Defendant was sitting in a van when she was gotten out and then arrested. Her purse was left behind. Her purse was not subject to a search incident when she’d been handcuffed and led away. The state’s argument that inevitable discovery would have applied because her purse would have been inventoried at the jail is rejected as unproven. The state put on no proof that would have happened. State v. Ritchey, 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 62 (Nov. 2, 2018).
The question of the legality of the seizure of defendant’s blood was harmless at best on this record of his intoxication. State v. Thompson, 301 Neb. 472 (Nov. 2, 2018).
Posted inDrug or alcohol testing, Search incident|Comments Off on KS: Def was removed from a van and her purse left behind; it wasn’t subject to search incident
Because defendant didn’t own the car he borrowed, he wasn’t prejudiced by the five day delay in getting a search warrant for it. State v. Stacey, 2018 N.H. LEXIS 208 (Nov. 2, 2018).
State law requires automobile exception apply to cars “in transit” and not already parked. Defendant here was in a car at a closed gas station when the officer approached, and that was “in transit” since the driver was in it. State v. Glavan, 2018 N.H. LEXIS 209 (Nov. 2, 2018).*
Defendant’s use of IP addresses his computer signed in through isn’t enough like CSLI in Carpenter to require a search warrant. United States v. Monroe, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186998 (D. R.I. Nov. 1, 2018): Continue reading →
A probation search of a cell phone is permitted under a provision in the search condition for searching “personal effects.” United States v. Ard, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187125 (E.D. La. Nov. 1, 2018).
There’s no evidence that NCMEC’s search expanded the private search, and there was probable cause. United States v. Wilbert, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187024 (W.D. N.Y. Nov. 1, 2018).*
Posted inCell phones, Probation / Parole search|Comments Off on E.D.La.: Probation search of a cell phone is permitted under the search condition for searching “personal effects”
Asking that a lawyer get to look at a search warrant with an electronic signature for validity is not a refusal to consent under Georgia v. Randolph. United States v. Sanchez, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187115 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 1, 2018).*
Initial search didn’t taint a later search warrant at all. United States v. Hollins, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187193 (D. Haw. Nov. 1, 2018).*
Posted inConsent, Independent source|Comments Off on M.D.Fla.: Asking that lawyer look at SW isn’t refusal to consent under Randolph
“The Chardon Municipal Court Judge had a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause existed in issuing the warrant for a thermal image search of 7071 Ledge. The Government must obtain a search warrant before use of thermal imaging equipment to detect heat-generating activity in a defendant’s house.” “The police further corroborated this [CI] by surveilling the Property; observing the smell of marijuana at times consistent with practices often observed in large scale marijuana cultivation operations; and observing the same individuals over multiple days loading and unloading unknown materials. Investigators also subpoenaed and reviewed electrical records which reflected a higher use of electricity than commercial buildings of a similar size.” United States v. Nagy, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187206 (N.D. Ohio Nov. 1, 2018).*
Posted inInformant hearsay|Comments Off on N.D.Ohio: Thermal imaging SW was based on probable cause because CI corroborated
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Andrew Crocker says that a controversial warrant employed in an FBI child pornography sting also recently waived on by other circuits is “really inconsistent with the idea of the Fourth Amendment.”
Posted inProbable cause|Comments Off on The Recorder/Law.com: NITs to Pick: An EFF Attorney Riffs on a Recent Ninth Circuit Malware Decision
Even though they were more than 100 miles from an international border, ICE officers had probable cause (which was conceded) to believe that defendant was in the U.S. despite having been previously removed. Therefore, the stop was valid. United States v. Bautista-Ramos, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187238 (N.D. Iowa Nov. 1, 2018).
In an omnibus motion to unseal documents, the arrest warrant materials in the Bundy case in Nevada are not unsealed. United States v. Bundy, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185193 (D. Nev. Oct. 30, 2018).*
Officers investigating a noise complaint ended up talking to defendant in a parked car. They could ask for his DL despite the noise having abated. While that was going on, one officer could see marijuana hidden under the edge of the seat. That was justification for a search. United States v. Warren, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186353 (N.D. Iowa Oct. 31, 2018).*
The search warrant for defendant’s iCloud and Facebook accounts was supported by probable cause, as was the search warrant for his cell phone. United States v. Vines, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186013 (S.D. Ind. Oct. 31, 2018).*
Defendant was arrested in what was alleged to be an unlawful entry. After he was out, he requested his cell phone so he could call a lawyer. Going back in with him and the protective sweep with it was by consent and was reasonable. United States v. Barr, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 188067 (N.D. Ga. Oct. 17, 2018), adopted, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187827 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 2, 2018).
