Advances in artificial intelligence could supercharge surveillance cameras, allowing footage to be constantly monitored and instantly analyzed, the A.C.L.U. warned in a new report.
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Defendant was entitled to suppress the evidence of his alienage because the government detained him without reasonable suspicion. The government gets no safe harbor in Summers because the purpose of the detention was rounding up foreign nationals to remove them. Cruz v. Barr, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 17674 (9th Cir. June 13, 2019): Continue reading →
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“Defendant may not retreat to the curtilage of his home to avoid arrest.” State v. Nolan, 2019 La. App. LEXIS 1085 (La. App. 3 Cir. June 12, 2019).
The smell of marijuana was justification for search of defendant’s person. A patdown produced drugs but not a weapon. United States v. Colbert, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97070 (S.D. Ind. June 10, 2019).*
The City of Chicago requires GPS monitoring of food trucks to make sure they stay 200′ away from a regular restaurant or in food truck zones is reasonably related to the city’s interest in promoting viability of restaurants in the city. It was not an unreasonable search under the state constitution. Moreover, food service qualifies as a heavily regulated industry under Burger. Indeed, the food trucks cannot claim a violation of a reasonable expectation of privacy because (1) the city has yet to seek GPS information, and (2) many food truck owners publicized their location on the internet to attract customers. The requirement they maintain the location data for six months doesn’t add anything to their claim. LMP Services, Inc. v. City of Chicago, 2019 IL 123123, 2019 Ill. LEXIS 658 (May 23, 2019): Continue reading →
41-day delay between seizure of cell phone and its search, while not good, wasn’t constitutionally unreasonable under all the circumstances, primarily because defendant was in custody and couldn’t use the phone anyway, so it didn’t intrude on his possessory interests. United States v. McNeely, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97094 (N.D. Cal. June 11, 2019).
Brandishing a firearm at a crowd and retreating into a house was sufficient for exigency for a warrantless entry. Defendant’s regular visiting of the premises was so extensive he was an effective subtenant. He had a key, kept clothes there, and he visited at will and spent the night. United States v. Leonard, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97917 (S.D. Fla. May 8, 2019), adopted, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97100 (S.D. Fla. June 11, 2019).
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The SCA was the law prior to Carpenter, so the good faith exception applies. From the date of Carpenter, the Fourth Amendment applies: “Carpenter II confirmed that the SCA does not immunize a government officer’s collection of CSLI from the safeguards of the Fourth Amendment. Moving forward, traditional Fourth Amendment principles will replace reflexive or mechanical use of § 2703(d). The government must either get a warrant or rely on a recognized exception to the warrant requirement.” United States v. Carpenter, 926 F.3d 313 (6th Cir. June 11, 2019), rehearing granted on sentence on other grounds, United States v. Carpenter, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 37721 (6th Cir. Dec. 19, 2019):*
The district court’s duty at a suppression hearing is not de novo review of probable cause – it’s whether there is substantial evidence to support the conclusion of the issuing magistrate that there was probable cause. United States v. Mohring, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97664 (N.D. Iowa June 11, 2019): Continue reading →
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Facial-recognition technology is un proven and largely unregulated — yet it is already arriving at airports all over the United States. At JetBlue ‘e-gates’ and earlier prototypes, the airline has scanned 150,000 faces in the past two years to verify international travelers before they board.
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The dispute intensified Tuesday as California Democrats voted to prohibit the use of facial recognition in body cameras, setting the proposed ban up for a final vote on the state Senate floor this summer. Assembly Bill 1215 cleared the Assembly last month without a single Republican vote and again Tuesday in a state Senate committee.
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A pair of class actions seek statutory damages on behalf of children in nine states whose conversations were recorded by an Alexa-enabled device, like Echo and Echo Dot.
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The information in the search warrant application was sufficient to show a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime would be found in a hotel room registered to a known drug user who had recently tested positive for drugs, and the hotel staff had found evidence of drug use in the room that day which they photographed. Also, the application was not stale. Finally, the police corroborated the confidential informant’s information and the photographs by the hotel staff provided good reason to believe the informant was truthful. United States v. Salsberry, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 17394 (8th Cir. June 11, 2019).*
The trial court’s order is reversed for lack of adequate findings for appellate review. State v. Thompson, 2019-Ohio-2269, 2019 Ohio App. LEXIS 2362 (9th Dist. June 10, 2019).*
Defendant was stopped for being parked with only foglights on, the officer thinking that he was about to drive without headlights on, but the stop wasn’t justified. (A kind of anticipatory reasonable suspicion.) People v. Kidd, 2019 Cal. App. LEXIS 527 (4th Dist. May 16, 2019), published June 10, 2019.*
The government articulated several possible factors for reasonable suspicion for extending the stop which the court rejects on the totality. “Short declined to articulate any basis for awaiting the dog sniff when Near specifically asked him ‘May I ask what I’ve done wrong, sir?’ (Video at 18:36). Instead, Short answered, ‘Um I’ll tell you as soon as we’re done.’ (Id. at 18:38). He subsequently prepared a written report that referenced only rapid breathing and a pulsing carotid artery as suspicious factors.” United States v. Near, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97681 (N.D. Okla. June 11, 2019).*
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Defendant plans a suppression motion claiming that the search was invalid for use of excessive force during the search. He seeks discovery of other allegations of excessive force during searches by the officers, and it’s denied as speculative. United States v. Allen, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95317 (W.D. Wash. June 6, 2019).*
Considering the standard of review and the presumption favoring warrants, “Although perhaps minimally sufficient, the undersigned magistrate judge finds that Officer Friedrichsen’s affidavit provided probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant.” United States v. Mitchell, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97910 (D. Neb. June 11, 2019).*
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Defendant’s waving a gun at a crowd was probable cause, and it was on video. United States v. Leonard, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97917 (S.D. Fla. June 11, 2019).*
“The defendants have not shown that Det. Miller was reckless or that he deliberately omitted material information in preparing his search warrant affidavit.” United States v. Fisher, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97834 (D. Nev. June 11, 2019).*
Defendant fails to make a preliminary showing of intentional falsity to get a Franks hearing. People v. Hemphill, 2019 NY Slip Op 04646, 2019 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4651 (1st Dept. June 11, 2019).*
Law of the case isn’t always completely binding but usually is, and it certainly permits the trial court to consider other issues not decided in the original appeal against suppression of the evidence. People v. Morehead, 2019 CO 48, 2019 Colo. LEXIS 515 (June 11, 2019): Continue reading →
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With a dog alert on a car, the search of a locked toolbox under the automobile exception was permissible. State v. Sullivan, 2019-Ohio-2279, 2019 Ohio App. LEXIS 2372 (12th Dist. June 10, 2019).
Exigent circumstances could not be used to justify a warrantless entry to look for a person allegedly inside wanted on an arrest warrant. Too much time had passed between when he’d been previously believed to be there and the entry. The government’s reliance on Strieff is also rejected because Strieff was present at the time. United States v. Hunter, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95517 (N.D. Cal. May 31, 2019).*
Defendant in his 2255 admitted that he consented to a search, but he suggests without an offer of proof that it was involuntary, and this isn’t pleading enough. Aceves v. United States, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95488 (S.D. Cal. June 6, 2019).*
"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.