois v. Rodriguez, 1990; Georgia v. Randolph, 2006; Fernandez v. California, 2014)
- Exigent circumstances, including hot pursuit, destruction of evidence, and emergency aid (Missouri v. McNeely, 2013)
- Inventory, administrative, and special-needs searches (Michigan Dep't of State Police v. Sitz, 1990; City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 2000)
Where does the exclusionary rule go?
At the bottom of every branch, as a single shared module. Do not duplicate it. A violation gets you nothing until you clear the remedy analysis, and this is the most commonly skipped issue on suppression exams.
Structure it in two moves. First, is this evidence direct or derivative? Derivative evidence runs through Wong Sun v. United States (1963) and its three escapes: independent source (Murray v. United States, 1988), inevitable discovery (Nix v. Williams, 1984), and attenuation (Brown v. Illinois, 1975; Utah v. Strieff, 2016). Second, does a categorical bar apply anyway? Good faith reliance on a warrant later held invalid (Leon), on binding appellate precedent later overruled (Davis v. United States, 2011), or on isolated negligent recordkeeping (Herring v. United States, 2009). Add Hudson v. Michigan (2006) for knock-and-announce violations, and note the rule's inapplicability to grand jury proceedings, and its availability for impeachment of the defendant's own testimony.
Also note the standing loop back to Rakas, and the standard of proof: the prosecution generally bears the burden of justifying a warrantless search by a preponderance.
How do you structure the confessions branch?
Three independent theories, run in this order, because a statement can survive one and die under another. Say so explicitly at the top of the page: analyze all three, always.
Due process voluntariness. Totality of the circumstances, requires actual police coercion, applies whether or not the defendant is in custody, and an involuntary statement cannot even be used for impeachment.
Miranda. Custody plus interrogation. Custody is objective — would a reasonable person feel at liberty to terminate and leave — and interrogation includes words or actions officers should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response (Rhode Island v. Innis, 1980). Then waiver: knowing, intelligent, voluntary, and not established by silence alone but inferable from an uncoerced statement after warnings (Berghuis v. Thompkins, 2010). Then invocation: it must be unambiguous (Davis v. United States, 1994); silence invoked requires scrupulous honoring (Michigan v. Mosley, 1975); counsel invoked bars all further interrogation until counsel is present, with a fourteen-day break-in-custody rule (Edwards v. Arizona, 1981; Maryland v. Shatzer, 2010). Then exceptions and fruits: public safety (New York v. Quarles, 1984), undercover agents (Illinois v. Perkins, 1990), impeachment use, and the Elstad/Seibert two-step distinction.
Sixth Amendment right to counsel. This one is offense-specific and attaches only at or after the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings (Massiah v. United States, 1964; Brewer v. Williams, 1977; Texas v. Cobb, 2001; Montejo v. Louisiana, 2009). The trigger word on an exam is indictment, arraignment, or preliminary hearing. Deliberate elicitation, not interrogation, is the standard.
What about identifications and the adjudicative half of the course?
Identifications get a half page: Sixth Amendment counsel at post-charge corporeal lineups and showups (United States v. Wade, 1967), not before charges (Kirby v. Illinois, 1972) and not at photo arrays; plus due process reliability review for unnecessarily suggestive procedures (Neil v. Biggers, 1972; Manson v. Brathwaite, 1977), which requires police arrangement of the suggestive circumstances (Perry v. New Hampshire, 2012). Add the independent-source rule for in-court identification.
Whether you need an adjudicative branch at all varies by school. Many programs split the material into Criminal Procedure: Investigation and Criminal Procedure: Adjudication; others teach a single 'bail to jail' survey. Check your syllabus, not a commercial outline. If your course covers adjudication, build a fourth trunk in chronological order: charging and Gerstein/McLaughlin probable cause determinations, bail, preliminary hearing and grand jury, discovery and Brady, speedy trial under Barker v. Wingo, jury trial rights including Ramos v. Louisiana and Batson, guilty pleas and the plea-bargaining ineffectiveness cases (Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper), double jeopardy under Blockburger, and sentencing under Apprendi and Blakely.
One more variation worth a margin note: state constitutions frequently provide more protection than the federal floor, and several states have rejected Gant, Leon, or Belton-style automobile rules as a matter of state law. If your professor teaches a state-law overlay, flag it inline where it diverges rather than in a separate appendix you will never open.
How do you pressure-test it before the exam?
Take three old exams and run them using only the attack outline. Every time you have to open the master outline or a casebook, mark the node that failed and fix it — usually the fix is a missing trigger phrase, not missing law. Every time you finish an issue and realize you skipped a step, add a forcing question at that node.
Then compress. Anything you never consulted across three practice exams is decoration. A good criminal procedure attack outline is short enough that you have effectively memorized its shape, which is the actual point: the document is insurance, and the memorization is the deliverable.
On citation form in exam answers: use the case name alone, no reporter cite, no year, unless your professor asks otherwise. 'Under Gant, the search was invalid because Diaz was handcuffed in the patrol car and the arrest was for driving on a suspended license' earns full credit. Full Bluebook citations belong in your seminar paper and your journal note, not on a three-hour issue spotter.