Legal Question in Constitutional Law in Virginia

Re: Probable Cause

Probable cause amounts to the minimum evidence that the police need to arrest a person suspected of having commited a crime or to secure a warrant from an authorized magistrate for the arrest of such a person or to obtain a warrant for the search of a premises which is believed by law enforcement authorities to hold or contain evidence of a crime. Probable cause(or reasonable suspicion)that a crime may have been committed also refers to the evidence sufficient to justify the stop of a vehicle and the questioning of its driver by police.

The nature and quantity of this probable cause evidence may vary from situation to situation but one thing is quite clear from the established law which deals with this particular issue: not a whole lot of such evidence is required to make out a

valid case for probable cause and it is certainly always less than the preponderance of evidence standard which is customarily used to adjudicate civil cases.