Implied consent of the third party consenter was shown by the police coming to the door and asking her about a gun, and she took them to the bedroom and pointed it out. “Implied consent to enter a home is no less valid than explicit consent.” United States v. White, 508 Fed. Appx. 837 (10th Cir. 2013).
Defendant Flying Tigers, Inc. was the target of a search warrant for installing bogus parts on airplanes. The airplanes were not theirs and the logbooks were in possession of one of the mechanics at FTI who consented to retrieving them from home. FTI had no standing in the logbooks because they weren’t theirs. United States v. Flying Tigers, Inc., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12111 (E.D. Pa. January 29, 2013).*
Officers had an arrest warrant for the defendant, and they got a tip he was at a particular house. The owner of the place gave consent to enter to look for him, and that was enough to search the house and look under the air mattress. United States v. Evans, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11732 (W.D. Mo. January 22, 2013).*
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Defendant was stopped and ticketed for no proper tags on his vehicle, and it had to be towed because even a passenger, if there was one and there wasn’t, would be breaking the law to drive it away. The inventory properly included a pill container on the key fob where cocaine was found. State v. Seay, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 601 (July 16, 2013).
A CI called 911 to report that they were outside Club Mayhem and defendant had retrieved a gun from his trunk and put it in his waistband. Police arrived while the caller was still on the line. The encounter with defendant and his frisk was reasonable. United States v. Armstrong, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100218 (S.D. Ga. June 28, 2013).*
Tennessee still applies Aguilar-Spinelli, and the CI’s information complied with it here. State v. Baker, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 600 (July 17, 2013).*
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Defendant stole a woman’s purse at gunpoint. In her purse was a smart cell phone with GPS. Tracking the GPS to locate the defendant violated no right of his. People v. Barnes, 216 Cal. App. 4th 1508, 157 Cal. Rptr. 3d 853 (1st Dist. 2013).* [Law.com article here from 6/27] This opinion is six times longer than it needed to be because the Jones tracking argument was completely irrelevant:
The warrant application specified a car and the residence as the target of the search. The warrant, however, did not mention the car. Since warrants for houses include vehicles parked on the curtilage, the car could be searched. State v. Washington, 90 So. 3d 1157 (La. App. 5 Cir. 2012):
Although the affidavit on which the warrant was based refers several times specifically to the Monte Carlo, the warrant itself does not refer to any vehicles. However, a warrant authorizing the search of a particularly described premises permits the search of a vehicle located on the premises targeted for the search and subject to the authority of the warrant. State v. Smith, 02-1842, p. 1 (La. 9/20/02), 827 So. 2d 1122, 1123 (per curiam); State v. Carter, 10-973, p. 8 (La. App. 5 Cir. 8/30/11), 75 So.3d 1, 5. The rationale behind this holding is that the vehicle is capable of concealing the sought-after contraband. Id. Accordingly, the search of defendant’s vehicle was valid pursuant to the warrant since it was parked in front of the residence which was the target of the search and which was particularly described in the warrant. This assignment of error is without merit.
Defendant’s traffic stop was unlawful and was suppressed. Information from that stop ended up in a search warrant application. Excising it, the remainder still showed probable cause. Defendant had been under investigation for quite sometime and a lot of information had been developed. State v. Williams, 87 So. 3d 949 (La. App. 2d Cir. 2012).*
The CI’s tip of a group smoking marijuana was corroborated by plain smell on the officer’s arrival, providing reasonable suspicion. State v. Pineda, 90 So. 3d 1163 (La. App. 5 Cir. 2012).*
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Parked in a store parking lot with the motor running and lights on but apparently asleep justified police contact. Telling the driver to roll down the window did not convert it to a stop. At that point the officer smelled marijuana. Dermio v. State, 2013 Fla. App. LEXIS 5553 (Fla. 2d DCA April 5, 2013).*
Defendant was close enough to the description from an officer in pursuit of a suspect to justify his stop when another officer saw him. State v. Robinson, 2013 Ohio 1345, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 1253 (8th Dist. April 4, 2013).*
The search here produced a dead body in defendant’s trunk. The denial of the motion to suppress has no findings, so there is nothing for appeal. Remanded for findings. State v. Bruce, 402 S.C. 621, 741 S.E.2d 590 (App. 2013).*
There was still probable cause for the search of defendant’s car: “We further hold the alleged inconsistencies between the police report and the officers’ testimony do not necessarily warrant reversal of the trial court’s finding that the search of the vehicle was lawful.” State v. Tynes, 402 S.C. 211, 740 S.E.2d 512 (2013).*
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WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday sharply and repeatedly challenged the Obama administration’s claim that courts have no power over targeted drone killings of American citizens overseas.
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A motion to reconsider a motion to suppress months later was properly denied in the discretion of the trial court. There was no offer of what the defendant wanted to relitigate. Thomas v. Commonwealth, 62 Va. App. 104, 742 S.E.2d 403 (2013).
Disclosure of plaintiff’s minor’s daughter’s sexual orientation to the parents and a “disciplinary confrontation in a locked locker room” with the minor are not remotely clearly established for Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment liability to attach. Wyatt v. Fletcher, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 11045 (5th Cir. May 31, 2013).*
Defendant called the police on her husband for a domestic assault, and the officers separated them and arrested him. The officer reasonably concluded that the defendant was in possession of drugs and consent to search her person was reasonably obtained. State v. Fair, 353 Ore. 588, 302 P.3d 417 (2013).*
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As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated.
