The affidavit for the search warrant included justification to search digital media such as a camera for drug related evidence, based on the officer’s experience. United States v. Gocha, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 58962 (N.D. Iowa August 10, 2007):
In the present case, the deputy’s affidavit contained background information indicating Deputy Beaver is experienced and well-qualified in the investigation of drug-related crimes. The court finds the issuing judge was entitled to rely on the officer’s experienced opinion that it was likely Gocha would maintain records and images relating to his drug activities on his personal computers, cameras, and storage devices. (See paragraphs 4-6 of the affidavit, in which the deputy listed in detail the various types of computer peripherals and storage devices that might contain incriminating evidence.) The fact that the deputy offered additional detail about why evidence might be found on the digital camera and digital storage media is not difficult to comprehend; the reason that someone involved in drug transactions would maintain photographs and videos of their associates and drug-related activities is not as commonly known as is the maintenance of drug notes and transaction records in text form.
Viewing the affidavit as a whole, the court finds the warrant applications provided probable cause for issuance of the warrants to search Gocha’s computers, digital cameras, Palm Pilot, and media storage devices, and it was reasonable for the issuing magistrate to conclude evidence of Gocha’s drug activities would be found in or on those items. Furthermore, the officers’ conduct was exemplary in seeking to obtain the third search warrant for the Palm Pilot, in an abundance of caution to ensure the device was covered by the scope of a search warrant.
Comment: I’ve seen pictures in case files found during searches of clients with money and drugs. Not in many cases, but in some. How prevalent that is to justify it in a search warrant, I personally cannot say, but the fact that it happens some likely would be enough for a search warrant to at least look. Even in a theft by receiving case of a car, I had the prosecutor show me a picture of a woman standing next to a man holding a huge marijuana plant. It was my client’s sister who had been in the car. I’ve also seen pictures of clients in drug cases with them rolling on the floor surrounded by about $500k in cash.
Due process clause provides no more protection to a false arrest claim than the Fourth Amendment, so that claim is dismissed. Plaintiff pled enough to state a Fourth Amendment claim, and qualified immunity is denied. Walters v. Stafford, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59079 (S.D. Ohio August 13, 2007)*:
The “Fourth Amendment was tailored explicitly for the criminal justice system, and its balance between individual and public interest always has been thought to define the ‘process that is due’ for seizures of persons or property in criminal cases, including detention of suspects pending trial.” Id., quoting, Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 125 n. 27, 95 S. Ct. 854, 43 L. Ed. 2d 54 (1975). Even though Plaintiffs were not charged criminally, the court finds that, based upon the facts of this case, the Due Process Clause does not mandate any additional safeguards beyond the Fourth Amendment. Id. Therefore, Defendants are entitled to judgment on this claim as a matter of law.
Court adopts the U.S.M.J.’s finding that defendant consented to a search of his backseat during a traffic stop. A soft rifle case was back there, but the seat was not properly in place, and the officer pulled the seat up finding an automatic weapon. United States v. Blankenship, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 58839 (D. Neb. August 10, 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.
