Handcuffing plaintiff for merely stopping to watch a St. Louis police officer conduct traffic stops in the park where he was jogging violated clearly established law on plaintiff’s facts. Walker v. City of Pine Bluff, 414 F.3d 989 (8th Cir. 2005). Therefore, summary judgment on qualified immunity would be improper. Plaintiff was jogging and had no ID on him, so arresting him for giving his name, address, and dob but not his SSN was unreasonable. He was privileged to not tell them anything. Chestnut v. Wallace, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1740 (8th Cir. Jan. 21, 2020) (2-1).
“While the Court has found that the Leon good faith exception applies to the facts of this case, and that an analysis of probable cause is therefore not required, the Court in any event finds that Logan’s affidavit does establish the existence of probable cause.” United States v. Murphree, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8881 (N.D. Miss. Jan. 16, 2020).*
Reasonable suspicion is the standard for a prison visitor strip search, and officers had reasonable suspicion here. Calloway v. Lokey, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1756 (4th Cir. Jan. 21, 2020): Continue reading →
WaPo: Saudi crown prince implicated in hack of Jeff Bezos’s phone, U.N. report will say by Marc Fisher and Steven Zeitchik (“A United Nations investigation to be released Wednesday will report that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s cellphone was hacked in 2018 after he got a WhatsApp message that came from an account purportedly belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to a person with direct knowledge of the report.”)
Posted inSurveillance technology|Comments Off on WaPo: Saudi crown prince implicated in hack of Jeff Bezos’s phone, U.N. report will say
The search warrant for defendant’s apartment didn’t have the apartment number, but the warrant was specific and directed the officers to his door. That was constitutionally adequate. State v. Gilmartin, 2020 La. App. LEXIS 118 (La. App. 4 Cir. Jan. 15, 2020).
Defendant’s claim the officer wasn’t credible on smelling marijuana during the stop is rejected. [His arguments don’t really follow the conclusion he seeks.] United States v. Muhammad, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 225095 (D. Minn. Dec. 20, 2019),* adopted, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7726 (D. Minn. Jan. 16, 2020).*
Defendant’s headlight violation, corrected after the officer saw him, was still a constitutional justification for the stop. The fact it may have been subjectively a pretext doesn’t matter. United States v. Swain, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9062 (D. Alaska Jan. 17, 2020).*
Posted inParticularity, Pretext, Probable cause|Comments Off on LA4: Lack of apt no. in SW wasn’t inspecific where officers were directed to his door
Posted inPlain view, feel, smell, Probable cause|Comments Off on The Center Square: Illinois Supreme Court could decide if smell of marijuana is enough to justify police search
Three adults worked to get access to defendant’s cell phone because he was sexting a minor. “Moreover, even assuming solely for the sake of argument that Dustin Clark had wrongfully taken Minor A’s phone from Defendant Walsh and Deputy Bennett knew it, Dustin Clark’s status as a private actor in taking Minor A’s phone, whether ‘innocent or deliberate … reasonable or unreasonable,’ does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Even if, Deputy Bennett knew Dustin Clark had previously improperly taken Minor A’s phone from Defendant Walsh at the time Dustin Clark showed him the phone, that does not mean Deputy Bennett acquiesced before hand in the intrusive conduct by Dustin Clark.” [Besides, he doesn’t have standing in the minor’s cell phone. United States v. Walsh, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 225094 (D. Minn. Dec. 6, 2019),* adopted, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7960 (D. Minn. Jan. 17, 2020).*
Fourth Amendment claims can’t be a basis of habeas in California. In re Favor, 2020 Cal. LEXIS 236 (Jan. 2, 2020).
Posted inCell phones, Private search|Comments Off on D.Minn.: Search and seizure of cell phone was private search
NYTimes: ‘I Was Wrong,’ Bloomberg Says. But This Policy Still Haunts Him. By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Joseph Goldstein (“After defending the stop-and-frisk policing tactic, the former mayor apologized. But black voters in the Democratic presidential race may not forgive him.”)
Posted inStop and frisk|Comments Off on NYTimes: ‘I Was Wrong,’ Bloomberg Says. But This Policy Still Haunts Him.
Defendant got out of his car and left the door open, so it was already open when the dog sniff occurred. Opening the door was not a command. “We decline, however, to rule that an officer’s knock on a driver’s window is a command for the driver to open his door. Such a ruling would be inconsistent with this Court’s prior decisions, which have concluded that a driver may ignore an officer’s knock on his vehicle’s window.” The dog sniff was otherwise reasonable. State v. Cox, 2020 Ida. App. LEXIS 1 (Jan. 16, 2020).*
The CI’s information provided probable cause. “But the record shows that the officers had plentiful reasons to believe the source and verified much of it before making the arrest.” “Mr. Roacho does not seriously dispute that, if believed, this information was adequate to give the officers probable cause to believe he was committing a crime. Instead, he gives four reasons the source should not have been believed.” There was probable cause. United States v. Roacho, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8671 (D. Colo. Jan. 17, 2020).*
Posted inDog sniff, Informant hearsay|Comments Off on ID: Def left his own door open before the dog sniff; and sniff wasn’t otherwise unreasonable
Posted inSocial media warrants|Comments Off on The Intercept: Facebook Warrant Targeting Student Journalists in Puerto Rico Prompts Fears of Political Surveillance
Reversing itself on rehearing (prior opinion Berry v. State, 2019 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 64 (Sept. 20, 2019)), the court concludes that a potential statutory violation was not a Fourth Amendment violation. The officer knew of warrants for defendant’s arrest and he arrested him. The prior opinion finding the arrest invalid is rejected. Berry v. State, 2020 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 9 (Jan. 17, 2020): Continue reading →
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on AL: Statutory violation in arrest wasn’t a 4A violation; arrest not suppressed (on rehearing)
The IRS summons in a cryptocurrency investigation, the government satisfied the Powell standard with the exception of a proper time limitation on the years covered. Similar is Zietzke v. United States, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 204274 (W.D. Wash. Nov. 25, 2019), with the same parties and outcome. Zietzke v. United States, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8675 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 17, 2020).
