Affidavit for search warrant that did not specify the crime that allegedly occurred for which the warrant was issued was not constitutionally difficient. The investigation started out as a solicitation for videotaped sex with a retarded young man, and yielded child porn. United States v. Summage, 481 F.3d 1075 (8th Cir. 2007):
The district court faulted the affidavit for its lack of specificity in describing the offense giving rise to the request for the warrant. We disagree. It is not necessary for an affidavit to include the name of the specific crime alleged. United States v. Koyomejian, 970 F.2d 536, 548 (9th Cir. 1992) (Kozinski, J., concurring); 2 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH AMENDMENT § 3.1, at 9 n.28 (4th ed. 2004) (“It need not be certain precisely what crime was committed.”). Rather, “‘only a probability of criminal conduct need be shown.'” United States v. Koonce, 485 F.2d 374, 380 (8th Cir. 1973) (quoting McCreary v. Sigler, 406 F.2d 1264, 1268 (8th Cir. 1969)); Gates, 462 U.S. at 235 (“It is clear that ‘only the probability, and not a prima facie showing, of criminal activity is the standard of probable cause.'” (quoting Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 419, 89 S. Ct. 584, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637 (1969))). Although the affidavit did not specifically name the crime that had been committed, the alleged facts support a finding of probable cause to believe that Summage’s actions constituted criminal conduct–specifically the solicitation of prostitution or pandering–given the fact that Summage had offered money in exchange for Doe’s services in a sex act.
Defendant was driving his pimped out 1968 Electra up to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel border area, and he looked for a parking space. The car drew the attention of Customs and Border Patrol officers and it was noticed that the defendant was smoking a blunt. The search was justified as occurring within the border area, even though he said he was not crossing the border, or plain view. United States v. Humphries, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26015 (E.D. Mich. April 9, 2007).
The confidential informant was corroborated and the police were in constant communication with him. The original place of the drug deal had moved, and the informant told the police. United States v. Traxler, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 8211 (10th Cir. April 9, 2007).*
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not exploring the basis for his search where the defendant agreed with a statement of facts that included defendant consented to the search. Wilkins v. United States, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25998 (E.D. Tenn. April 6, 2007).*
Magistrate recommended dismissal of a § 1983 case because it did not mention the Fourth Amendment. District Court disagrees under F.R.C.P. 8: “While we find that the plaintiff’s complaint falls far short of the standard for ideal legal drafting, we agree that the complaint provides fair notice to the defendant of plaintiff’s allegation that the breathalyzer tests administered to him violated his Fourth Amendment rights.” Majewski v. Luzerne County, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26056 (M.D. Pa. April 5, 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.
