Defendant’s mother discovered that he had child pornography on his computer, and she brought the hard drive to the police. The police made some effort to locate the defendant, but he was hard to find because the police were looking for him. They decided to declare the hard drive abandoned and searched it, but the court found no evidence of abandonment. State v. Gould, 2010 Ohio 3437, 2010 Ohio App. LEXIS 2925 (6th Dist. July 23, 2010):
[*P28] The state contends that the hard drive was abandoned by appellant. Abandoned property is not subject to Fourth Amendment protection. Abel v. United States (1960), 362 U.S. 217, 80 S. Ct. 683, 4 L. Ed. 2d 668. “Abandonment is primarily a question of intent, and intent may be inferred from words spoken, acts done, and other objective facts.” United States v. Colbert (C.A.5, 1973), 474 F.2d 174, 176. In determining whether someone has abandoned property, “[a]ll relevant circumstances existing at the time of the alleged abandonment should be considered.” Id. “The issue is not abandonment in the strict property-right sense, but whether the person prejudiced by the search had voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest in the property in question so that he could no longer retain a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to it at the time of the search.” Id.
[*P29] At the suppression hearing, there was no evidence presented to demonstrate appellant’s intent, by words spoken or acts done, to abandon the hard drive.
[*P30] While intent of one in possession of property or premises often cannot be inferred from his actions, abandonment will not be presumed. It must be clearly established by the party asserting it. Coleman v. Maxwell (C.A.6, 1967), 387 F.2d 134, certiorari denied (1968), 393 U.S. 1007, 89 S. Ct. 492, 21 L. Ed. 2d 472. Mere absence from the premises without a clear intention to abandon could not legitimize a search of property found therein. U.S. v. Robinson (C.A.6, 1970), 430 F.2d 1141.
[*P31] Detective Lester’s subjective belief that the hard drive had been abandoned was unsupported by the objective facts and Easterwood’s testimony. More significantly, the detective could have obtained additional information concerning the circumstances surrounding Easterwood’s access to the computer hard drive through further questioning and properly sought a search warrant for the hard drive. Accordingly, we find that the state failed to demonstrate by credible, competent evidence that the hard drive was abandoned.
Defendant was asked in Spanish for consent to search his vehicle, which he granted, after a simple and direct question. He was not Mirandized as he should have been, but that does not make the consent invalid. United States v. Solano-Fell, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74324 (W.D. N.Y. May 17, 2010).*
Officers had a call of a suspicious person selling drugs on a street corner, so they went there, saw him, and approached. He threw down a gun, and that was probable cause to arrest. United States v. Chissem, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 129098 (E.D. Mo. April 17, 2009).*
Two apparent hand-to-hand sales of a man under surveillance was reasonable suspicion. United States v. Beard, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 129131 (E.D. Mo. April 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.
