Defendant was driving on US11 in New York and was stopped at an immigration checkpoint manned by 4-5 Border Patrol agents and state officers. He was driving from a Mohawk reservation to a smoke shop and had cigarettes in a U-Haul trailer. It was apparent both occupants were U.S. citizens, but defendant was referred for a secondary stop. “The basis for detaining and questioning defendant further ended when Jock told Hotz at secondary inspection that he had cigarettes in the trailer and that he was going from the Akwesasne Reserve to the Seneca Smoke Shop. This information gave rise to no reasonable inference of criminality in the possession or transportation of the [untaxed] cigarettes.” People v Jock, 2013 NY Slip Op 23176, 40 Misc. 3d 457, 967 N.Y.S.2d 818 (St. Lawrence Co. 2013).*
According to the SW affidavit, defendant sent an instant message to a known collector of child pornography expressing his interest in child pornography and requesting such an image from the collector. That shows a reasonable basis concluding that defendant, like the collector, used computer equipment to obtain pornographic images of children over the Internet. State v. Shields, 308 Conn. 678, 69 A.3d 293 (2013).*
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The evidence supporting alleged probable cause in this case was weak, and the officer’s experience doesn’t fill in the blanks of what was already weak. The search of defendant’s porch was suppressed by the trial court and affirmed. Commonwealth v. Whitlock, 2013 PA Super 105, 69 A.3d 635 (2013)*:
The defendant service member was accused of aggravated sexual assault, and he consented to a DNA draw. Four days later, before it would be tested, he revoked his consent, and the revocation was legally effective. Inevitable discovery, however, saves the use of the DNA at trial. The record could have been better made by everybody involved, but there is enough to conclude that the evidence would have been inevitably discovered and a warrant issued for the DNA if there was no consent. [It would have been better to have gotten a warrant after consent was revoked, but it still survives here.] United States v. Keller, 2013 CCA LEXIS 665 (A.F. Ct. Crim. App. July 15, 2013):
Defendant’s tractor trailer was subject to commercial vehicle inspection even though he claimed he was on a personal private trip and should be considered unregulated. United States v. Arlett, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119768 (D. Kan. August 23, 2013):
In a partially sealed opinion, the Ninth Circuit holds that the search warrant defines the scope of search, not the affidavit. [Could have said “tail wagging the dog” but didn’t.] United States v. Sedaghaty, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 27006 (9th Cir. August 23, 2013):
Defendant’s mother’s house was searched where he claimed he’d been staying, but he didn’t attempt to show standing. “The Court finds that Defendant does not have standing to challenge the search that occurred on June 2, 2009. Defendant failed to meet his burden of showing that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the residence searched. Defendant presented no evidence that the residence was his residence, that established any right to occupy the residence, and no one from Defendant’s family testified that Defendant resided at this location. The residence in question belonged to File Shkambi, Defendant’s mother.” United States v. Shkambi, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 120158 (E.D. Tex. July 31, 2013).*
The private search of a cell phone resulted in it being turned over to OSI and prosecution resulted. The government’s search of the cell phone’s text messages were equal to the private search and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Wicks, 2013 CCA LEXIS 621 (A.F. Ct. Crim. App. June 24, 2013).*
The continuation of defendant’s stop was with reasonable suspicion because the officer could not confirm defendant’s right to be driving the vehicle. It had not been reported stolen at the time. State v. Vanderweide, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 932 (August 21, 2013).*
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Email “meth check alert” came to the police from a Wal-Mart that somebody bought too much pseudoephedrine. “[T]he circuit court concluded that the e-mail generated by the National Precursor Law Enforcement Exchange Program and sent to [the officer] was analogous to an anonymous tip that did not provide a sufficient basis to conduct an investigatory stop on the vehicle in which Pollard was riding.” The trial court suppressed, and the state appealed. The state did not raise the question of the legality of defendant’s stop below, but the court gives the state a pass on that because the record has enough: Namely, the officer ran the LPN and came back with a warrant on the owner of the vehicle and that justified the stop. State v. Pollard, 2012 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 130 (December 14, 2012)* [Yes, this opinion is six months old and just on Lexis.]
Defendant was arrested for DUI after an officer got a report that someone was breaking in to cars in a high crime area. Defendant’s stop was not supported by any factual justification that he was doing anything wrong. No traffic offense; no suspicion; no hunch. State v. Hahn, 2013 Ohio 2308, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 2234 (5th Dist. June 3, 2013).*
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The smell of marijuana coming from defendant’s car and his excessive nervousness gave probable cause to search a Purex detergent box found in the car that had been opened and resealed. Heroin was inside. United States v. Glover, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119254 (S.D. Ind. August 22, 2013).*
2255 petitioner had his full and fair opportunity to litigate his suppression motion before trial, and did. Winkler v. United States, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117484 (E.D. Tenn. August 20, 2013).*
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Defendant was walking in a high crime area of the Bronx and he saw a police car and avoided it. The officers watched him moving his hands like he was adjusting a gun, and when they got closer they could see the butt. The stop was justified. United States v. Williams, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118890 (S.D. N.Y. August 14, 2013).*
2255 claim that affiant violated Franks fails because the person named wasn’t the affiant. United States v. Baez, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118619 (D. R.I. August 21, 2013).*
“When Mr. Henderson entered the guilty plea, he reserved the right to appeal the denial of the motion to suppress but did not assert that the motion was dispositive, and the trial court made no such finding.” Therefore, he can’t appeal it under Florida law. Henderson v. State, 2013 Fla. App. LEXIS 13061 (Fla. 2d DCA August 21, 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.
