“Contrary to Defendant’s view, the positive CODIS hit did not ‘only amount[] to an investigative lead at best ….’ It is well-established that a blood match from a reputable, national database that links a defendant to a crime scene establishes sufficient probable cause to issue a warrant.” United States v. Combs, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200404 (D. Utah Nov. 4, 2024).
Defendant possessed body armor and forensic analysis was deemed necessary. A search warrant for a CT scan of the body armor was issued. This issue only came up in whether the forensic expert was to be permitted. United States v. Sawyers, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200026 (S.D. W. Va. Nov. 4, 2024).*
“Based on our precedent and the contents of the defendants’ body camera footage, we conclude that the individual officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable in light of the circumstances they faced. Once Thomas approached some of the officers and pointed his gun at them, the individual officers clearly had probable cause to believe that he posed a serious threat to the officers on scene. Accordingly, they did not use excessive force in shooting Thomas.” Swinford v. Santos, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27878 (11th Cir. Nov. 4, 2024).*
The affidavit for warrant was unsigned by the officer but he had been sworn before the warrant issued. The good faith exception saves this search. United States v. Hampton, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200326 (D. Alaska Nov. 4, 2024)
Defendant’s traffic stop was reasonably extended because he didn’t have his DL and a warrant surfaced for him. United States v. Birry, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199550 (M.D. Pa. Nov. 4, 2024).*
In defendant’s appeal, the merits of the good faith question was decided 2-1, and rearguing it as an ineffective assistance of counsel claim goes nowhere because he still loses on the merits. Smith v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199681 (W.D. Mich. Nov. 4, 2024).*
The collective knowledge doctrine applies to the officer making a traffic stop at the request of the DEA even when they don’t tell him why to make the stop. United States v. Greatsinger, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199769 (D. Conn. Nov. 4, 2024).*
Posted inExcessive force, Warrant execution|Comments Off on Reason: Cop who fired blindly into Breonna Taylor’s home is convicted of violating her constitutional rights
A ground to suppress a search belongs in a motion to suppress, not to dismiss the indictment. United States v. Bailey, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198707 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 31, 2024).
The search warrant didn’t provide the address of the place to be searched, but it included a photograph, and the right place was searched. Particularity was satisfied. United States v. Gumbs, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199320 (D. Conn. Nov. 3, 2024).*
Defendant’s spontaneous admission of a criminal offense when he got out of his car was probable cause. State v. Creech, 2024-Ohio-5245 (12th Dist. Nov. 4, 2024).*
Plaintiff’s traffic court Fourth Amendment claims are barred by limitations and because it lacks any factual basis. Dibenedetto v. Coley, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27858 (2d Cir. Nov. 4, 2024).*
After a traffic stop of a rental vehicle produced a marijuana smell, the driver and passenger were detained. The passenger was shortly let go and asked for his bag from the car. The officer’s search of the bag before handing it back was reasonable. More marijuana was found. Bradford v. State, 2024 Ind. App. LEXIS 303 (Oct. 2, 2024).
There was probable cause, but even if there wasn’t, the good faith exception applies. United States v. McGraw-Williams, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198734 (D. Minn. Oct. 31, 2024).*
“As best as I can tell, the only issue raised in the latter motion that is not raised in the former is the absurd suggestion that because Mr. Moslem and his son met with their accountant Stephen Strauhs in their place of business behind closed doors, it somehow violated their Fourth Amendment rights for Strauhs to testify about those conversations. ‘[A] defendant does not have a privacy interest in matters voluntarily revealed to a government agent, including a confidential informant.’ ….” United States v. Moslem, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199056 n.1 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 1, 2024).*
The response to the R&R that the USMJ misapplied state law under the Fourth Amendment is not an issue for federal court. United States v. Millan, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199153 (W.D.N.Y. Nov. 1, 2024).*
“The seizure of the keys from Williams’s friend was unlawful because the officers did not have probable cause to believe that the keys were evidence of a crime and the plain view doctrine did not apply.” Motion to suppress granted as to that. United States v. Williams, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197664 (D.D.C. Oct. 31, 2024).
