“The knowing use of a file-sharing program defeats any claim of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the files shared on that network.” United States v. Hoffman, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108076 (D. Minn. August 1, 2013),* R&R 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108900 (D. Minn. June 27, 2013).*
The seizure of defendant’s Express Mail package implicated the Fourth Amendment, but it was reasonable. [This case is unnecessarily long and goes on for ten pages when it could have been done in two: Dog sniff in transit is no interference with package; sniff is PC for warrant; slight delay for warrant is de minimus. (It’s a rookie judge.)] United States v. Hoyt, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108135 (E.D. Ark. August 1, 2013).*
Defendant’s racial profiling claim, if that’s what it is, isn’t cognizable on habeas. Alvardo v. United States, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108152 (M.D. Pa. August 1, 2013).*
To win on a Fourth Amendment IAC claim, the habeas petitioner has to show that he’d have prevailed, and here he can’t. Ray v. United States, 721 F.3d 758 (6th Cir. 2013).*
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A twelfth-hour (later than an eleventh-hour) motion to suppress records was filed on the eve of a forfeiture trial within the forfeiture action that was filed nearly four years earlier complicated by separate civil suits involving the same records. Waiting all this time and never objecting to any of the civil discovery was a waiver. In re 650 Fifth Ave. & Related Props., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128666 (S.D. N.Y. September 9, 2013):
Defendant was arrested, and state highway patrol policy required an audio or written record be made of the contents of a vehicle for accountability purposes. When the inventory occurred, the officer did not know that defendant’s father was on his way to take possession of the vehicle, and methamphetamine was found. The court also declines to adopt a less intrusive measures approach as a matter of state law. Hunnicutt-Carter v. State, 2013 WY 103, 2013 Wyo. LEXIS 107 (August 29, 2013).*
An officer in an unmarked car pulled up next to defendant and his cohort asking what they were doing in the bushes. There were no lights on, and the car was not blocking anything. Defendant’s conversation with the officer was consensual. Also, the camera in the backseat of the car to record conversations there was obvious, and it complied with the Illinois eavesdropping statute. People v. Burk, 2013 IL App (2d) 120063; 2013 Ill. App. LEXIS 584 (August 30, 2013).*
Probable cause was shown for a search warrant for child pornography in defendant’s home on tribal lands based on downloads from GROU.PS to his screen name tied to him and IP address. The tribe’s director of engineering pointed out which place was his. United States v. Needham, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124979 (D. Minn. July 8, 2013).*
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Defendant filed an ineffectiveness claim against counsel for advising him to plead guilty without contesting the search of his person. His brother, however, contested the search of his house and prevailed. The court held that defendant had no standing to contest the search of the house because he was a mere social guest [completely overlooking the fact that he obviously has standing to challenge a search of his own person]. State v. Derricoatte, 2013 Ohio 3774, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 3932 (11th Dist. September 3, 2013)*:
Defendant was a suspect in identity theft using a credit card from a stolen backpack, and she was on video taking it. A search warrant was issued for her house, and the police did not seek the distinctive shirt she was wearing in the warrant. The shirt was found during the search, and the plain view doctrine justified its seizure. They were lawfully in her house on the warrant when they saw it. People v. Jauch, 2013 Colo. App. LEXIS 1375 (August 29, 2013).
