Drug dog’s arrival in 3-5 minutes did not unduly prolong the stop. Also, even though the officer quickly determined that the driver was not guilty of a traffic offense, he could still ask for the driver’s license and run it. Hart v. State, 235 S.W.3d 858 (Tex. App. – Eastland 2007):
It appears from our record that Officer Bryan’s initial conversation with Hart did not last much more than a minute. Her computer check of Hart, conducted after she learned that he was driving with an expired driver’s license, lasted less than three minutes. While Officer Bryan was in the process of writing Hart a citation for driving with an expired license, the canine unit she requested arrived in three to five minutes. We hold that all of Officer Bryan’s conduct was reasonable under the circumstances and did not unduly prolong Hart’s detention.
Hart correctly notes that many jurisdictions have held that, once an officer has ascertained that the motorist is not guilty of the violation for which he or she was originally stopped, the officer must release the motorist at that time and may not ask to see the motorist’s driver’s license. …
However, as previously noted, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has held that, in applying the general rule, an investigative stop can last no longer than necessary to effect the purpose of the stop; it should be remembered that a check for driver’s license and warrants is an additional component to a routine traffic stop. Kothe, 152 S.W.3d at 63. The court appeared to discount the suggestion that a license check is unreasonable if it is conducted after the officer has determined that the motorist is not guilty of the violation for which he or she was originally stopped. Id. at 66. It noted that the order of events, while relevant to the legal determination of reasonableness, is not determinative. Id. The courts of other states have also held that it is not unnecessarily unreasonable for a police officer who has made a valid traffic stop to ask the motorist for his or her driver’s license, even though the officer knows that the motorist is not guilty of the violation that served as the initial basis for the stop. … We choose to follow Kothe and this line of cases in holding that, where the initial traffic stop is valid, a license check of the driver, even if conducted after the officer has determined that the motorist is not guilty of the violation for which he or she was originally stopped, is not unreasonable so long as it does not unduly prolong the motorist’s detention. Inasmuch as the license check in the case at bar did not unduly prolong Hart’s detention, we hold that it was not unreasonable.
Failure to file motion to suppress did not affect defendant’s guilty plea that was otherwise voluntary. State v. Carroll, 2007 Iowa App. LEXIS 1006 (September 19, 2007).*
Where the search warrant affidavit showed probable cause for child pornography and firearms in the house, the search warrant properly included computers, storage devices, and magazines with child porn and firearms. State v. Hinahara, 2007 NMCA 116, 142 N.M. 475, 166 P.3d 1129 (2007), certiorari denied 166
P.3d 1089 (N.M. 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.