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Clarifying prior case law, the police here did not exploit any prior illegality in getting defendant’s consent. An illegal stop will hardly ever lead to valid consent. State v. Hemenway, 353 Or 129, 2011 Ore. LEXIS 1029 (April 25, 2013) (Lexis miscite):
Defendant’s alleged consent was recorded by “COPS” but later erased by the production company. He’s not entitled to suppression on that ground. The court credits the officer’s testimony on defendant’s consent and finds it voluntary. United States v. Brayfield, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99046 (W.D. Mo. June 25, 2013), adopted 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98179 (W.D. Mo. July 15, 2013):
Federal nighttime search sustained based on a reasonable belief the drugs were being moved “that evening” [although the search was at 1:15 am]. 21 U.S.C. § 879 prevails over Rule 41 on nighttime searches. United States v. Thompson, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98895 (E.D. Mich. July 16, 2013):
Defendant’s hotel room rent expired on the 16th, and the hotel entered on the 17th and removed his stuff. The hotel was not acting as an agent of government in doing so, and he waived his reasonable expectation of privacy by leaving it behind. United States v. Jokhoo, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97803 (D. Minn. May 20, 2013).*
Defendant was detained in his house for an hour, and this was reasonable. Officers responded to an “armed disturbance” and found yelling people. United States v. Davis, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98326 (D. Neb. July 15, 2013),* R&R 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98322 (D. Neb. May 24, 2013).
The fact defendant’s attorney could have asked a few more questions on cross-examination at the suppression hearing doesn’t make him ineffective. What was missing certainly wouldn’t have changed the outcome. United States v. Landers, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97672 (D. Alaska July 10, 2013).*
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State’s failure to raise lack of standing in the trial court meant it couldn’t raise it on appeal. Defendant raised the issue that the state exceeded the scope of consent orally in the trial court, albeit not in the motion, but that was notice enough for the state because the issue was tried. State v. Martinez, 372 S.W.3d 598 (Tenn. Crim. App. 2011).
The search incident of defendant’s vehicle was proper under Gant because there was reason to believe that evidence of the crime he was stopped for would be in the car. Gant, 129 S. Ct. at 1714. State v. Clark, 2011 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 808 (October 24, 2011).*
Defense counsel was hardly ineffective for not challenging admission of jail calls against the defendant that showed intent because it was frivolous; he was on notice of recording. Al-Salibi v. United States, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 125306 (D. N.J. October 31, 2011).*
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Anders brief rejected; the Fourth Amendment claim here is at least arguable and must be discussed more fully. The court won’t reject it out of hand. United States v. Telfair, 507 Fed. Appx. 164 (3d Cir. 2012)*:
In addition, the importance of the evidence seized from 185 Parker Street to the Government’s case, and the circumstances of its discovery, should have alerted Mr. Azzarello that he must address the issue. The heroin found at 185 Parker Street was the source of the investigation of Telfair; if this evidence is tainted, it is not “fruit of the poisonous tree,” but rather is the root of the poisonous tree. This evidence provided the foundation for the investigation and prosecution of Telfair. Without that foundation, the case collapses. Furthermore, because this quintessential evidence was discovered during a warrantless search—which is per se unreasonable, subject to a few, narrow exceptions, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 356 (1967)—Mr. Azzarello was obligated to discuss the issue in his brief and explain why it would be frivolous to seek a reversal of the District Court’s order.
Given the foregoing, Mr. Azzarello’s Anders brief does not satisfy this Court that he has conducted a thorough examination of the record in search of appealable issues. Finding that his Anders brief is inadequate, we proceed to step two of the analysis, and conduct an independent review of the record to determine whether any nonfrivolous issues exist. Coleman, 575 F.3d at 321; Youla, 241 F.3d at 301.
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An anonymous CI provided information that the defendant was coming from New York to North Carolina to get away from the police, and he was bring drugs. He was going to a specific house. While an anonymous CI doesn’t have a track record, this one’s information all panned out and proved to be accurate. A search warrant is for the place where things may be found, not necessarily for persons, and probable cause and nexus was shown to defendant’s house. State v. Oates, __ N.C. App. __, 736 S.E.2d 228 (2012).*
POs did a home compliance check of various probationers, and this one was because two probationers came up in the system with the same address, and they both were to have no contact with other probationers. When they knocked at the door and announced “probation and parole,” the woman answering the door opened it all the way, implying they could enter. They did a quick walk through and found cocaine on a table. The probation entry was justified under Knights. Wallace v. State, 62 A.3d 1192 (Del. 2012).*
The owner of the house consented to a protective sweep of the premises, then a search of the premises. There are booking and public safety exceptions to Miranda. Asking about aliases and a gun here were not within the exceptions. United States v. Chavez-Maciel, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183038 (N.D. Ga. December 7, 2012).*
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Defendant was on parole, and parole officers saw him involved in an apparent hand-to-hand drug transaction. A warrant was issued for his arrest. By the time they got to serve it, they discovered he was living at an unapproved address. That was reasonable suspicion for a parole search. The court declines to engage in determining whether they were “cajoled” into the search by the police since there was a basis. United States v. Marcano, 508 Fed. Appx. 119 (3d Cir. 2013).*
Defendant did not object to the GPS at his December 2009 suppression hearing, so it is reviewed for plain error, which it is not under Davis. United States v. Andres, 703 F.3d 828 (5th Cir. 2013).*
Defendant’s 2255 argument that the operator of a rental car had the authority of the actual renter, although not on the rental agreement, was the better way to argue the standing issue was a loser. Therefore, defense counsel wasn’t ineffective. United States v. Hunter, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 519 (D. Kan. January 3, 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.