The search warrant target’s name over the doorbell of a house isn’t enough to link him to it. While there may be reason to believe defendant had drugs in his bedroom, the affidavit doesn’t link that address to the offense and the probability of evidence being found. Still, the good faith exception applies because it was not bare bones. United States v. Rose, 714 F.3d 362, 2013 FED App. 0108P (6th Cir. 2013):
Here, although the search warrant provided a description of the property that tenuously linked the property to Rose by explaining that the name “Rose” appeared over the doorbell of apartment number one, the affidavit did not provide a link between the property and Rose. The affidavit merely explained that the victims testified that criminal activity took place in Rose’s bedroom and nothing more. There is no way to read the affidavit and to conclude that the magistrate judge had a substantial basis for thinking that there was a fair probability that evidence of the crimes described in the affidavit would be found at 709 Elberon Ave. As a result, the affidavit did not provide probable cause to believe that the items sought in the warrant were located at 709 Elberon Ave.
Giving the magistrate judge’s probable cause determination the deference that it is due, we still find that probable cause does not exist in the present case. The affidavit undoubtedly links Rose, and Rose’s bedroom, to evidence of criminal activity, but because it fails to link Rose to 709 Elberon Ave., it does nothing to establish the required nexus between the place to be searched and the evidence sought. If, for example, the affidavit stated that the victims alleged that the sexual misconduct took place at 709 Elberon Ave., or that an investigation revealed that Rose lived at 709 Elberon Ave., there would be probable cause to believe that evidence of the crimes described in the affidavit would be found at 709 Elberon Ave. There was no probable cause to search 709 Elberon Ave. because the affidavit failed to establish the nexus between 709 Elberon Ave. and the evidence sought in the investigation of Rose.
. . .
Finally, the good-faith exception is premised on the idea that “the exclusionary rule is designed to deter police misconduct rather than to punish the errors of judges and magistrates.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 916 (1984). The facts of this case do not raise fears of police misconduct. Officer Schroder conducted an investigation into allegations by several victims that Rose sexually abused them and showed them pornographic images on his computer in his bedroom. It is fair to presume that, given his investigation and the number of witnesses, Officer Schroder secured Rose’s address with relative ease. The affidavit provided overwhelming evidence linking Rose and his residence to a crime and to the evidence sought in the search warrant. The affidavit simply failed to provide the link between Rose and 709 Elberon Ave. Although such an oversight should not be taken lightly, the facts of this case support the application of the good-faith exception. Rather than fears of police misconduct, this case merely raises concerns about sloppiness in drafting affidavits within the Cincinnati Police Department.
"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.
