Defendant is a Nigerian who was living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was arrested on an extradition warrant from the United States for computer hacking of the Georgia Tech computer system. His computers and media were seized at the time of his arrest. Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) acting on an extradition warrant doesn’t make this a joint venture in the search, and the Fourth Amendment does not apply. United States v. Olaniyi, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50592 (N.D. Ga. Feb. 15, 2018):
Nothing about the fact that the RMP officers seized Defendant’s computer equipment and other property during his arrest “shocks the conscience.” While the officers may have lacked a warrant specifically authorizing a search for and seizure of these materials, the RMP advised the FBI that it did not need such a warrant under Malaysian law. Defendant provides no argument otherwise, that is, that the seizure of these electronic materials was illegal under Malaysian law. In any event, the courts have held “conduct does not shock the judicial conscience when it is ‘simply illegal’; rather, it must be ‘egregious.'” United States v. Getto, 729 F.3d 221, 228 (2d Cir. 2013) (internal citations omitted). The mere seizure of electronic evidence in the possession or in the residence of an arrestee suspected of computer crimes is not, in itself, “egregious.”
While U.S. Fourth Amendment law did not apply to this search, it is hardly clear that the RMP’s search for and seizure of Defendant’s electronic equipment would have violated the Fourth Amendment, either. Under U.S. law, items in the possession of an arrestee may be seized and searched in many circumstances as incident-to-arrest, and obviously incriminating material may be seized if seen in plain view while authorizing a valid arrest warrant. While the Supreme Court in recent years has clarified that the internal contents of smart phones and computer storage media may not be automatically searched incident-to-arrest, see Riley v. California, 573 U.S. , 134 S.Ct. 2473, 189 L. Ed. 2d 430 (2014), there is no indication that the RMP or the FBI did that here. Rather, the FBI simply obtained a forensic copy of the electronic media while in Malaysia, and refrained from actually searching the electronic memory of that media until it obtained a proper search warrant from a judicial officer in this district.
While the RMP’s alleged beating of Defendant obviously would have violated U.S. law, the Court finds it unnecessary to consider whether this conduct was so “egregious” as to “shock the conscious” for purposes of considering whether to suppress the physical evidence. Plaintiff makes no showing that this conduct related specifically to or resulted in the seizure of the electronic evidence in Defendant’s possession. Rather, the evidence suggests simply that this material was seized as being in Defendant’s possession and/or his apartment when he was arrested, as it very well might have been had the arrest occurred in the U.S. The record suggests that any beating was immaterial to the RMP’s mere seizure of this electronic evidence, or at least Plaintiff makes no showing otherwise.
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
"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)