Arrest for loitering and prowling may have lacked probable cause, but the arrest was valid because there was probable cause to arrest for burglary. D.S. v. State, 122 So. 3d 482 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013).*
Defendant’s stop was valid because he failed to signal. Scandrett v. State, 293 Ga. 602, 748 S.E.2d 861 (2013).*
There was a factual basis for defendant’s stop for crossing the centerline, so the DUI is affirmed. State v. Black, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 820 (September 18, 2013).*
An officer was delayed in responding to a fight call at an apartment, and he got to defendant’s premises and the others involved in the fight weren’t around and not answering the door. Defendant was outside saying that everything was fine. Officers were free to disregard his statement and enter to check on persons who could have been injured in the fight. Alternatively, defendant’s parole condition would have permitted the search. People v. Lester, 2013 Cal. App. LEXIS 800 (4th Dist. October 7, 2013).
Defendant was not in custody during a consensual search so Miranda warnings were not required. State v. Rosas-Miranda, 176 Wn. App. 773, 309 P.3d 728 (2013).*
Merely touching or crossing the fog line is not weaving, and this stop was without reasonable suspicion. State v. Beck, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 1161 (Mo. App. October 7, 2013).*
Defendant’s warrantless arrest as an unregistered sex offender was valid. He was arrested in a bedroom, and the officer’s protective sweep of the closet, sweeping his arm through the clothes hanging there, was designed to see if a person was there. Instead, he felt a firearm, and it was thus in plain view. United States v. Gray, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167536 (N.D. Ga. October 31, 2013).*
2255 petitioner is arguing “semantics” whether this trash was at the “curb” or not, and he pled guilty with no motion to suppress. “As such, the Supreme Court’s decision in California v. Greenwood clearly supports the legality of Agent Crain’s search and there is no conceivable way in which Petitioner’s counsel was ineffective in failing to challenge the search. Despite his vigorous assertions, Petitioner’s legal and factual bases for this Ground are erroneous.” Garries v. United States, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167464 (E.D. Va. November 25, 2013).*
WaPo: Microsoft, suspecting NSA spying, to ramp up efforts to encrypt its Internet traffic by Craig Timberg, Barton Gellman, and Ashkan Soltani:
HuffPo: Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit ‘Radicalizers’ by Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim (link won’t imbed:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html):
The DEA was at an oncologist’s office and demanded to see the paid drugs. The officer manager “Ms. Posey flatly testified that she never consented to any search, and that she believed that she had no choice but to comply with West’s demands. She said that she was ‘completely paralyzed, she was so scared.’ [¶] Ms. Posey’s testimony is believed, without qualification. Remarkably, Agent West tends to corroborate Ms. Posey’s testimony that she was extremely frightened during her interaction with these agents. West himself, early in the interview, told Ms. Posey she ‘looked like a deer in the headlights.’ [¶] … The United States has failed to carry th[e] burden [on consent]. Ms. Posey’s ‘consent’ was not voluntary. Thus, there was no consent at all.” United States v. Sen, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167641 (E.D. Tenn. November 14, 2013).*
“The district court correctly concluded that the anonymous letter carries little weight in this analysis—it simply prompted D’Alessandro to visit Defendant’s home. … But the remaining facts—the NPLEx e-mail, Defendant’s history of manufacturing methamphetamine, and, above all, the odor of a methamphetamine precursor—together gave D’Alessandro probable cause to believe that criminal activity was afoot.” There was no clear error in crediting the testimony. United States v. Lykins, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 23602, 2013 FED App. 0996N (6th Cir. November 21, 2013).*
Defendant’s stop was without reasonable suspicion of any criminal activity. While other criminal activity had occurred at or near some of the residences in that area, and defendant appeared nervous and was “breathing heavily,” and the officer found his answers to the officer’s questions to be “inconsistent,” there was nothing else to show crime was “a foot.” Therefore, no reasonable suspicion. United States v. Kessler, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166172 (W.D. Mo. October 15, 2013), Adopted by, Motion granted by United States v. Kessler, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165546 (W.D. Mo. Nov. 21, 2013).
Defendant’s claim that an attorney for a bank illegally seized records during a bankruptcy was both waived and a private action claim. United States v. Prince, 547 Fed. Appx. 587 (5th Cir. 2013).*
Defendant’s 2255 search claim was defaulted by appealing before without asserting it. Not only that, the issue would fail. Benford v. United States, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166252 (N.D. Ala. November 22, 2013).*
An Officer looking at defendant’s laptop saw a thumbnail image that was child pornography, and that was probable cause for a seizure of the computer. The 13 month delay in getting a search warrant for the computer was not unreasonable under the circumstances here because defendant’s own liberty was not restrained. The delay was based on an error, not lack of diligence. United States v. Howe, 545 Fed. Appx. 64 (2d Cir. 2013):
Seizure of a gun off property defendant admitted wasn’t his meant he had no reasonable expectation of privacy there. United States v. Stile, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167144 (D. Me. May 6, 2013)* (Pro se motion not adopted by defense counsel decided anyway.)
Seizure of property out of another’s car meant defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy there. Also, a search warrant involved in this motion was particular enough. United States v. Stile, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166904 (D. Me. May 2, 2013)* (same).
