A citizen called 911, gave her name and what she was driving, and reported defendant as being under the influence. The called was entitled to more credibility because she was an identified citizen, not a CI. State v. Long, 2014 Mo. App. LEXIS 39 (Mo. App. January 16, 2014).
The officer had probable cause to stop and arrest defendant for tossing what he believed was a gun into the bushes. The search of his person produced ammunition. Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the bushes where the gun landed. The conviction was reversed, however, for prejudicial hearsay on a 911 call about defendant having a gun on his person. United States v. Nelson, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 25946, 2013 FED App. 0210P (6th Cir. August 7, 2013).*
Officers encountered defendant in a car at a Red Roof Inn parking lot late at night in an area known for its late night crime. The corner of a plastic bag was seen in plain view, and that’s drug paraphernalia. Defendant’s heavy breathing and reflexively touching his pocket was reasonable suspicion. United States v. Faulkner, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183827 (W.D. N.C. November 7, 2013),* adopted 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6553 (W.D. N.C. January 17, 2014).*
Comments Off on MO: Fully identified 911 caller was not “anonymous tipster”
Issue: Whether the Fourth Amendment requires an officer who receives an anonymous tip regarding a drunken or reckless driver to corroborate dangerous driving before stopping the vehicle.
Thus, what does Terry mean on “reasonable suspicion” for a stop? It takes little to corroborate; just follow for a little while because something will happen. However, what if that something is a head-on crash with another vehicle?
Comments Off on Navarette v. California argument Jan. 21
Defendant ran a convenience store with a beer and wine permit. NH ABC got word he was selling liquor contrary to his license, so they went to the store to ask about it and conduct an annual premises inspection. When there, a customer came in and asked for vodka. Defendant ultimately produced a receipt showing that he’d purchased vodka but said it was for himself, but he’d apparently consumed it because it was first, gone, then second, offsite. The officers helped themselves and searched his desk in the office without asking permission, or a warrant, and controlled substances were found. Because alcoholic beverage sales are highly regulated, the search of the desk was within the power of the ABC officers in their premises inspection. State v. Gness, 2014 N.H. LEXIS 2 (January 14, 2014):
Police got a tip that defendant was involved in picking up methamphetamine in Minnesota and bringing it back to North Dakota. “Police verified that the Burleigh County Sheriff’s Department had a bench warrant for Grubb for driving under the influence and driving under suspension.” So, they took that bench warrant and went to the house and entered and found drugs. The entry of a house on a routine misdemeanor bench warrant was unreasonable. State v. Hart, 2014 ND 4, 2014 N.D. LEXIS 3 (January 14, 2014):
I’m going to go out on a limb here: Can a smartphone (a computer) capable of holding a million pages of documents and a few hundred thousand photographs be compared to the crumbled cigarette pack in 1973’s Robinson? To ask is to answer. No.
Update: Here, if a cell phone was seized, I assume it was dumped into the police computer whether the discovery mentions it or not. Too many times I’ve read about seized cell phones and the police bragging about their electronic toys to copy phones. Twice I’ve had clients arrested and released (“catch and release”) where the police held the cell phone for about two hours and returned it. And what were they doing with it?
Comments Off on Cell phone search incident–cert granted in two cases
Rejecting Florida v. Riley and California v. Ciraolo under state law, targeted aerial surveillance of the curtilage of the home is a “search” under the state constitution. “Airborne police are not the equivalent of airborne members of the public” [channeling Scalia in Jardines]. State v. Davis, 2014-NMCA-042, 321 P.3d 955 (2014), cert. granted 324 P.3d 376 (N.M. Mar. 14, 2014): Continue reading →
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on NM holds targeted aerial surveillance of curtilage is a “search” under state constitution
Defendant was driving a rental car in his girlfriend’s name, but he made no effort to show standing in the car. He didn’t rent it, and he wasn’t an authorized driver on the agreement, which said no other drivers were permitted. The car was tracked with GPS planted by Missouri police before Jones, but he was stopped for speeding in Arkansas when they were expecting him. He had no standing, so neither Jones nor his effort to distinguish Davis good faith needs to be decided. He consented after the stop. Wilson v. State, 2014 Ark. 8, 2014 Ark. LEXIS 31 (January 16, 2014).
The officer conducting a traffic stop of the defendant knew that he was under investigation by the DEA. The stop was at night in a high crime area. Defendant was subjected to a cursory patdown for weapons that revealed none, and there was no manipulation of his pockets. He validly consented to a search of his car. United States v. Asghedom, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183686 (N.D. Ala. October 21, 2013).*
Then it was revealed there was a GPS device on defendant’s car, and the stop was in 2010. All this was way prior to Jones, and it is settled in this circuit that pre-Jones GPS tracking is subject to the good faith exception under Davis. United States v. Asghedom, 2013 U.S. U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183683 (N.D. Ala. December 31, 2013).*
Comments Off on AR: Def didn’t show standing in rental car rented by woman he said was his girlfriend
Deployed without proper regulation, drones equipped with facial recognition software, infrared technology, and speakers capable of monitoring personal conversations would cause real harms to our privacy rights.
"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.
