Defendant’s cell phone was seized incident to his arrest for armed robbery, and it was searched with a search warrant two weeks later. There is no authority cited that the seizure was invalid pending obtaining a search warrant. Considering the split of authority that a search incident of a cell phone is reasonable, mere seizure pending a search warrant should be reasonable. United States v. Gholston, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9301 (E.D. Mich. January 27, 2014).*
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not pursuing an appeal of the denial of the motion to suppress. Defendant was without standing to challenge the search, and it would have lost on appeal. Brooks v. United States, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9625 (W.D. N.C. January 27, 2014).*
There was probable cause to support defendant’s arrest warrant. The search incident of the backpack that was on him was valid because he disclaimed ownership and that denies standing. United States v. Tomlin, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9487 (E.D. Ky. January 27, 2014).*
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Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his driveway from police observation, and it doesn’t qualify as curtilage. When he fled from there, they followed. The driveway area was generally accessible to visitors. United States v. Stitt, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182275 (E.D. Tenn. July 15, 2013),* adopted 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113 (E.D. Tenn., Jan. 2, 2014).*
All this is reasonable suspicion: “vehicle’s condition, the bill of sale, the registration of the vehicle just before leaving on a trip, and the long-distance, short-duration nature of the trip were all indicators of possible criminal activity.” As to the long distance, the officer searched Google for directions on the route defendant was traveling on his cell phone. Through all this, the officer didn’t unreasonably extend the stop. Klomliam v. State, 2014 WY 1, 315 P.3d 665 (2014).*
Defendant was lawfully stopped for overtinting, and the stop became too long after the warning was issued and consent was sought. Defendant refused consent to search the car, so the officer told him that a drug dog was coming to go around the car. The dog alerted and the search was unreasonable. United States v. Walker, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8745 (S.D. Ala. January 24, 2014).
The USMJ’s recommendation denying the motion to suppress is rejected, and the motion is granted. There was no reasonable suspicion from defendant’s traffic stop that permitted his detention. Raising one’s hands during a stop may be “weird,” but it doesn’t indicate criminality. Defendant was wearing a down jacket with pajama bottoms in winter in South Dakota; what’s the criminal activity afoot from that? United States v. Banks, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8731 (D. S.D. January 24, 2014).*
Officers were looking for suspects in a bank robbery and had GPS money tracker information they were following. When defendant saw the police he fled. The police were justified in pursuing him [because his actions gave him away]. United States v. Johnson, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8311 (S.D. Fla. January 10, 2014).*
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Applying all the basic rules of staleness, five month old information was not stale in possession of a machine gun. Firearms are usually kept, and this was an ongoing offense. United States v. Goodwin, 552 Fed. Appx. 541 (6th Cir. 2014): Continue reading →
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Fourteen days video surveillance of defendant’s back yard by a pole camera, following Anderson-Bagshaw from the Sixth Circuit, was unreasonable, but not suppressed because of good faith. United States v. Houston, 965 F. Supp. 2d 855 (E.D. Tenn. 2013): Continue reading →
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Defendants were convicted of violations of the Clean Air Act for not properly having asbestos removal done on a building they were having demolished. They sought a permit for the work, but the company that was low bidder apparently wasn’t shown all that they had to do. When they finished their work, they left. The site remained unattended for at least a month when state pollution control inspectors showed up. The building was unlocked, without security to keep people out. They entered and took samples of asbestos. This commercial building being torn down was an “open field” without a reasonable expectation of privacy. United States v. Mathis, 738 F.3d 719 (6th Cir. 2013).
A regular library patron told the police that a juvenile with a group had a gun and was entering the library. The patron was treated as a citizen informer although a name wasn’t given, because he could be found again at the library. The tip was enough for a frisk. In re B.A.R., 2013-Ohio-5712, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 5993 (10th Dist. December 24, 2013).*
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TSA officials get qualified immunity for detaining an American at Philadelphia airport after his security screening revealed Arabic language flash cards that included “bomb,” “terrorist,” “explosion,” “an attack,” “battle,” “to kill,” “to target,” “to kidnap,” and “to wound.” They couldn’t be expected to turn a blind eye to that. The security screening also included him being taken away in handcuffs and questioned for four hours. This case, however, is at the outer boundary of the Fourth Amendment and qualified immunity. George v. Rehiel, George v. Rehiel (3d Cir. 2013):
Defendant had child pornography on his computer, and a teenage boy who saw it had the computer and showed his mother, with whom defendant had been staying. She took it to the police. That was purely a private search, and the police could seize the computer to get a search warrant for it. United States v. Goodale, 738 F.3d 917 (8th Cir. 2013).
