Plaintiff matched the description of a shooter, and an eyewitness pointed him out. That provided probable cause for arrest and defeats a § 1983 Fourth Amendment claim. Franks v. Temple Univ., 514 Fed. Appx. 117 (3d Cir. 2013).*
Defendant’s nervous demeanor and apparent gun in pocket justified patdown. United States v. Felton, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22944 (E.D. Wis. February 20, 2013).*
Defendant’s business was subjected to a search warrant for federal benefits fraud. He consented to a search of his truck while he was not in custody and had been told he was free to leave, yet he didn’t. United States v. Dix, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22476 (N.D. Ga. January 29, 2013).*
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The search warrant “was specifically limited to ‘photographs and video tapes … undeveloped rolls of film and disposable cameras’” and the court finds that this 20th Century description still applies to digital information that was found. United States v. Miller, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117576 (W.D. N.Y. August 16, 2013).
One police officer was watching an intersection from a video control room because of a shooting there the day before. For over 20 minutes, she watched one man who was obviously armed. She reported that to officers on patrol who stopped the defendant. That qualified under the collective knowledge doctrine. United States v. Dupree, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117539 (D. Md. August 20, 2013).*
The entry of the officers into defendant’s home was without consent or exigency, and it was suppressed. There was no need for the entry. United States v. Marchese, 966 F. Supp. 2d 223 (W.D. N.Y. 2013).*
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The government monitored Free6.com, a website headquartered in Sweden. Free6 was being used to exchange child pornography, and they actively tried to discourage and stop it. A DHS investigator emailed Sweden asking for help, and the company obliged and gave him administrative privileges to wander all around the website. At the officer’s request, Free6 even added to its banner that it might give the information to the government. Recognizing a reasonable expectation of privacy in email (Warshuk), defendant still had no reasonable expectation in the chats because he was warned there was no privacy. United States v. Bode, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118627 (D. Md. August 21, 2013) (court has an opinions page; check back):
Defendant’s computer was subjected to a keyword search in a tax fraud case by two names and a phrase. That was clearly within the warrant. A second search effort, however, for “discovery” was outside the warrant and suppressed. It could not be legitimately characterized as a part of the initial warranted search. “However, the search warrant did not authorize a search of defendant Wardle’s hard drive for the purpose of obtaining documents related to a different individual in response to discovery obligations in a different case. Because the second search was clearly performed for a distinct purpose that was not authorized by the warrant, the court can not find that the search was proper.” United States v. Wardle, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100091 (D. Utah July 16, 2013).
Two controlled buys brought defendant in his white car to the scene. That was probable cause for arrest and a search of the car. Herron v. State, 991 N.E.2d 165 (Ind. App. 2013).*
Seizure of money from defendant four months after his alleged use of an ATM card for about that same amount of money was without probable cause. State v. Noller, 2013 Ohio 3183, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 3243 (6th Dist. July 19, 2013).*
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Defendant was a passenger in a car stopped for speeding. He got out of the car and started to walk away. The officer told him to stop, and he refused and kept walking. He was arrested for failing to follow the commands of the officer. When he was searched, marijuana was found in his pocket. That gave probable cause to search the whole car and more was found, and it was all lawful. People v. Brannon, 2013 IL App (2d) 111084, 990 N.E.2d 1170 (2013).*
Parole officers had sufficient cause to conduct a parole search of defendant’s place without a search warrant. The fact they had time to get one doesn’t matter because this is an exception to the warrant requirement. They had probable cause to believe that he’d be found there. United States v. Pressley, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63841 (W.D. Wash. May 3, 2013).*
The stop was justified by speeding, and the nervousness of the occupants and their inconsistent stories was reasonable suspicion to extend the stop. State v. Sayles, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 374 (May 3, 2013).*
