Nexus of probable cause to believe weapons or ammunition would be found in defendant’s house was established by the fact he was stopped just leaving the house and had ammunition on him. The search warrant for the premises was for drugs, weapons, currency, and documents. Seizure of documents unrelated to the former was without probable cause and was ordered suppressed. United States v. Ferguson, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7560 (W.D. Ky. February 1, 2007):
The searching officials knew of the federal arrest warrant stemming from Ferguson’s indictment on drug trafficking charges and also knew of his two prior felony convictions for drug trafficking. Detective Sutter testified that it is common knowledge within law enforcement that firearms generally are associated with drug trafficking. Special Agent David Hayes testified that the cameras that were hooked up to the JVC television constituted a security system that police officers most typically see associated with drug traffickers. Thus, the police had probable cause to associate the cameras and the JVC television with criminal activity, namely drug trafficking. Large quantities of cash are often associated with drug trafficking. See United States v. Thomas, No. 88-6341, 1989 WL 72926 at *1 (6th Cir. July 5, 1989). Similarly, individuals involved in drug trafficking often use safe deposit boxes to store currency, controlled substances, and other materials related to their illegal activity. See, e.g., United States v. $174,206.00 in United States Currency, 320 F.3d 658, 659 (6th Cir. 2003); Thomas, 1989 WL 72926 at *1. Therefore, the officers had probable cause to associate the $5011 in United States currency and the safe deposit key with criminal drug trafficking activity. However, the Court finds that the police did not have probable cause to associate the documents unrelated to firearms with criminal activity.
Therefore, this Court finds that the documents seized unrelated to firearms should be suppressed.
Because separate sovereigns are involved, two connected criminal cases, one in federal court and one in state court, for different crimes arising from the same facts, the state court need not await a federal court ruling on the merits of a search before the state proceeds. Here, the state had an arrest warrant and conducted a search incident which led to this case. Then, the state got a search warrant, and the product of that went federal. Also, the defendant did not put the search warrants in the record, so there is nothing to rule on even if the court wanted to. State v. Proell, 2007 ND 17, 726 N.W.2d 591 (February 1, 2007).
Defendants were detained with probable cause while the police sought a search warrant for their luggage. The record supports the conclusion they consented to a search of the luggage. United States v. Gilles, 220 Fed. Appx. 540 (9th Cir. 2007)* (unpublished).
In a consumer protection case brought by the State of Vermont, the defendant did not raise the issue of whether civil discovery amounted to an unreasonable search in the trial court, so the issue could not be raised on appeal. State v. Lee, 2007 VT 7, 181 Vt. 605, 924 A.2d 81 (2007).*
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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.