Defendant’s consent to search his car was voluntary. United States v. Berkley, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181022 (N.D. Ga. December 30, 2013).*
Defendant’s traffic stop was with probable cause, and drugs were in plain view. His argument that the car couldn’t be seized out of his own driveway was not raised below and is waived [and probably would lose anyway]. State v. Lagese, 2013-Ohio-5773, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 6062 (7th Dist. December 19, 2013).*
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A preannounced dormitory room health and safety inspection was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment under the student handbook both by pre-granted contractual consent and special needs. 89g of marijuana were found by the RA’s conducting the inspection and they called the police. “([Medlock’s] failure to use the abundant warning time to clean up his act is one of the mysteries of this case.)” By accepting the student handbook, he consented to the inspection in advance. If there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and there wasn’t, it wouldn’t bar the evidence in a student disciplinary proceeding. Ultimately 89g were found, and the Dean of Students testified it was the largest possession case they had, and he found it not indicative of being a minor possession charge. Medlock v. Trustees of Indiana University, 738 F.3d 867 (7th Cir. 2013):
The mere fact defendant was a repeat DWI offender is not an exigent circumstance to overcome the warrant requirement for a BAC test where there’s no consent. State v. Villarreal, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 645 (Tex. App. – Corpus Christi & Edinburg January 23, 2014):
Defendant’s cell phone was unlawfully searched without a warrant, and he asserted a privacy interest in it. State v. McClatchey, 259 Ore. App. 531, 314 P.3d 721 (2013). [No real discussion of the unlawfulness of the search; it is assumed.]
Defendant’s consent was voluntary. “The agents advised Defendant that they were seeking his cooperation, that he could refuse to consent and that he could revoke any consent that he had given.” He knew they were looking for child pornography. United States v. Williams, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165176 (N.D. Ga. September 5, 2013).*
The evidence showed that ten marijuana plants were on the curtilage to defendant’s home, 35 yds from the house applying the Dunn factors. Defendant conceded nine others were outside the curtilage. United States v. Couch, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165182 (E.D. Ky. June 28, 2013).*
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Defendant was “arrested” for invoking speedy trial when he was taken in for questioning in handcuffs. He was told he was not under arrest, but he was also told he was not free to leave; 91 days later he was charged. State v. Hansen, 2014 Iowa App. LEXIS 93 (January 23, 2014):
Officers had a search warrant for stolen power tools in defendant’s house. Once inside, they pried off a locked gun cabinet door and found a sawed off shotgun with a scratched off serial number. To enter the cabinet, the officers didn’t have to believe that all of the stolen stuff would be there, just any of it, and it was reasonable to think that. Bending the lock was not constitutionally significant. State v. Salyers, 2014 Minn. App. LEXIS 8 (January 21, 2014).
Defendant was stopped for a traffic offense, and the officer saw he was moving “feverishly” inside the car. When he got defendant out, he handcuffed him for officer safety and then saw a handgun in the car, which was in plain view. United States v. Earthman, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6936 (N.D. Tex. January 21, 2014).*
Defendant roomed with a woman and her teenage son who found child pornography on their computer defendant was using. She could and did consent to a search and seizure of the computer. United States v. Coulter, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183939 (W.D. Mo. July 15, 2013).*
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Records of ownership in a car are likely to be kept there for the life of ownership. Therefore, staleness is hard to prove. There was probable cause to believe the car was involved in a robbery and it was found much later in a parking garage. The probable cause for records of ownership didn’t dissipate. United States v. Salomon-Mendez, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7312 (S.D. N.Y. January 20, 2014):
Consent to one officer searching defendant’s car was complete and there was a temporal break when the second officer searched the car. In between she was told she could leave and then consent was sought before she could go. This amounted to a second stop. State v. Marino, 259 Or. App. 608, 314 P.3d 984 (2013).
When the trial court is asked to rely on the offense report, credibility determinations are limited. The court of appeals erred in determining that it was not believable when it relied on it. Delafuente v. State, 414 S.W.3d 173 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013).*
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Police often ask for consent, but before asking a motorist for consent in a routine traffic stop, the motorist has to know he or she is free to go. Still holding the license when asking for consent is not “free to go.” United States v. Washington, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8002 (N.D. Ohio January 13, 2014):
"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.