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Defendant was arrested for child pornography on a computer and a memory card to a camera was seized that also turned out to have child pornography on it. Defendant was prosecuted and convicted for the computer image. He sought return of the memory card, and finally the police looked at it nine months after the seizure. There is no limit under the Fourth Amendment or New York law for the time to execute, and probable cause never dissipated in the memory card. People v. Deprospero, 2013 NY Slip Op 01992, 20 N.Y.3d 527, 964 N.Y.S.2d 487, 987 N.E.2d 264 (2013).*
Co-defendant had access to a thumb drive on a night stand sufficient to consent to its seizure in an access device fraud case. While it didn’t belong to her, it was available to her and it was fixed in with her stuff. The three week delay in getting a search warrant for it wasn’t unreasonable. United States v. Marchante, 514 Fed. Appx. 878 (11th Cir. 2013).*
Trial court finding that no consent was asked for was clearly erroneous. There was consent to a patdown, and that produced a “hard chunky substance” that the officer believed by feel was contraband. The search was lawful. State v. Andrews, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 279 (March 26, 2013).*
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Jury verdict for unreasonable force and handcuffing without objective justification is upheld. Also, there were disputed facts for trial. Plascencia v. Taylor, 514 Fed. Appx. 711 (10th Cir. 2013):
The district court properly denied summary judgment on qualified immunity that officers were at best negligent in running his head into a door while carrying him into the jail while he was in a hobble restraint. The Fourth Amendment protects against gratuitous uses of force against arrestees. Here, it was all on videotape. Runge v. Snow, 514 Fed. Appx. 891 (11th Cir. 2013):
Use of a key fob to see whether it matched defendant’s vehicle was not an unreasonable search where it was left in the house of a burglary victim. Commonwealth v. Harvard, 2013 PA Super 64, 64 A.3d 690 (2013).
School nurse’s examination of a child’s genital area was subject to qualified immunity because the law about pure medical examination at school was not clearly established. Hearring v. Sliwowski, 712 F.3d 275 (6th Cir. 2013).*
2254 petitioner had a full and fair opportunity to litigate this search in state court, and he is denied a COA for appeal of the denial of the habeas on all grounds. Brown v. Bravo, 514 Fed. Appx. 739 (10th Cir. 2013).*
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A forensic search of a computer seized under a search warrant is not a second search under the initial warrant. State v. Johnson, 831 N.W.2d 917 (Minn. App. 2013).
The closed container in defendant’s car was searched with probable cause he committed robbery, and it wasn’t a search incident. People v Dixon, 2013 NY Slip Op 4550, 107 A.D.3d 530, 967 N.Y.S.2d 71 (1st Dept. 2013).*
The OVI tip in this case came from the passenger in defendant’s car. State v. George, 2013 Ohio 2511, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 2468 (4th Dist. June 14, 2013).*
A search warrant for the premises in a child pornography case did not limit the search to only unoccupied buildings: any building could be searched. Jeffers v. Commonwealth, 62 Va. App. 151, 743 S.E.2d 289 (2013).*
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Defendant took his computer to Staples for a computer tech to remove viruses and spyware, giving the tech the password to the computer. The computer tech found child pornography in a folder called “PVT,” and he called the police who saw the files and seized the computer. The court finds that the defendant waived his reasonable expectation of privacy in the computer by his actions. State v. Dale, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 704 (August 19, 2013):
The trial court erred in granting a motion to suppress a search of the trunk of defendant’s car. When the officer smelled marijuana, he could search the passenger compartment. When he found it, he could search the trunk. State v. Jones, 2013 Ohio 2375, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 2326 (9th Dist. June 10, 2013).*
Consent here included the whole vehicle: “Sgt. Carson again clarified the scope of Capps’s consent by asking ‘[s]o you’re giving me consent to search your vehicle’? Capps repeated the same response, ‘go ahead and look.’ Accordingly, the district court did not err in concluding that an objectively reasonable person would have understood Capps to have consented to a search of the entire vehicle.” United States v. Capps, 716 F.3d 494 (8th Cir. 2013).
Defendant lured a girl off the street claiming her mother told him to pick her up. He took her to his house and showed her pornography and pulled his pants down, showing his underwear. She started crying, and he took her home. There was a computer with a camera on it in the room. That was probable cause to search his place for child pornography. Checo v. State, 402 S.W.3d 440 (Tex. App. – Houston (14th Dist.) 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.