The district court will not second guess the USMJ’s conclusion there was probable cause for the search warrant based on the well-known standard of review of affidavits. As for whether a pickup truck could be searched as a part of a warrant for the residence, there was no showing that the pickup was not on the curtilage and thus not subject to search. As for the particularity of the search warrant, the evidence is lacking whether the attachment was present, so an evidentiary hearing will be required for that. United States v. Romeu, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8717 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 17, 2020).*
Defendant was validly stopped for going 3 mph over the speed limit determined by radar. After handing defendant back his paperwork, and saying he could leave, the officer called out his name and kept him there. The court finds this was by consent. United States v. Martinez, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8488 (D. N.M. Jan. 17, 2020): Continue reading →
Posted inConsent|Comments Off on D.N.M.: Handing back paperwork during stop and then calling def by name led to consensual extension of stop
Plaintiff’s frisk for eating out of a dumpster was unreasonable. He wasn’t committing any crime. Jones v. City of ElyriaJones v. City of ElyriaJones v. City of Elyria, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1609 (6th Cir. Jan. 17, 2020).*
There was no Fourth Amendment violation where defendant refused to identify himself during a public intox stop, and he was thus arrested under Utah law. Handcuffing him behind his back wasn’t unreasonable. Donahue v. Wihongi, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1600 (10th Cir. Jan. 17, 2020).*
Defendant’s post-conviction claim is based in part on the alleged issue that defendant counsel didn’t tell him there was a search warrant for his car. There was, and it was in the discovery that was shared with defendant. State v. Miles, 2020 Del. Super. LEXIS 30 (Jan. 15, 2020).*
Defendant’s Franks challenges succeeds. Enough information was omitted from the affidavit for search warrant that the USMJ would not get a clear picture of what was really going on. And, it was material to the finding of probable cause. Motion to suppress granted. United States v. Anderson, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8082 (W.D. Va. Jan. 17, 2020): Continue reading →
Posted inFranks doctrine|Comments Off on W.D.Va.: Omitted information was critical to PC finding; Franks challenge succeeds on recklessness and materiality
Appellant’s challenge to the search warrant was to one in the trial court and then tried to expand the issue on appeal. Moreover, she tried to distance herself from the places to be searched to the point she had no standing. The issues are not preserved for appeal. State v. Weemes, 2020-Ohio-140, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 115 (6th Dist. Jan. 17, 2020).
A cell phone that defendant borrowed had explicit messages between defendant and “Minor A.” Minor A’s cell phone was subjected to a private search. [But the court doesn’t even mention lack of defendant’s standing in Minor A’s cell phone.] United States v. Walsh, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7960 (D. Minn. Jan. 17, 2020).*
The stop here was unreasonably extended for a second pat down without additional justification, and the motion to suppress is granted. State v. Stevens, 2020 Del. Super. LEXIS 31 (Jan. 17, 2020).*
“Burns does not dispute the traffic stop’s validity. Credibility is not at issue in the dashcam video, in which Burns freely consents to a vehicle search and which flatly refutes Burns’ claims of involuntariness and illegal post-stop detention. That ends our de novo constitutional analysis. Id. The trial court erred in suppressing the evidence. We reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” State v. Burns, 2020 Mo. App. LEXIS 50 (Jan. 16, 2020).
Defendant was validly stopped for a lane change violation, which he essentially admitted in the defense case. Suppression reversed. State v. Kelpe, 2020 La. App. LEXIS 75 (La. App. 2 Cir. Jan. 15, 2020).*
Defendant was validly stopped for crossing the fog line unto the shoulder. State v. Smith, 2020 Mo. LEXIS 1 (Jan. 14, 2020).*
Posted inConsent, Reasonable suspicion|Comments Off on MO: Dashcam video leaves no doubt as to voluntariness of consent
Defendant is now subject to a RICO prosecution, and he challenges a 2001 traffic stop. “When the investigating officers pulled him over, Banks was driving without a license, an offense under California law. The officers therefore had probable cause to detain him” and impound his vehicle. United States v. Brown, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 1545 (9th Cir. Jan. 15, 2020).*
Two officers were working on foot in a parking lot in Dayton known for hand-to-hand drug sales. They observed defendant who was known to not have a DL drive on the lot. He was going to be arrested for that, and officers considered it imprudent to leave the vehicle there, so it would be impounded. Before the impounding, however, drugs were seen in the car in plain view. The search of the car was valid. State v. Boyd, 2020-Ohio-125, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 101 (2d Dist. Jan. 17, 2020).*
"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.
