The law of GPS was developing before Jones, and it can’t be said that officers were reckless pre-Jones to justify the exclusionary rule. Therefore, no exclusion. United States v. Rose, 914 F. Supp. 2d 15 (D. Mass. 2012)*:
Under that standard [Davis], the last resort of suppression is not warranted here because the agents did not “exhibit deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard” for the constitutional rights of the defendants. At the time agents installed three of the four GPS devices, circuit courts were unanimous in holding that GPS tracking did not so much as implicate, never mind violate, the Fourth Amendment. They installed the fourth GPS device in November 2010, one week after another Session of this Court rejected Maynard as contrary to precedent and unappealing as a matter of principle. Sparks, 750 F. Supp. 2d at 393-96. In relying on the consensus of lower courts and a common-sense reading of Supreme Court doctrine, the agents here acted in good faith and, as a result, the exclusionary rule does not apply.
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In a RICO case, nearly decade old background information in the affidavit for a search warrant doesn’t make it stale. “The mere mention of background information does not render that information stale. Moreover, even if one were to disregard this information, the Affidavit provided more than sufficient information to establish probable cause for the issuance of the warrant.” United States v. Savage, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13713 (E.D. Pa. February 1, 2013).*
Defendant was suspected of attempting to buy a large gift card at a Home Depot with a fraudulent credit card. The store had been victimized by the same fraud before. When her driver’s license was asked for, she left without completing the transaction and was followed to the parking lot. A car came in and she jumped in the car and took off. The stop was justified by reasonable suspicion. They consented to a search of the car producing multiple gift cards. United States v. Wilson, 510 Fed. Appx. 339 (5th Cir. 2013).*
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Defendant was accused under the Assimilative Crimes Act of ignoring her infant child to death while her husband was deployed, spending 12-15 hours a day computer gaming, hardly stopping for anything. Her husband consented to a seizure of the computer, and it was finally searched months later. While a delay can be unreasonable, it wasn’t here and she never complained before the search. Her computer history was damning evidence against her. United States v. Christie, 717 F.3d 1156 (10th Cir. 2013):
“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people,” he said in 1975, “and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.”
He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. “could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”
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The officer continued the conversation after giving the papers back to the defendant, and that made the detention unlawful. “Finally, at the time when Trooper Sheets engaged Mr. Lopez in additional conversation, Trooper Sheets did not have an articulable suspicion of criminal activity. His additional questions were designed to see if something would turn up or if Mr. Lopez would implicate himself.” Motion to suppress granted. United States v. Lopez, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26954 (D. Utah February 26, 2013).*
Defendant’s guilty plea waived the search issue, but it would lose on the merits because defendant didn’t have standing. “It is well settled that there is no ‘co-conspirator exception’ to the rule that a defendant must have standing to contest the constitutionality of a search or seizure.” United States v. Valdez, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26420 (W.D. La. February 3, 2013).*
Request to “push open the door and look in the bedroom” was a request to consent to enter the bedroom, not just stand at the door. United States v. Stone, 510 Fed. Appx. 891 (11th Cir. 2013).*
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On an interlocutory government appeal from suppression, the defendant cannot seek additional suppression of evidence because that must await final appeal. There was reasonable suspicion for detention of defendants, and a drug dog validly alerted on their tractor-trailer. “Therefore, defendants’ detention did not cause the government’s discovery of the challenged evidence. Put another way, the agents did not ‘exploit[]’ defendants’ seizure to discover the evidence; it was discovered ‘by means sufficiently distinguishable’ from that seizure. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S. Ct. 407, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441 (1963). Defendants’ case for suppression therefore fails on the requirement of causation: ‘The exclusionary rule forbids the government from using evidence caused by an illegal seizure, not evidence found around the time of a seizure.’ Clariot, 655 F.3d at 555. It does not apply here.” United States v. Figueredo-Diaz, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 11231, 2013 FED App. 0159P (6th Cir. June 5, 2013).
The finding of the gun in this case came from a valid plain view during a protective sweep of defendant’s place when he was arrested for armed robbery. Hutto v. State, 114 So. 3d 802 (Miss. App. 2013).*
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During a traffic stop, it is not unreasonable for an officer to ask “locomotion-related inquiries not strictly directed to the motorist’s conduct at the time of the stop, such as ‘[the] motorist’s travel history and travel plans’ and ‘the driver’s authority to operate the vehicle .'” The officer had a drug dog, and it was not unreasonable to use the dog. “While Defendant may curse his bad luck to get stopped by a police officer who has a drug dog and who knows the constitutional limits of his authority, nothing about this stop was unreasonable.” United States v. Pratt, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101906 (M.D. Tenn. July 22, 2013).
Defendant’s appearing to be under the influence of drugs when he was stopped was reasonable suspicion to call for a drug dog. United States v. Poole, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101661 (N.D. Iowa July 22, 2013).
There was a federal warrant for defendant’s arrest, and ICE agents found him at a county courthouse, there for a civil case with his lawyer. When he was arrested, he was asked about whether his lawyer would take his briefcase or it would come with him. He said the agents could take it. A search for weapons was reasonable. This was not a search incident per se but an inventory because defendant said the officers could take possession of the briefcase. United States v. Camick, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101623 (D. Kan. July 22, 2013).*
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Willful violation of the computer search protocols of searching within 120 days required suppression of the search of records from defendant’s house. Defendant was a Border Patrol Union rep, and was a retired Border Patrol agent. Also, the computer searchers chose to search outside the terms of the warrant to look at adult pornography on the computer. United States v. Bonner, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103087 (S.D. Cal. July 23, 2013):
At the beginning of the suppression hearing, the state challenged standing. The officer’s testimony supported standing, and the defense put nothing on, the court noting that had it not found standing on the little record there was, he could have filed an IAC claim against defense counsel. Then the court found the CI was not adequately supported and the search was suppressed. State v. Woods, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 624 (July 3, 2013). As to standing:
Surveillance of comings and goings to defendant’s apartment with a pole camera does not constitute a “trespass” under Jones. United States v. Brooks, 911 F. Supp. 2d 836 (D. Ariz. 2012):
Additionally, as argued by the Government, despite a block wall that could potentially act as an enclosure or barrier that could obstruct the view of a person standing on the outside of the Westgate complex, the typical focal point of the pole camera was visible to any passerby inside the complex or to any person in the arena parking lot. In fact, Detective Kinsey testified that the complex’s outer wall also had iron openings that allowed for easy visibility of Building “L” for someone standing outside of the complex. Defendant presented no evidence to rebut Detective Kinsey’s testimony that he could simply walk into the complex from the street, leaving Defendant’s assertions about the apartment community’s keypad access as insufficient to show that there were special features or activities associated with the Westgate complex parking lot to support a reasonable expectation of privacy in the parking lot.
The evidence points to the fact that a person would not be required to be a complex resident to see the “comings and goings” at the Glendale Apartment, and any expectation of privacy by Defendant in the complex parking lot in front of Building “L” from surveillance was unreasonable. Therefore, law enforcement’s use of the pole camera did not violate the Fourth Amendment and, thus, there was no need for law enforcement to seek a warrant before using the camera.
Defendant had been Mirandized and told he could refuse consent, so his consent is found voluntary. United States v. Brooks, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 168734 (D. Ariz. November 28, 2012).*
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Defendant’s calls from the jail were all recorded, and two calls to his attorney were also listened to. The calls from the attorney are not suppressed because there was no reasonable expectation of privacy based on the recorded warning. As to the attorney-client privilege, the government has established that the crime-fraud exception applies to the conversation. United States v. Mitchell, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 188717 (M.D. Fla. August 21, 2012):
"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.
