In a child pornography case, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in computer files open to a file sharing program. When the investigators have the IP address of the computer involved, and they can pinpoint the house address, that is nexus for a search warrant. Defendant didn’t raise a staleness challenge on a 19 day delay in the trial court, so it’s waived. It would lose anyway because the time is so short compared to other cases. State v. Aguilar, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 1101 (December 18, 2013)* [Note: I’ve never seen a successful staleness challenge in a child pornography case, no matter what the time period.]
Denial of defendant’s suppression motion was waived for appeal by not including it in the motion for new trial. State v. Nix, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 1102 (December 18, 2013).*
Defendant’s traffic stop that led to his DUI was based on probable cause. State v. Murrell, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 1104 (December 18, 2013).*
Defendant’s traffic stop that led to his DUI was based on reasonable suspicion. State v. Banks, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 1105 (December 18, 2013).*
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NYT: Researchers Hack Webcam While Disabling Warning Lights by Nick Bilton (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/researchers-hack-webcam-while-disabling-warning-lights/?ref=technology):
Defendant showed implied authority to consent to a search of a purse when he told police his ID was in it. “There can be no doubt that Hull’s actions at the time of his arrest could have been reasonably interpreted by the officers as communicating his consent to their search of the purse.” United States v. Walker, 529 Fed. Appx. 256 (3d Cir. 2013).
Officers had probable cause to arrest plaintiff, so his false arrest claim fails. He can get return of some property, however. Smith v. Tobon, 529 Fed. Appx. 36 (2d Cir. 2013).*
District Court improperly abstained from determining false arrest claim and dismissing the case while a criminal case was pending. Kanciper v. Suffolk County SPCA, 722 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2013).*
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1982’s Wuagneux still lives as the leading particularity case. This warrant referring to the crimes under investigation for particularity wasn’t overbroad. United States v. Kermali, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178169 (M.D. Fla. November 27, 2013):
This investigatory stop was really conducted as a full blown felony arrest, and it was unreasonable because of a lack of probable cause. The subsequent consent was tainted. United States v. Castro-Carbajal, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178217 (D. Utah December 13, 2013):
One who is a mere party to an email conversation doesn’t have standing to challenge its seizure from another. United States v. Young, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178284 (D. Utah December 17, 2013):
Officers encountered defendant’s 11 year old son when they arrived to do a knock-and-talk. They asked for defendant and he said that defendant was inside, and he took them in. Defendant’s son is not treated as consenting to the entry, but defendant never objected to the officers being in the house either. When defendant was asked for consent, he refused, and the officers obtained a valid search warrant. United States v. Belt, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178891 (N.D. W.Va. December 20, 2013), R&R 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178888 (N.D. W.Va. November 8, 2013)*:
A school bus driver was reasonably subject to random drug testing under the special needs doctrine. Freeman v. Middle Twp. Bd. of Educ., 529 Fed. Appx. 213 (3d Cir. 2013).
An order of protection was issued against the defendant, including an order to relinquish firearms, and state officers who came to serve it can collect his guns. They collected a short barreled shotgun. Officers came back to talk to him about it, and made clear that he was not being arrested and was not in custody. Defendant did not have to let the officers into his place to talk about the court order, but he did. The seizure of the gun was reasonable under the state court order. Alternatively, it was in plain view. United States v. Gamache, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92125 (D. Me. May 23, 2013).
Defendant’s stop for a cracked taillight that emitted both red and white light was not a violation of Florida law. The stop was based on a mistake of law and was unreasonable. United States v. Harris, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92858 (N.D. Fla. July 2, 2013).
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Defendant’s consent was vitiated by the threat to get a search warrant where it was clear that, under New York law, one would not have issued. United States v. Munoz, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177576 (S.D. N.Y. December 18, 2013):
"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.
