While there likely was probable cause, the officer’s testimony didn’t sufficiently show exigency to dispense with a search warrant. Burton v. State, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 2491 (Tex. App.—Texarkana April 5, 2011):
Considering the evidence with McNairy’s suggested factors, we find there was evidence of some degree of urgency (first factor) and of some danger to the officers and others in the immediate vicinity (third factor); but little or no evidence, other than Proctor’s broad assertion that evidence could be destroyed, that evidence could soon be removed or destroyed, or that suspects knew that law enforcement officers were close by and investigating (second, fourth, and fifth factors).
Defendant was stopped for a traffic offense, and the license plate did not match it. Impounding the vehicle was lawful. The serial numbers of two firearms in the trunk were run and one was found stolen. The inventory was valid. Commonwealth v. Lagenella, 2011 PA Super 68, 17 A.3d 1257 (2011),* rev’d Commonwealth v. Lagenella, 2013 Pa. LEXIS 3250 (December 27, 2013) posted here.
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There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a license plate number. The police can run them through the computer system for warrants on the owner anytime they want. Jones v. Town of Woodworth, 2013 La. App. LEXIS 2869 (La.App. 3 Cir. December 26, 2013).
On an offer of proof at a juvenile hearing, the accused fled from the police when confronted, and he was shot while fleeing. Searched when he was finally stopped by the shooting, a shotgun shell was found on him, and that was the basis of the charge. The trial court noted that there’s nothing suspicious in having one’s hands in his coat pocket walking on a cold Chicago night. The case is remanded for a new suppression hearing because the offer of proof left a void in the record. After taking two years to get through first hearing and the interlocutory appeal, the appellate court wants it expedited on remand, and recommends settling the dispute with “a resolution of this case that is advantageous to all concerned.” In re Kendale H., 2013 IL App (1st) 130421, 2013 Ill. App. LEXIS 918 (December 27, 2013).*
Driving without headlights in a residential neighborhood was reasonable suspicion for a stop. State v. Jackson, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 1542 (December 26, 2013).*
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Defendant was reported to the police as “suspicious and disoriented.” When they found him, he was intoxicated. There was nothing to suggest he was dangerous. “[T]he information the Officers possessed about Defendant did not indicate that he was armed and dangerous.” The frisk could not be justified by that. The officers felt, however, that defendant was a danger to himself or others, and the court finds probable cause for a frisk before taking him“into protective custody under Colorado’s Emergency Commitment statute.” United States v. Gilmore, 945 F. Supp. 2d 1211 (D. Colo. 2013).*
Co-defendant passenger had standing to challenge the stop (which was valid) but not the search of the vehicle owned and driven by another. United States v. Desjardin, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70770 (D. Nev. May 17, 2013).*
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Defendant’s DNA was collected in 2005 by grand jury subpoena duces tecum, and no charges were filed. In 2011, defendant became the focus of something else, and his DNA was examined again, and this time he was matched up. While collection of the DNA violated Maryland v. King, it was collected years before in good faith, and the exclusionary rule would not be applied. United States v. Thomas, 736 F.3d 54 (1st Cir. 2013), on appeal from United States v. Thomas, 815 F. Supp. 2d 384 (D. Me. 2011):
Defendant was mistaken for being a casino robber who had entered a Sioux Falls casino at night wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled way down over his eyes. A casino employee had seen a poster with the robber’s photograph, and she thought he was the man. She hit the “panic button” that called the police, and, when on the phone, was acting really scared and afraid to talk. “The overall tone and nature of the call—an identified, concerned citizen feeling so threatened that she is unable to speak openly with a dispatcher—further supports the officers’ reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.” When the police arrived, they went over to defendant and talked to him. When he tensed up, they frisked him finding a meth pipe. The frisk was still with reasonable suspicion, although he was the wrong man. The casino employee was not a CI because she talked with the police and was identifiable. State v. Mohr, 2013 SD 94, 2013 S.D. LEXIS 154 (December 18, 2013).