Defendant’s flight from the police was the state crime of obstruction which gave them probable cause to arrest. United States v. Alvarez, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198438 (D. Colo. Oct. 31, 2024).*
Hearsay is admissible at a suppression hearing on what the officers were acting on. State v. Hunt, 2024 La. App. LEXIS 1788 (La. App. 4th Cir. Oct. 31, 2024).*
The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to probation revocations. Trottman v. State, 2024 Del. LEXIS 367 (Oct. 31, 2024).*
Failure to brief the Fourth Amendment in the post-trial brief was waiver. Dep’t of Sanitation v. Anonymous, 2024 NYLJ LEXIS 3515 (ALJ Sept. 9, 2024).*
Search incident of bag of a handcuffed defendant surrounded by six officers and being attended by paramedics was unreasonable. “The Government argues that Allen could have slipped free of his handcuffs and lunged for the bags, but such gymnastics are extraordinarily unlikely. While Allen may have shown great strength in fighting with the officers at the time of his initial takedown, by the time the bags were searched twenty minutes later, any threat he may have posed had dissipated.” United States v. Allen, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198666 (E.D.N.C. Oct. 31, 2024).
The affidavit for search warrant was not bare bones, and there wasn’t a false statement to overcome the good faith exception. United States v. Peterson, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27729 (6th Cir. Oct. 30, 2024).*
“No one suggested to the ATF agents here that the residence consisted of two separate apartments. And even if the Zillow search and exterior entrance might have given the agents some reason to suspect that 3696 Blackmer Road was a multi-unit residence, their observation of the home’s interior through the CI’s video recording, their personal observation of the single address—3696—affixed to the home, and their verification with USPS reasonably dispelled any such suspicions. Because the evidence available to the agents does not suggest that they knew or should have known prior to the search that the residence was subdivided, we find the warrant was sufficiently particular and valid.” United States v. Nester, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27728 (6th Cir. Oct. 30, 2024).*
Posted inParticularity, Probable cause, Search incident|Comments Off on E.D.N.C.: Search incident of bag of handcuffed suspect surrounded by six officers was unreasonable
A special ranger employed by the Texas & Southwest Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) recognized as part of the Texas DPS held himself out to be a law enforcement officer. Special rangers are limited to livestock and limited offenses. Instead, he was investigating pictures sent to a minor. He was [way] outside his limited authority and it’s suppressed. The Texas exclusionary rule protects against pretend officers, too. State v. Coleman, 2024 Tex. App. LEXIS 7788 (Tex. App. – Tyler Oct. 31, 2024).
The factual issues involving whether defendant’s arrest remain unsettled for an ineffective assistance claim, so the court will conduct a hearing on that. United States v. Jenkins, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198122 (E.D. Ky. Oct. 31, 2024).*
Defendant’s cell phone (if it was his) was in the custody of the government for over two years. He refused to provide the passcode. He doesn’t expressly claim the phone is his. He seeks access to the phone to look at it and then would re-lock it and give it back. There’s no authority for this. United States v. Gray, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198035 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 30, 2024).*
Defendant seeks to segregate the facts to show a lack of reasonable suspicion, but that’s not how it works. It’s the totality. United States v. Rivera, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198181 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 31, 2024).*
A code enforcement officer’s entry onto plaintiff’s construction site to stop work in violation of the city code was not a Fourth Amendment search. And it was otherwise reasonable. Kindle v. Eisert, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198527 (S.D. Ill. Oct. 31, 2024).
“The district court must balance a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights against the government’s ‘substantial’ interest in a ‘proper and effective supervision.’ … The interest in proper and effective supervision necessitates suspicionless searches here.” United States v. Dority, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27645 (2d Cir. Oct. 31, 2024).*
The FBI SWAT team came to defendant’s house to serve a search warrant with an armored vehicle parked outside. He came out backwards as instructed in shorts and a t-shirt. He was told he was free to go. “A reasonable innocent person, told he is free to leave by an FBI Agent, would believe it on the totality of these facts.” United States v. Lightner, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197806 (M.D. Fla. Oct. 31, 2024).*
2255 petitioner didn’t plead anything to show that search warrant here was obtained in bad faith or that anything could be suppressed. Molina v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197952 (N.D. Tex. Oct. 31, 2024).*
LA Times: L.A. man wearing GPS ankle monitor is accused of a robbery spree. Officials can’t track him by Matthew Ormseth (“A 19-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested five times in five months, including for robberies that he is suspected of committing while under court-ordered GPS tracking. The case raises questions about how effectively the Probation Department is supervising pretrial defendants at a time when judges increasingly turn to GPS monitoring as an alternative to jail.”)