Defendant’s release condition that he not have access to sexually explicit material includes a provision that LEOs can be enlisted in the search, but it is not construed to mean that LEOs can do it without a PO instigating it. Johnston v. State, 2013 Alas. App. LEXIS 90 (September 4, 2013).*
Defendant is not entitled to a Franks hearing on how child pornography sniffing software worked because it wouldn’t change the outcome. The government submitted declarations that the officers knew what they were doing when using it. [Essentially, the request for a Franks hearing here is a fishing expedition without the “substantial preliminary showing” the case requires.] United States v. Norris, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 125640 (E.D. Cal. August 30, 2013).*
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When stopped, defendant made a furtive movement under the seat, and he and the passenger got out of the car and walked back toward the police officer. They were nervous, and the officer thought they were trying to distance themselves from the car. A search for weapons under the seat was valid, but what the officer found instead was an open cigarette pack with heroin in it. The seizure was valid. State v. Webb, 2013 Ohio 3844, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 4006 (2d Dist. September 6, 2013):
High-crime area, change of direction and increased pace, grabbing at waistline, two men splitting paths, defendant’s backpedaling when talked to, flight of his companion. The district court didn’t put much weight in the grabbing at waistline, but this court does [as does almost every other court]. United States v. Briggs, 720 F.3d 1281 (10th Cir. 2013).*
Carrying two plastic bags to one’s car at night in a high crime area simply doesn’t add up to reasonable suspicion. Motion to suppress granted. United States v. Lunas, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93207 (E.D. Pa. June 5, 2013).*
It was objectively reasonable for the officer to have concluded defendant’s seatbelt was not fastened, and that justified the stop. United States v. Hughes, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93643 (W.D. N.C. July 3, 2013).*
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“Given that Mr. Scott was arrested outside of his home, the officer’s subsequent protective sweep of his home was not justified under Buie absent reasonable suspicion that there were dangerous individuals in the home.” United States v. Scott, 517 Fed. Appx. 647 (11th Cir. 2013).*
One defendant did not show any standing to challenge the search of the car he was in. He claimed no interest in anything in the car, so the court concludes he has no standing. United States v. Lemay, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55021 (D. R.I. April 17, 2013).*
Defendant had standing to challenge the stop, but not the search. The stop was valid for a traffic offense. United States v. Davis, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54513 (N.D. Ill. April 15, 2013).*
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Abandonment after an illegal arrest is to be suppressed. State v. Joe, 213 N.C. App. 148, 730 S.E.2d 779 (2012).*
Defense counsel was not ineffective in an OVI case for stipulating the officer’s testimony. “ We fail to see how stipulating to the facts, when both parties agree the facts were uncontested, prejudiced appellant. Nor do we see how requiring the trooper to testify would have resulted in a different outcome for the suppression.” The stipulation showed reasonable suspicion for the stop. State v. Hammen, 2012 Ohio 3628, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 3206 (5th Dist. August 6, 2012).*
The officer had reasonable suspicion that defendant was under the influence to continue the stop. State v. Shutt, 2012 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 615 (August 10, 2012).*
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A paraeducator had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his desk at school because it was never locked and others could regularly have access to it. Walker v. State, 432 Md. 587, 69 A.3d 1066 (2013), affg Walker v. State, 206 Md. App. 13, 47 A.3d 590 (2012) (posted here):
Police officers went to a motel and scanned the guest registry [a practice later held violated the state constitution] finding a name there was an arrest warrant for. They went to the room and knocked with the intention of arresting. Inside they could see a bloodied woman, and they entered to render aid. Inside they found another girl who said she’d been raped by the defendant. The emergency aid doctrine justified the entry. State v. Smith, 177 Wn.2d 533, 303 P.3d 1047 (2013):
Officers had a line on the defendant as being involved in a shooting, and they went to a bar, seeing him through the window. They entered, and he saw them and fled. That was probable cause for his arrest. United States v. Watkins, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128106 (S.D.W.Va. September 9, 2013).*
Defendant was indicted in 1994 for a mafia murder and disappeared. The FBI found him in Idaho under a different name, and acquired an arrest warrant for him. Defendant was arrested driving, and he had two children whom he refused to disclose where they were, saying only that their mother was in Utah. They didn’t get off the nearest school bus, so the officers went to his house to make sure they weren’t there. They went to the door and knocked but got no answer despite a TV being on. They could see a gun through the window. They acquired a search warrant for his house and based it in part on his statement to others that he was attempting to acquire automatic weapons. The warrant was an independent source. United States v. Ponzo, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128212 (D. Mass. September 9, 2013).*
The suspicionless probation search of defendant’s car was valid. The LPN was suspended, and that led to the stop. United States v. Canton, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128151 (D. Nev. August 15, 2013).*
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If their motions are granted, five unions representing New York City’s police officers will be able to participate in the city’s appeal of Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin’s decision ordering the appointment of a monitor to oversee reforms of the NYPD’s practice.
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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.
