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- CA11: QI for FBI SWAT raiding wrong house at 3:30 am
- NYLJ: Analysis: Turnabout: Cell Site Location Information for the Defense
- CA11: QI in suicide by cop case
- CA11: Officer’s experience and opinions about CP collectors and retention of information is entitled to weight in PC determination
- AZ: Private search and apparent consent don’t support warrantless search of SD card in video voyeurism case
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) -
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
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Monthly Archives: April 2017
Cal.4th: Probation search for “property” does not include “electronic data”
The juvenile’s probation search condition for his “property” does not reasonably include electronic data. In re I.V., 2017 Cal. App. LEXIS 392 (4th Dist. April 28, 2017):
W.D.N.Y.: Bringing federal officers along on a cigarette tax search was not unreasonable; no duty to clean up after an otherwise reasonable search
(1) Under New York state law, cigarette retailers are pervasively regulated. Here, NY tax officials were checking on tax stamps. (2) While officers seemed to think they had authority to search defendant’s purse under the administrative search doctrine, they didn’t. … Continue reading
VT: Entry into respondent’s land to investigate open fire was reasonable
Respondent was burning something on his open land without a burn permit. Firefighters were called, and they observed from the road that the color of the smoke indicated something other than natural wood was being burned. From their view, however, … Continue reading
MD: Drug dog’s reliability is not subject to de novo appellate review
Whether a drug dog is reliable is a question committed to the trial court. It is not subject to de novo review on appeal. Grimm v. State, 2017 Md. App. LEXIS 413 (April 26, 2017). In this death case, there … Continue reading
D.N.J.: CI aiding police entered vessel on his own to take pictures of weapon; still a private search
Defendant was indicted for “knowingly taking marine mammals on the high seas by means of a firearm in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), 16 U.S.C. §§ 1372(a)(1) and 1375(b).” A CI, already conversing with law enforcement, went … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Despite bad SW drafting, text messages are “records” in a cell phone
“[N]otwithstanding the warrant’s poor grammar and ‘unwieldy’ language,” the court finds that text messages are included within the definition of “records” in the defendant’s cell phone. United States v. Swinton, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62172 (W.D. N.Y. April 24, 2017):
W.D.N.Y.: Violations of state law on jurisdiction of investigative subpoenas not a federal issue
Defendant’s motion to reopen his suppression hearing to explore a state law claim on jurisdiction of subpoenas is denied because it has no relevance to the federal investigation. One of his issues is jurisdiction: which county had jurisdiction over the … Continue reading
MO: Two week old information in call to child maltreatment hotline was not stale nor without exigency
A call to a child maltreatment hotline was made two weeks after the observation that motivated the phone call. The exigency still existed for a warrantless entry. State v. Prince, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 348 (April 25, 2017). Defendant’s vehicle … Continue reading
CA4: Exigency didn’t justify search of a car for a weapon where there was no threat and no gun crime
Defendant was stopped and arrested on a police call, but it wasn’t for a gun crime. Therefore, because defendant was cooperative and the scene was completely under control and there were no confederates involved, a search of the car for … Continue reading
NYTimes: N.S.A. Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets
NYTimes: N.S.A. Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets by Charlie Savage:
Cal.2d: Emergency aid search of wrong house was still objectively reasonable
Based on a police dispatch of a screaming woman who was also moaning in distress, the police went to the address (2314) given and entered. They did not find the woman and kept looking upstairs and in closets and found … Continue reading
CA10: Successful suppression of evidence is not a “favorable outcome” for malicious prosecution purposes against the prosecutor; QI granted
Successful suppression of evidence is not a “favorable outcome” for malicious prosecution purposes against the prosecutor. It doesn’t show actual innocence. Margheim v. Buljko, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 7421 (10th Cir. April 27, 2017):
D.Kan.: 37 day old knowledge of def’s suspended DL wasn’t stale for RS for a stop
The officer’s prior knowledge that defendant’s license was expired wasn’t considered stale for a stop, even for 37 days. [It’s a stop on reasonable suspicion, not a search on probable cause.] United States v. Bell, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62616 … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Possession of a camera phone was violation of release conditions and justified PO search
Defendant had a release condition to stay away from children, but he babysat two and he let them use his cell phone connected to his computer. This was reasonable suspicion for a search of the cell phone and computer for … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: SW materials not yet releasable because investigation is ongoing; defense can get it later
The search warrant materials in this case are not released yet because the case is still pretrial and there is investigative and CI information that shouldn’t be disclosed yet. “In evaluating a common law claim of access to judicial documents, … Continue reading
NYTimes: Do Body Cameras Help Policing? 1,200 New York Officers Aim to Find Out
NYTimes: Do Body Cameras Help Policing? 1,200 New York Officers Aim to Find Out by Ashley Southall: The New York Police Department – on a mission to put body cameras on all 23,000 of its patrol officers in two years … Continue reading
WaPo: Will the Supreme Court agree to hear the Fourth Amendment cell-site cases? (And should they?)
WaPo: Will the Supreme Court agree to hear the Fourth Amendment cell-site cases? (And should they?) by Orin Kerr: As John Elwood noted recently at SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court has relisted a set of pending cert petitions on whether the … Continue reading
Worcester Telegram (MA): Broken door, broken promise: Police renege on pledge for judicial permission for no-knock raids
Worcester Telegram (MA): Broken door, broken promise: Police renege on pledge for judicial permission for no-knock raids by Brad Petrishen: State police declined to say why they reversed course on the external control, and also declined to discuss an apparently … Continue reading
WaPo: ‘I don’t like to be touched’: Video shows 10-year-old autistic boy getting arrested at school
WaPo: ‘I don’t like to be touched’: Video shows 10-year-old autistic boy getting arrested at school by Lindsey Bever. The parents were told to bring the child in this month for “testing” and he was handcuffed and taken away by … Continue reading
ABAJ: Murdered woman’s Fitbit data inconsistent with husband’s story, police say
ABAJ: Murdered woman’s Fitbit data inconsistent with husband’s story, police say by Debra Cassens Weiss: