USPO did not violate is statutory authority or separation of powers in first investigating defendant’s admissions to his mental health counselor that he was viewing child pornography and then assisting USAO in the case. United States v. Jennings, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109025 (N.D. N.Y. November 23, 2009):
For similar reasons, the Court also finds that the USPO did not exceed its constitutional authority. Defendant contends that prosecuting crimes is within the sole province of the executive branch, that it is outside the scope of the judiciary to institute new criminal proceedings, and that the instant matter blurs the roles of each branch because “if the probationer feared that information candidly shared with Probation was going to form the basis of a separate criminal prosecution, the probationer would have no incentive to honestly participate in his own recovery … [and] limiting criminal investigations and the initiation of criminal proceedings to the executive assures that the constitutional rights of a probationer … are guarded through the well-established rules of criminal procedure ….”
. . .
The USPO’s statutory duties of keeping informed of whether a probationer is complying with the conditions of release necessarily overlap some law enforcement duties. See Scott, 118 S. Ct. at 2025. That the results of the USPO’s duties may have dual uses (i.e. forming the basis for a revocation of supervised release and the initiation of new criminal charges) does not run afoul of the separation of powers. In this case, the undisputed evidence is that the USAO was involved in the criminal investigation from an early stage. The record evidence is that the USAO: (1) conferred with the USPO concerning obtaining a search warrant; (2) prepared the warrant application based on information obtained from the USPO; (3) presented the warrant to this Court; (4) made the decision to file new criminal charges; (5) made the decision as to which criminal charges to pursue, see Gov’t Mem. of Law at 19; (6) prepared the felony complaint, see Lovric Aff. at P 23; (7) filed the criminal charges; (8) presented the matter to a grand jury; and (9) continues to prosecute the charges against Defendant. The probation officer has no role in how the information submitted to the USAO is used by it. See United States v. Hook, 471 F.3d 766, 777 (7th Cir. 2006). Inasmuch as the Executive Branch has been involved from an early stage and has made the critical determinations whether, and how, to proceed with new criminal charges against Defendant, the Court finds no encroachment that violated the separation of powers doctrine. Nothing the USPO did interfered with the Executive Branch’s ability to make law enforcement decisions or perform law enforcement functions. See Sczubelek, 402 F.3d at 189.
For a COA in a § 2254 case, reasonable jurists could not find the district court’s decision remotely wrong that “video pornography” implicitly includes only commercially made and not defendant’s homemade. Satterlee v. Addison, 354 Fed. Appx. 292 (10th Cir. 2009) (unpublished).*
Defendant’s guilty plea was unconditional, but the government concedes that he wanted to reserve the right to appeal, so the plea is vacated and remanded for a do over. United States v. Ochoa, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 25768 (11th Cir. November 24, 2009) (unpublished).*
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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.
