Officer’s search of injured man for his ID revealed a container that the officer could not ascertain the contents of without opening; search suppressed
Defendant was found lying on the ground injured and bloody, and an officer arrived at the scene. He had difficulty communicating his name, and he permitted the officer to remove his wallet for his ID. The officer also felt an object that was round, but it had to be opened to ascertain its contents because it was not “immediately apparent.” The search of the container was unlawful. Cannon v. State, 985 So. 2d 968 (Ala. Crim. App. 2007):
In this case, Cannon gave Daley consent to retrieve his identification from his pocket. Before reaching into Cannon’s pocket, Daley did a pat-down search for her safety. While doing the patdown, she felt an object in one pocket that she knew was not Cannon’s driver’s license but that felt like a film canister. Just as the officer who testified in Warren explained, Daley said that based upon her training and experience, she knew that people kept illegal drugs in such canisters. When she could not see to identify the contents of the canister pulled from Cannon’s pocket, she opened it and found what she believed to be a controlled substance. Nonetheless, nothing in the record shows that the nature of the contraband found in the canister was immediately apparent when Daley pulled it from Cannon’s pocket.
Informant’s statement was sufficient to show probable cause, and two week old information about drug sales from defendant’s house was not stale. State v. Jenkins, 26 So. 3d 458 (Ala. Crim. App. 2007).
In a suit over a state mandated database to track information about potential predatory mortgage loans, the statute does not offend due process or the Fourth Amendment. Access to the information is only permitted if there is a crime or fraud suspected, and it is a long way from there to actual release of the information, which plaintiffs have no standing to object to under California Bankers Ass’n. v. Schultz, 416 U.S. 21, 68 (1974). Bell v. Martinez, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37948 (N.D. Ill. May 24, 2007).*
The viability of a state constitutional claim was not absolutely clear, so the court had to deny the motion to dismiss, considering that it will likely have to decide that question itself. Aquino v. County of Monroe, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37872 (M.D. Pa. May 24, 2007):
Plaintiff correctly notes that where there is no ruling currently available from the state’s highest court on a matter of state law, the district court “must predict how that court would resolve [the relevant] issues should it be called upon to do so.” Dilworth v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 418 F. 3d 345, 349 (3d Cir. 2005). To make such a prediction, the district court will examine: (1) state Supreme Court decisions in related areas; (2) “decisional law” of intermediate state courts; (3) opinions of federal courts of appeals and district courts applying state law; and (4) decisions from other jurisdictions that have discussed the issues before the court. Id.
Police officer had a reasonable basis for concluding that the car that plaintiff was driving was stolen when the stop occurred, so the defendant is entitled to summary judgment. Phelan v. Village of Lyons, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37943 (N.D. Ill. May 23, 2007).*
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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, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"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]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"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)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