Posted inGPS / Tracking Data|Comments Off on LA Times: L.A. man wearing GPS ankle monitor is accused of a robbery spree. Officials can’t track him
“Although the felony complaint, indictment, voluntary disclosure form, arraignment transcript, and search warrant affidavit disclosed to defendant provided him with ‘detailed information about the sequence of events leading up to his arrest’ …, he failed to controvert the specific information provided by the People or to establish any other basis for suppression.” People v. Kayumov, 2024 NY Slip Op 05415, 2024 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5670 (1st Dept. Oct. 31, 2024).*
Even though the arrest was outside the house, the protective sweep doctrine guards against risks from those unseen and even inside. Moore v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197533 (E.D.N.C. Oct. 30, 2024).
Reasonable suspicion isn’t required for a police database records check. Toyer v. United States, 2024 D.C. App. LEXIS 394 (Oct. 31, 2024).*
There was nexus and probable cause for the search warrant for defendant’s cell phone. Also, the good faith exception applies. United States v. Lopez, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197654 (D. Minn. Oct. 31, 2024).*
As narrowed by the parties, the subpoena to Office Depot as a government contractor wasn’t too burdensome. United States v. Office Depot, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197661 (D.D.C. Oct. 31, 2024)*:
The police shooting here from behind was not unreasonable on the totality. “When McVae threw the rock, Trooper Perez had to make an immediate reflexive decision of how to protect himself in a rapidly evolving situation against an increasingly violent individual who had repeatedly resisted lesser forms of force. … Plaintiffs’ use of several frame-by-frame screenshots from the body camera footage to dissect events that occurred in less than 2.5 seconds is the ‘sort of Monday morning quarterbacking’ that our precedent proscribes. … [¶] A reasonable officer could have believed that McVae posed a threat of serious harm even if he was running away and unarmed in the exact moment that Trooper Perez shot him.” McVae v. Perez, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27567 (5th Cir. Oct. 30, 2024).*
Defense counsel’s failure to call as a witness the judge who approved the arrest warrant as a witness wouldn’t change the result on post-conviction. State v. Mayfield, 2024 Del. Super. LEXIS 727 (Oct. 28, 2024).*
On post-conviction “Mr. Mayfield suggests that his rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment were violated by a ‘failure to conduct [a] pretrial investigation,’” but that’s purely conclusory and shows nothing. State v. Mayfield, 2024 Del. Super. LEXIS 727 (Oct. 28, 2024).*
Police could inventory defendant’s backpack when he was picked up and transported to a treatment facility. Inventory was provided for by local ordinance. The same policies apply to inventory even if defendant isn’t in jail. State v. Wilcox, 335 Or App 743 (Oct. 30, 2024).
In a civil rights prosecution for an officer firing a gun through a curtained window during a search, proffered 404(b) evidence are other alleged bad acts during execution of other warrants. United States v. Hankison, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197147 (W.D. Ky. Oct. 30, 2024).*
Officers could conduct a knock-and-talk at defendant’s house. While officers walked down the sides of his shotgun house, the sides were visible from the street, but they were only looking for escape routes. So there was no violation of curtilage that mattered. State v. Barnett, 2024 La. App. LEXIS 1771 (La. App. 5 Cir. Oct. 30, 2024).*
Considering the deference owed warrants, defendant had the burden of showing a lack of probable cause, and he failed. The CI was familiar with methamphetamine, and he was corroborated by the investigation. United States v. Ray, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197057 (N.D. Ala. Sep. 26, 2024).*
The Terms of Service agreements of social media platforms state that they are required by law to report child pornography. Therefore, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s files that are child pornography. State v. Gasper, 2024 Wisc. App. LEXIS 914 (Oct. 30, 2024):
The constitution doesn’t incorporate state criminal procedural rules and statutes, and a violation of them doesn’t make a Fourth Amendment violation. See Virginia v. Moore. McCullough v. Graves, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27503 (2d Cir. Oct. 30, 2024).
The address of real property alone usually satisfies particularity. “Even a search warrant with an incorrect address can satisfy the particularity requirement.” United States v. Konert, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 196123 (W.D. Mo. Oct. 11, 2024).*
The dashcam video here clearly supports the stop for leaving the lane. State v. Cardona, 2024 Iowa App. LEXIS 802 (Oct. 30, 2024).*
Decedent who was noncompliant with the officers’ commands didn’t have a need for a warning before deadly force was used. Here it was objectively reasonable. Rice v. City of N. Las Vegas, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 27525 (9th Cir. Oct. 30, 2024).*
"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.