The stop of the car defendant was a passenger in was based on the fact the driver was known to have a suspended DL. Defendant was previously suspected of methamphetamine trafficking in 2012, with a new allegation from 2013. Thus, there was reasonable suspicion to detain her further because of that. United States v. Rolenc, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166681 (D. Neb. October 18, 2013).*
Search warrant seeking “electronic/digital devices/media” permitted officers to seize cell phones. United States v. Reed, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142337 (D. Vt. October 2, 2013).*
Defendant’s furtive movements justified his search, so defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging it. State v. Farrey, 2013 Ohio 4263, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 4483 (9th Dist. September 30, 2013).*
Defendant took his computer to CompUSA for repair in 2005, and the computer tech found child pornography on the computer and called the police. That was a valid private search. For some reason, the investigation started again in 2009, and the police when to defendant’s house and his wife with apparent or actual authority consented to a search of his computer and found more child pornography. The searches were valid. United States v. Tosti, 733 F.3d 816 (9th Cir. 2013).*
NYT: N.S.A. May Have Hit Internet Companies at a Weak Spot by Nicole Perloth and John Markoff:
Security experts said they believe that spies bypassed Google and Yahoo and accessed their data through the fiber-optic cables that link their data centers.
NRC (Netherlands): NSA infected 50,000 computer networks with malicious software by Floor Boon, Steven Derix, and Huib Modderkolk:
Shima Baradaran, Rebalancing the Fourth Amendment, 102 Geo. L.J. 1 (2013):
Even assuming defense counsel was deficient in not presenting a search and seizure issue on appeal, defendant fails to show how the outcome would be different or that the appellate court would have reversed. Penney v. United States, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165019 (E.D. Tenn. November 20, 2013):
Defendant’s post-trial learning of an NSA leak claim that defendant’s phone calls were captured by the NSA affords no relief. The court finds no reasonable expectation of privacy in the metadata of a telephone call seized off of a third party’s telephone call. United States v. Moalin, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166582 (S.D. Cal. November 14, 2013):
US AOC: 64 Federal Courts Now Publish Opinions on FDsys:
A project providing free online access to federal court opinions has expanded to include 64 courts. The federal Judiciary and the Government Printing Office partner through the GPO’s Federal Digital System, FDsys, to provide public access to more than 750,000 opinions, many dating back to 2004.
Federal court opinions are one of the most heavily used collections on FDsys, with millions of retrievals each month. Opinions are pulled nightly from the courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) systems and sent to the GPO, where they are posted on the FDsys website. Collections on FDsys are divided into appellate, district or bankruptcy court opinions and are text-searchable across courts. FDsys also allows embedded animation and audio – an innovation previously only available with opinions posted on a court’s own website or on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER).
FDsys is now added to the sidebar, and it is a service of the GPO. Featured today are records of the Kennedy assassination. I tried searching for the Moalin opinion in the previous post, but that court is not online yet.
Defendant was accused of battery of a woman, and, when the police arrived, he refused to consent to police entry because he didn’t want them to see her. Assuming, arguendo, that this was clear constitutional error, there was plenty of other evidence admitted without objection proving the same thing. Thus, “Carmouche has not shown that the testimony referencing his exercise of his Fourth Amendment rights, and the prosecutor’s brief comment on this testimony, affected the outcome of the trial proceedings. We conclude the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” State v. Carmouche, 2013 Ida. App. LEXIS 87 (November 21, 2013).
2255 petitioner consented to seizure and search of his computer, so the unsupported claim that the government searched it and lied about it has no merit. It appears that it was never searched. Hargrove v. United States, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166361 (N.D. W.Va. September 18, 2013).*
Petitioner’s IAC allegation that defense counsel didn’t order the transcript of the suppression hearing alleges nothing about performance. State ex rel. Adkins v. Dingus, 2013 W. Va. LEXIS 1339 (November 21, 2013).*
Defendant was subjected to a patdown because he had a knife clipped to his pocket. He consented to removing a pill box from his pocket but not to its search, and the search of the box could not be justified by the frisk. McCormack v. State, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 985 (November 22, 2013).
Mirandized defendant told he didn’t have to consent to search was found to have consented. United States v. Young, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166621 (W.D. N.Y. November 22, 2013).*
The state parole search of defendant’s residence was valid. The PO received information defendant had drugs and guns, so he went there to look and found marijuana and a firearm. United States v. Perkins, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166623 (W.D. N.Y. October 11, 2013).*
DHS officers trolling the internet for peer-to-peer file sharing discovered that a computer with a particular IP address had 418 likely child pornography files on it, and they narrowed it down and got a search warrant. The particularity clause of the warrant was limited strictly to looking for child pornography and it was not inappropriate to seize hardware, too. “The warrant was not unconstitutionally overbroad because non-contraband items contained within the computer (such as bank statements, professional records, personal photographs and music) were also subject to seizure. Again, federal courts have consistently recognized that computer searches pose unique challenges that may result in ‘some innocuous documents [being] examined, at least cursorily in order to determine whether they are, in fact, among those papers authorized to be seized.’ Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 482 n.11, 96 S. Ct. 2737, 49 L. Ed. 2d 627 (1976).” United States v. Conrad, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111176 (M.D. Fla. May 14, 2013).
“With respect to his motion concerning the search warrant, defendant Young failed to support his motion with a personal affidavit setting forth facts and/or circumstances that would warrant the granting of the motion. Since the defendant has failed to ‘create a dispute over any material fact,’ there is no requirement that the Court hold a hearing on his motion to suppress. Furthermore, the government’s uncontradicted response, refutes the defendant’s claim for suppression of evidence. Therefore, it is recommended that defendant’s motion to suppress be denied.” United States v. Young, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110661 (W.D. N.Y. January 23, 2013),* adopted 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110357 (W.D.N.Y., Aug. 5, 2013).*
