Officer’s entry into the house was to find the parents of an unsupervised four year old, so the community caretaking function applied. United States v. Taylor, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95555 (E.D. Va. October 14, 2009):
Applying the community caretaking exception, the Court finds that the officer’s entry into the home was unrelated to the detection, investigation, or attempt to acquire evidence of a crime. As required by the Fourth Circuit in Gwinn, nothing in the record suggests that Officer Ratliff’s reason for the entry was pretextual or that he acted in bad faith. Applying the Sixth Circuit’s Rohrig factors, it is clear that Officer Ratliff entered the home “to vindicate a compelling government interest” — that of caring for lost children and returning them to their parent or guardian in a safe environment — and that this is what motivated the officer, rather than a criminal investigation. “Life-or-death” circumstances did not exist, but they are not required. An officer is not expected to leave his common sense at home. He was looking for the child’s parent or guardian, and the logical place to begin was at her home, especially given her age and the fact that she was found wandering outside not too far from her home. The Sixth Circuit’s analysis balances the governmental interest being served — caring for and returning lost children to their parent or guardian in a safe environment — against the individual’s interest in remaining free from governmental intrusions, and notes that the individual’s conduct that has called the governmental interest into question can be considered — in this case, the defendant’s apparent failure to properly care for and supervise the four-year-old child is what called the governmental interest into question in this case. Further, when Ratliff entered the house he was not engaged in the “enterprise of ferreting out crime.”
Applying the Ninth Circuit’s test to our factual scenario, Officer Ratliff had reasonable grounds to believe that there was an immediate need for his assistance to protect the safety of a four-year-old child found wandering alone next to a busy city street, his entry into the house was not motivated by an intent to arrest or seize evidence but only to locate an adult who was responsible for the child, and the child led him to her home, creating a reasonable basis for him to associate the emergency of a lost child with the house at 2117 Bainbridge Street. If a responsible adult had responded to Ratliff’s initial calls of “hello” and had provided identification demonstrating that he or she was the child’s parent or guardian, that would have been the end of it. Indeed, when Ms. Lee arrived and Ratliff was able to determine that she was the child’s mother, he left the child with her. Ratliff’s entry into the house was limited to calling “hello” and trying to locate an adult responsible for the child. Thus, the Court finds that under the community caretaking exception, Officer Ratliff’s entry into the house was reasonable and there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Consent to search a motel room under a knock-and-talk permitted lifting a jacket which was unusually heavy and where a gun and cocaine were found. United States v. Adams, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 22485, 2009 FED App. 0363P (6th Cir. October 14, 2009).*
The totality of circumstances here gave reasonable suspicion for continuing the detention to bring in a drug dog, which alerted. United States v. Woods, 351 Fed. Appx. 259 (10th Cir. 2009).*
Inconsistencies between the officer’s reports and his hearing testimony were not so serious as to make a Franks violation. United States v. Bush, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95440 (N.D. N.Y. October 14, 2009).*
The officer had reasonable suspicion, including the faint odor of marijuana when he asked for consent. The consent was not restricted. Defendant’s nervousness and it being in a high crime area also added to the RS. United States v. Muti, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95418 (E.D. N.C. August 19, 2009) (USMJ R&R), adopted United States v. Muti, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95420 (E.D. N.C. October 8, 2009).*
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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.
