The consent search in this case was nine years before the suppression hearing. The officer’s willingness to admit that which he could not remember made him more credible, and it was expected he couldn’t remember all of it because it was so long ago. United States v. Mendez-Canales, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137055 (M.D.Ga. Sept. 12, 2016),* adopted, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 136699 (N.D. Ga. Oct. 3, 2016).*
Considering all the factors, the government proved defendant’s consent was voluntary. Defendant’s arrest was based on probable cause. United States v. Burcham, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 136375 (M.D.La. Sept. 30, 2016).*
The search of defendant’s person as a precautionary measure was reasonable considering he’d admitted he possessed hydrocodone. That led to a valid search of his car. United States v. Kerns, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 135584 (S.D.W.Va. Sept. 30, 2016).*
Posted inBurden of proof, Consent, Stop and frisk|Comments Off on N.D.Ga.: Officer was credible on search 9 years ago by admitting what he couldn’t remember
Defendant’s guilty plea waived his Fourth Amendment claim. Singleton v. State, 2016 Miss. App. LEXIS 637 (Oct. 4, 2016).
Defendant’s claim that the police withheld information about an alleged drug dog alert. That claim was either procedurally barred or unsupported by the record. Adams v. State, 2016 Miss. App. LEXIS 638 (Oct. 4, 2016).*
Ordering defendant back to his car didn’t make the stop illegal. United States v. Pryor, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131916 (D.Kan. Sept. 25, 2016).*
Posted inBurden of proof|Comments Off on MS: Guilty plea waived 4A claim
In a search warrant that included the defendant’s name repeatedly and then mistakenly included another name on the computer printed search warrant, common sense dictates that the warrant was directed at her. State v. Szabo, 2016 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 759 (Oct. 6, 2016).
The government proved the voluntariness of defendant’s consent. United States v. Buendia-Santos, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131495 (M.D.Ala. Aug. 29, 2016),* adopted, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130994 (M.D. Ala. Sept. 26, 2016).*
“The search of Sanchez’s home pursuant to Sanchez’s status as a probationer does not meet the probation search exception because the agents did not have reasonable suspicion Sanchez was engaged in criminal activity or that the home contained evidence of Sanchez’s violations.” United States v. Sanchez, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131627 (D.Mont. Sept. 26, 2016).*
“The state argues Snyder’s backpack was within his immediate control because it was next to the entrance of the room in the security office where Snyder was detained. According to the state, Snyder could have ‘quickly reached the backpack (notwithstanding the handcuffs) in order to obtain a weapon or destroy evidence.’ We disagree.” State v. Snyder, 2016 Ariz. App. LEXIS 251 (Oct. 7, 2016).
The officer received an anonymous report of an argument between a man and a woman but found nothing to corroborate it when he got to the scene. The stop of defendant’s car was merely on a hunch they were involved. State v. McCarty, 2016 Mo. App. LEXIS 988 (Oct. 4, 2016).*
Defendant’s breath test was constitutionally valid under Birchfield. State v. Navarro, 2016 Ariz. App. LEXIS 250 (Oct. 7, 2016).*
Defendant’s child pornography search warrant wasn’t based on stale information even a year old.
United States v. Ornelas, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133809 (C.D.Cal. Sept. 27, 2016).*
Defendant’s consent was involuntary, but the automobile exception justified the search of the car. United States v. Quin Li, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133151 (N.D.Miss. Sept. 16, 2016).*
The court finds that the defendant came to the police station voluntarily to give a statement about his possession of drugs in his house found during a probation search. United States v. Ng, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 136209 (N.D.Cal. Sept. 30, 2016).*
Another Playpen warrant upheld. United States v. Allain, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134605 (D.Mass. Sept. 29, 2016).*
This white collar case warrant was based on probable cause and was sufficiently particular. Good faith also would sustain the warrant. United States v. Lewis, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134760 (E.D.Mo. Sept. 12, 2016),* adopted, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134348 (E.D. Mo. Sept. 29, 2016).*
The officer had probable cause for defendant’s arrest after relieving him of a gun and seeing the serial number obliterated. United States v. Evans, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138630 (D.Minn. Aug. 17, 2016).*
Inevitable discovery used to justify a search of a cell phone in 2002 because it might have been unreasonable under Riley from 2014 (no mention of good faith exception applied to pre-Riley searches). Logan v. United States, 2016 D.C. App. LEXIS 372 (Oct. 6, 2016): Continue reading →
Police were called to an apartment because of noise then a water leak into their place. The officer went to look for the cause and found a mason jar with marijuana. The grant of the motion to suppress is reversed because there was no misconduct justifying the exclusionary rule. Commonwealth v. Suters, 2016 Mass. App. LEXIS 144 (Oct. 7, 2016): Continue reading →
The use of pepper spray on somebody kicking a police car isn’t excessive force. Nigro v. Carrasquillo, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17921 (11th Cir. Oct. 4, 2016): Continue reading →
Posted inExcessive force|Comments Off on CA11: Use of pepper spray on somebody kicking a police car isn’t excessive force
FBI, local cops stage fruitless raid in Quincy; family of man killed in his own home gets $3.75 million; National Guard troops, helicopters raid grandma over a single pot plant.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on WaPo: Radley Balko’s “The Watch” Blog: This week in drug raids: Massachusetts edition
Defendant’s parole search was justified by defendant’s being unemployed but possessing a large sum of cash and other parole violations. People v. Goss, 2016 NY Slip Op 06596, 2016 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6457 (4th Dept. Oct. 7, 2016).