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Jardines and the drug sniffing dog at the door of a house does not apply to an apartment building because apartments don’t have curtilage. State v. Nguyen, 2013 ND 252, 2013 N.D. LEXIS 258 (December 26, 2013):
The officer, while writing a citation, called for a drug dog. Then he ordered defendant out of the vehicle for the sniff. It took ten minutes, and it did not unduly prolong the stop. United States v. Starr, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131480 (D. Utah September 12, 2013).*
A citizen informant gave specific information that led to defendant’s stop for being an impaired driver, and it was with reasonable suspicion. Russell v. State, 993 N.E.2d 1176 (Ind. App. 2013).*
When defendant saw the officers, he approached them, and they started talking. They asked for ID and he had none. He gave a name which didn’t come back on a computer check. He was not seized. State v. Matthews, 2013 La. App. LEXIS 1846 (La. App. 4 Cir. September 12, 2013).*
Defendant’s state law required “certified question” concerned only his stop and not the statement that came from the stop, so he didn’t preserve the issue for appeal. State v. Hasaflook, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 772 (September 12, 2013).*
Defendant’s handcuffing did not transform the detention into an arrest. In addition, his father consented to a search, and then came his admission, so the admission was not based on his arrest but a co-tenant’s consent. State v. Barabin, 124 So. 3d 1121 (La. App. 4 Cir. 2013).*
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Defendant was in an adult bookstore where a police officer was hanging out because it had been robbed a few times. Suspecting defendant and his girlfriend were underage, the officer asked them for their driver’s licenses which he held for 10-15 seconds and handed them back. He called it in for verification but did not ask for wants or warrants. Dispatch radioed back that the young man’s was under suspension. He waited for them to get into a car and leave, and he pulled defendant over for driving on a suspended license. He moved to suppress that information. The court held that asking for ID under those circumstances was not a seizure. Also, people expect that LEOs will run any ID they have. State v. Backstrand, 354 Ore. 392, 313 P.3d 1084 (2013):
The district court upheld the search but the parties did a woeful job of making a record by stipulation, so remanded. Here, exigent circumstances were relied on in the trial court, but the record didn’t support it. “[A]n officer’s mere fear or speculation that evidence might be destroyed does not justify a warrantless search and seizure under the exigent circumstances exception.” State v. Canfield, 2013 ND 236, 2013 N.D. LEXIS 234 (December 19, 2013):
Montana has a constitutional right to privacy and right to know. The Montana Supreme Court concludes that lower level employees disciplined for viewing pornography on city time on city computers had a reasonable expectation of privacy not to be publicly disclosed, and disclosure of their identities was not in the public interest. The Fourth Amendment reasonable expectation of privacy analogy was not apt because of the state privacy protection. Billings Gazette v. City of Billings, 2013 MT 334, 372 Mont. 409, 313 P.3d 129 (2013)*:
As the investigation progressed and some exculpatory information is obtained, the vast amount of information obtained was inculpatory. So, even if Franks requires that, it wouldn’t have nullified the warrant. State v. Brown, __ Ida. __, 313 P.3d 751 (App. 2013).*
Questions of a motorist while waiting for the criminal history and DL check do not extend the stop and are reasonable. United States v. Ramirez, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 127419 (D. Neb. September 6, 2013), R&R 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 127416 (D. Neb. August 2, 2013).*
It was clear that officers were going to get a search warrant before the alleged illegal search occurred. Even assuming it was illegal, the independent source doctrine makes the search under the warrant valid. United States v. Ponzo, 972 F. Supp. 2d 82 (D. Mass. 2013).*
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on ID: Even if Franks required including exculpatory information, the inculpatory here was enough
Defendant’s stop was [state] unconstitutionally extended by the officer after the need for it ended, and his car was blocking defendant’s car, so the defendant did not feel free to leave. The officer offered to move the car, and the defendant didn’t say so, but that’s not determinative. State v. Peterson, 259 Or. App. 294, 313 P.3d 388 (2013):
The search of defendant’s car was unreasonable and not supported by any exception. The inevitable discovery exception didn’t apply because it was going to be towed it could be inventoried because it was lawfully parked in a parking space in an apartment complex parking lot. It wasn’t on the roadway. United States v. Bennett, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142513 (S.D. Ga. August 19, 2013).
Prior appellate decision that defendant was lawfully arrested before he made his statement incriminating himself binds this case since it was the same arrest. State v. Cox, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 855 (September 30, 2013).*
Defendant was brought back to the scene of a hit and run accident as a passenger with her boyfriend. He at first said he was at fault, but the officer didn’t believe him, so he talked to her and she broke down and admitted it was her and he had too much to drink. This was a consensual encounter. Lewis v. State, 412 S.W.3d 794 (Tex. App. – Amarillo September 30, 2013).*
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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.
