Dog sniff of defendant’s car occurred while the officer was resolving the traffic stop and waiting for radio call back, so defendant was detained for it, but not extended because of it. United States v. McBride, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113405 (N.D. Ind. December 4, 2009):
The Defendant makes much of the use of the dog, mostly as evidence that he was being detained and was not free to leave. The video does in fact show the Defendant backing away from something that is out of the camera’s view with his hands in the air, and the officer telling him to come back and not to back into traffic. However, the fact that the Defendant was not free to leave is not a point of contention. When the dog performed the free air sniff around the car, the traffic violations were not yet resolved. In fact, Officer Gasvoda was still in the process of explaining why he had stopped the Defendant, and continued to do so as Officer Heck circled the car with the leashed dog. He had not yet verified any of the information provided by the Defendant, or determined the status of the unlicensed car or the Defendant’s driving status. Thus, the Defendant would not have been free to leave regardless of the dog’s presence. See Arizona v. Johnson, 129 S. Ct. at 784 (“For the duration of a traffic stop, … a police officer effectively seizes everyone in the vehicle, the driver and all passengers.”). Simply using a drug-sniffing dog during an otherwise lawful traffic stop does not implicate a defendant’s legitimate privacy interests. Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 409 (2005). If the Defendant means to argue that the presence of the dog subjected him to restraints comparable to those associated with formal arrest, the Court does not find legal support for such a contention.
Defendant claimed that the search of his car was invalid under Gant because he was arrested for failure to identify. His arrest, however, permitted the search under the inventory doctrine because the car was going to have to be towed. There was at least an indication that there was a gun, but the court declined to decide the factual dispute. United States v. Cartwright, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113428 (S.D. Ind. December 1, 2009).*
Defendant was Mirandized and agreed to talk to the officers, and this was a factor in finding his consent voluntary on the totality of the circumstances. United States v. Jones, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113316 (E.D. Pa. November 24, 2009).*
Frisk of person not named in search warrant was justified by his movements that created apprehension he was armed or had contraband. United States v. White, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112795 (W.D. Mo. November 16, 2009).*
Defendant’s consent was shown to be voluntary and not coerced. United States v. Dunning, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112849 (W.D. Mo. November 9, 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.