One of the officer’s justifications for the stop was an unreasonable mistake of law, but another wasn’t, and that supports the stop. United States v. Wilson, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17722 (11th Cir. Sept. 30, 2016).*
Defendant consented, and the district court’s findings are supported by the evidence. United States v. Mendoza, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17699 (11th Cir. Sept. 30, 2016).*
High crime area, nervousness, a furtive movement, and obviously producing the wrong papers during the stop all added up to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Dubois, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 135385 (E.D.Pa. Sept. 30, 2016).*
The City of East Chicago Housing Authority is enjoined from how it conducts administrative inspections of its apartments and uses drug dogs at the doors of apartments. Gutierrez v. City of East Chicago, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138374 (N.D.Ind. Sept. 6, 2016), adopted, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS ___ (N.D.Ind. Oct. 5, 2016):
The officer’s “knowledge, training and experience” isn’t a panacea that automatically adds up to turning innocent conduct into reasonable suspicion. More is needed from the state. State v. Ramirez-Tamayo, 07-15-00419-CR (Tex. App. – Amarillo Oct. 5, 2016): Continue reading →
Posted inReasonable suspicion|Comments Off on TX7: Officer’s “knowledge, training and experience” isn’t a panacea that automatically adds up to turning innocent conduct into RS
Last week, I wrote a post on the Playpen warrant currently being litigated in federal courts around the country. My post included a section, “Retrieving IP Addresses is Clearly a Search,” that said the following: …
Posted inComputer and cloud searches|Comments Off on WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Remotely accessing an IP address inside a target computer is a search
The officer had probable cause to stop and detain defendant for delivery of drugs based on the CI’s story coming together when defendant arrived. Therefore, the Gant search incident of the car for drugs was reasonable. United States v. Baskin, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130480 (N.D.Ga. Aug. 24, 2016), adopted, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130178 (N.D. Ga. Sept. 23, 2016): Continue reading →
Verizon’s turning over all emails to the NSA, reported in 2013, was sufficient for a Verizon subscriber to state standing to sue under Clapper. Schuchardt v. President of the United States, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 18025 (3d Cir. Oct. 5, 2016): Continue reading →
Posted inStanding|Comments Off on CA3: Verizon subscriber showed standing to sue NSA for seizure of all emails
Defendant was not in custody in this child pornography investigation when he was interrogated, and he even left the scene. “In light of the background investigation and Zavesky’s statements, law enforcement officers had probable cause to detain Zavesky’s semi-truck after observing the laptop in the passenger’s seat.” The hour long detention of the semi to get a search warrant was reasonable. United States v. Zavesky, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 18033 (8th Cir. Oct. 5, 2016).
Defendant consented to a blood draw at the scene and at the fire station when the blood draw was taken. Jacobs v. State, 2016 Ga. App. LEXIS 539 (Sept. 29, 2016).*
There was reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop; therefore, defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress. State v. Phillips, 2016-Ohio-7049, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 3912 (8th Dist. Sept. 29, 2016).*
Defendant was driving a rental car rented by his mother that limited driving to her alone. Still, that didn’t make defendant guilty of anything under state law, and impounding and inventorying the car was unreasonable. Commonwealth v. Campbell, 2016 Mass. LEXIS 715 (Sept. 30, 2016).
Defendant’s arrest was with probable cause. Therefore, his “disburden[ing]” himself of a small amount of drugs on his person at the jail was not subject to suppression. State v. Alderson, 2016 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 743 (Sept. 29, 2016).*
Information from three CIs and other suspicious behavior after the stop for speeding all added up to probable cause. State v. Lewis, 2016-Ohio-7170, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 4014 (3d Dist. Oct. 3, 2016).*
Posted inProbable cause|Comments Off on MA: Not being on the rental agreement as a permitted driver not an offense under state law for arrest
Police came to defendant’s trailer to talk to him about a domestic battery allegation. He refused to come out, and argued at the door with the police. Finally, he reached out and slapped an officer’s hand. That led to them trying to arrest him when he assaulted officers. The legality of the entry isn’t an issue: “The exclusionary rule does not command suppression of evidence that Tims violently resisted arrest and accosted officers, lawfully present or not.” Tims v. State, 2016 Fla. App. LEXIS 14742 (Fla. 1st DCA Oct. 4, 2016).
During a knock-and-talk with four officers, when the door was opened, drug paraphernalia was in plain view. When one of the four occupants headed to the back and didn’t respond to a command to stop, a protective sweep was justified. State v. Harris, 2016-Ohio-7097, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 3997 (2d Dist. Sept. 30, 2016).*
Posted inExclusionary rule, Knock and talk|Comments Off on FL1: Assault of officer on porch attempting to talk to def leading to police entry and more resisting not subject to exclusion
Unwilling sonogram by a college in a class is a Fourth Amendment search. “Inserting a probe into a woman’s vagina is plainly a search when performed by the government.” Investigative purpose not required. Doe v. Valencia College Board of Trustees, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17922 (11th Cir. Oct. 4, 2016): Continue reading →
Posted inSearch|Comments Off on CA11: “Inserting a probe into a woman’s vagina is plainly a search when performed by the government.”
"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.