The exclusionary in revocation proceedings only applies for egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment. This isn’t. Also, accessing third-party data isn’t protected by the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Wright, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 31138 (9th Cir. Nov. 2, 2018).*
Posted inConsent, Exclusionary rule, Independent source, Protective sweep|Comments Off on N.D.Ga.: Even though initial entry may have been unlawful, reentry at def’s request to get cell phone to call lawyer was by consent and permitted protective sweep
The affidavit for the search warrant here failed to show both probable cause and nexus, and the court details why. However, the 62 page detailed affidavit detailing the whole investigation was not bare bones by any means, and the good faith exception applies. United States v. Smith, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 30963 (6th Cir. Nov. 1, 2018): Continue reading →
Posted inGood faith exception, Nexus, Probable cause|Comments Off on CA6: Affidavit for SW failed both PC and nexus, but GFE applied: affidavit was detailed and 62 pages
Officers approached the defendant reasonably believing he was somebody else, and he ran. When they finally caught him and rolled him over, they realized they had the wrong person. Nevertheless, the stop was objectively reasonable despite mistaken identity. United States v. Burns, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187356 (D. Minn. Sep. 4, 2018): Continue reading →
Posted inReasonable suspicion, Reasonableness|Comments Off on D.Minn.: Stop of wrong man on mistaken identity was objectively reasonable
Defendant was surveilled in a funeral home at a funeral, and he was stopped later. Rodriguez does not apply before the stop actually occurred. United States v. Thompson, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185267 (W.D. Ky. Oct. 30, 2018).
“Such specific information, corroborated by other witnesses and the officer’s own investigation, is sufficient to indicate the reliability and veracity of the informant. While Elmore is correct that an informant whose prior tips proved reliable can be considered more reliable for the instant tip, failure to produce evidence from prior tips is not dispositive, particularly where, as here, there is independent corroboration of multiple kinds.” This entire investigation lasted a month, and there is no indication of staleness. United States v. Elmore, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185265 (W.D. Ky. Oct. 30, 2018).*
Defendant was stopped for a traffic offense, but he made it to his mobile home and parked outside the chain link fence. The court finds the car was outside the curtilage under Dunn when the stop and dog sniff occurred. Davis v. State, 2018 Fla. App. LEXIS 15397 (Fla. 1st DCA Oct. 31, 2018).
Defendant’s 2255 is denied and defense counsel was not ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress when defendant cannot even show on what grounds it would be successful. On the merits, it wouldn’t be. United States v. Tinson, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185488 (E.D. La. Oct. 30, 2018).*
Children were removed from the home because of suspected child abuse and subjected to forced gynecological and rectal exams without any court authorization or parental knowledge or consent. The court assumes the “special needs” doctrine applies and then finds it wasn’t complied with. Mann v. County of San Diego, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 30804 (9th Cir. Oct. 31, 2018). Summary by the court:
The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s summary judgment in an action alleging that the County of San Diego acted unconstitutionally when it removed children from their family home under a suspicion of child abuse, took them to a temporary shelter, and subjected them to invasive medical examinations, including a gynecological and rectal exam, without their parents’ knowledge or consent and without a court order authorizing the examinations. Continue reading →
Posted inBody searches, Special needs|Comments Off on CA9: Forced sex abuse exam of children without parental consent or court approval violates 4A
A device specifically designed to break into iPhones and Apple operating systems and allow access to encrypted files has been approved for purchase by the Charlottesville Police Department.
A protective sweep doesn’t permit a look in a toilet tank. United States v. Brown, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185187 (S.D. Fla. Oct. 29, 2018).
Plaintiffs’ 1983 search case fails. There was probable cause for issuance of the search warrant even though nothing turned up. The officers also were entitled to qualified immunity. Edwards v. Jolliff-Blake, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 31017 (7th Cir. Nov. 1, 2018).*
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on S.D.Fla.: A protective sweep doesn’t permit a look in a toilet tank
The inventory of defendant’s locked backpack when he was taken into custody was within departmental policy which was followed and was otherwise reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Trujillo, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184486 (D. N.M. Oct. 29, 2018): Continue reading →
Posted inInventory|Comments Off on D.N.M.: Inventory of a locked backpack was reasonable and within dept regs
Defendant’s 2255 for proven misconduct by an FBI agent involved in his case of tampering with evidence during the search that surfaced after defendant’s guilty plea does not lead to overturning his conviction. While the agent’s misconduct in another case led to dismissal there, the tampering here wasn’t anywhere as critical as it was to the other case. United States v. Logan, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183365 (D.D.C. Oct. 26, 2018): Continue reading →
Posted inPolice misconduct|Comments Off on D.D.C.: FBI Agent’s tampering with evidence in def’s case doesn’t lead to dismissal; not significant enough to case
Google is not a consumer software company, or even a search company. It’s an ad company. It collects exhaustive data about its users in the service of brokering ad sales around the web. To do so, Google requires an extensive understanding of the backgrounds, browsing habits, preferences, purchases, and lives of as many web users as possible, gleaned through massive data aggregation and analysis.
Posted inSurveillance technology|Comments Off on Wired: The Privacy Battle to Save Google From Itself
"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.
