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- Lawfare: How Google’s Location History Program Could Upend Digital Surveillance Law
- CA6 disagrees with CA7 on de minimis injuries under § 1983 force cases
- MO: No duty of care owed by police to fleeing motorist
- D.P.R.: Indictment for possession of switches to convert handguns to machine guns justified vehicle search when defendant was stopped
- N.D.Ohio: Heroin and three guns in plain view was exigency for entry with child alone inside
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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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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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Section 1983 Blog -
"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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Daily Archives: March 7, 2020
CA5: Def’s office in building behind his house was properly searched under IRS SW for house/office for records where officers relied on address publicly listed
IRS agents’ search of the home office behind defendant’s home was reasonable and did not violate the Fourth Amendment where the search warrant described defendant’s primary residence but the office carried a different address. It was reasonable to believe the … Continue reading
IA: Possible presence of runaway 14 yo not exigency for warrantless entry
A runaway child was not an exigency justifying a warrantless entry into defendant’s home. “Today we must decide if a police officer may enter a third party’s residence without a search warrant based on a verbal request from the Iowa … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Officers had PC to believe def was inside for execution of arrest warrant
The officers had at least a fair probability that defendant was inside for execution of the arrest warrant in Arizona and the case was indicted in New Mexico. The standards are different between the Ninth and Tenth Circuits, so which … Continue reading
LA2: Continuation of stop was without RS
The continuation of this stop was without reasonable suspicion. State v. Bell-Brayboy, 2020 La. App. LEXIS 368 (La. App. 2 Cir. Mar. 4, 2020)*:
E.D.Tex.: Conclusory objections to R&R are denied
Conclusory objections to the R&R on this search issue are overruled. United States v. Wilson, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36571 (E.D. Tex. Mar. 3, 2020). Feeling a firearm during a patdown is plain feel. United States v. White, 2020 U.S. … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Controlled buy is PC; CI’s alleged lie isn’t Franks issue
A controlled buy was probable cause. The claim that the CI lied isn’t cognizable under Franks. United States v. Sheridan, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36163 (N.D. Ohio. Mar. 3, 2020). There were disputed questions of fact on whether it was … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Shots fired call specifying def’s backyard was exigency permitting entry
A report of gunshots from defendant’s backyard justified exigency entry into yard. “In response to Officer Gali’s statement that they could do it the easy way or get a search warrant, Pouncey responded, ‘go ahead, bro.’ The Court reviewed the … Continue reading
E.D.La.: Despite apparent validity of motion to suppress never pursued, defense counsel kept evidence out of plea colloquy, so no IAC because of strategy call
Defense counsel didn’t file a motion to suppress evidence because defendant’s stop likely was without reasonable suspicion, and a motion to suppress might well have been granted. However, there was a legitimate strategic reason for not moving to suppress which … Continue reading