A protective sweep under Buie can occur after an arrest outside if there is reason to believe that a danger lurks inside. United States v. Kilfoil, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110290 (M.D. N.C. November 23, 2009)*:
Though not noted by the parties, it appears well-established in the majority of circuits that the protective sweep exception, as defined in Buie, justifies entry into a residence where an arrest is made outside, even in the absence of a warrant or probable cause. See, e.g., Wilson v. Morgan, 477 F.3d 326, 337-39 (6th Cir. 2007) (finding, in context of claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, that United States v. Colbert, 76 F.3d 773, 776-78 (6th Cir. 1996), justifies protective sweep of home interior where arrest made outside); United States v. Maldonado, 472 F.3d 388, 394-95 (5th Cir. 2006) (upholding protective sweep of house where arrest made in driveway); United States v. Paopao, 469 F.3d 760, 767 (9th Cir. 2006) (permitting protective sweep of apartment based on reasonable belief that at least one robber remained inside though arrest made outside); United States v. Lawlor, 406 F.3d 37, 41 (1st Cir. 2005) (noting that “an arrest that occurs just outside the home can pose an equally serious threat to arresting officer as one that occurs inside the home”); United States v. Cavely, 318 F.3d 987, 995-96 (10th Cir. 2003) (stating that, “[d]epending on the circumstances, the exigencies of a situation may make it reasonable for officers to enter a home without a warrant in order to conduct a protective sweep”); United States v. Henry, 48 F.3d 1282, 1284 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (upholding protective sweep inside home where arrest made outside); United States v. Oguns, 921 F.2d 442, 446-47 (2d Cir. 1990) (allowing protective sweep of apartment where officers could have reasonably believed that people inside heard them arresting defendant outside); United States v. Delgado, 903 F.2d 1495, 1502 (11th Cir. 1990) (upholding protective sweep inside warehouse where reasonable belief existed as to danger to agents outside).
Defendant was arrested on an arrest warrant and handcuffed outside his house. Officers asked him where his gun was, and he said he didn’t want anybody going in the house. They said they just wanted the gun, and they could go in and get it and there would be no search of the house. The defendant then consented to the search and it was found voluntary because the conversation was short and polite and the search was limited. United States v. Burke, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110221 (E.D. N.Y. October 16, 2009).*
Defendant did not object to a consent search that escalated to removing seats and carpeting, and failure to object is a factor in consent [I don’t buy this anymore]. Once it was apparent to the officers that there was a hidden compartment, there was probable cause and it was not unreasonable for officers to break open the vehicle. United States v. Bugarin, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109058 (D. Kan. November 23, 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.
