Reasonable suspicion here came from the fact that defendant transferred boxes from the vehicle of a target of a search warrant to his own while officers were watching, warrant in hand. His driving wasn’t evasive, and he likely didn’t even know he was being followed, but there was independent reasonable suspicion based on the box transfer. State v. McKnight, 2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 18 (January 20, 2015).
Defendant was in a minor accident, but the police came and found him under the influence of something. The officer suspected it was marijuana. The officer made the decision to arrest and tow his vehicle. Defendant was asked if he had any marijuana on him so he wouldn’t be introducing it into the jail. In plain view was a “Guy Fawkes” mask that the officer recognized. In an inventory the officer found an apparent Molotov Cocktail in a bottle in the trunk. That led to his indictment for possession of an incendiary device. The inventory was reasonable, and the protocol doesn’t have to be followed to a “T.” He was 20 years old, and his father consented to a search of his bedroom, and more were found. That was reasonable, too. United States v. Buchanan, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6117 (M.D. Tenn. January 20, 2015).*
Use of a subpoena to get IP information in a child pornography case was lawful under Smith v. Maryland. “‘Every federal court to address this issue has held that subscriber information provided to an Internet Provider is not protected by the Fourth Amendment’s privacy expectation.’ United States v. Perrine, 518 F.3d 1196, 1204 (10th Cir. 2008) (collecting cases); …” United States v. Torres, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6330 (S.D. Ga. January 14, 2015).*
Posted inInformational privacy, Inventory, Reasonable suspicion|Comments Off on NC: While watching a house just before SW execution in a drug case, transfer of boxes between cars was RS for visitor’s car
LOS ANGELES (CN) – A federal judge is poised to address a longstanding problem in the Los Angeles County warrant system that incarcerates thousands of innocent people, and in one case allegedly gave a convicted rapist a “free pass.”
The Los Angeles Times reported in 2011 that hundreds of people had ended up in jail because of identification errors in the warrant system in five years.
“It’s a horrible reality of what is basically the imperfect nature of the criminal justice system,” former county Sheriff Leroy Baca told the Times in late 2011. “No one who is an innocent person should ever be tied in with the criminal justice system … There’s a difference between saying ‘I plead not guilty.’ It’s another thing to say to anybody ‘I’m not that person.'”
Posted inArrest or entry on arrest|Comments Off on Courthouse News Service: L.A. County Warrant System Needs Fixing
This term, the Supreme Court heard two cases involving the actions of police officers during traffic stops. How the court comes down on the two cases will likely have significant repercussions far beyond the facts of the cases themselves. The court’s decisions could affect how police target motorists, which motorists they target and how often, and how they interact with motorists once they’ve pulled them over. The decisions will likely affect how police profile motorists to look for drug couriers, who gets detained and searched, and who has property confiscated through civil asset forfeiture.
Sonia Sotomayor stands up for the Fourth Amendment in drug-sniffing dog case. Continue reading →
Posted inDog sniff, Reasonable suspicion|Comments Off on Reason.com: Sotomayor to Justice Department Lawyer: ‘We Can’t Keep Bending the Fourth Amendment to the Resources of Law Enforcement’
Law enforcement use of the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System does not violate any reasonable expectation of privacy or the doctor-patient privilege. Here, a police officer was investigated for doctor shopping to obtain schedule III and IV drugs from multiple doctors, and the department acquired the records from pharmacies around town, created a spreadsheet, then verified all the prescriptions with the doctors, who all said they wouldn’t have prescribed if they’d known he was doctor shopping. State v. Myers, 2015-Ohio-160, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 135 (12th Dist. January 20, 2015): Continue reading →
The Supreme Court on Wednesday debated whether prolonging a traffic stop to allow police to conduct a K-9 dog sniff violates the driver’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Posted inDog sniff|Comments Off on Courthouse News Service: Justices Weigh How Long is Too Long to Wait on K-9
Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for New York’s Eastern District and President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, signed off on Tuesday to a settlement that would return $447,000 seized from a family-run Long Island business under a controversial area of federal law known as civil asset forfeiture.
Posted inForfeiture|Comments Off on NY Times: $447,000 Seized by Government Will Be Returned to Business
Officers drove into the parking lot of an extended stay hotel in Dallas known for its being a high crime area. Defendant was first seen peeking out a propped open door at the end of the building. The officers circled the building. Then he was seen coming out another door with a man, but the officers lost sight of them, suspicioning that they were hiding. On another pass, the headlights of a white car came on and drove in the opposite direction. The officers stopped the car, and a bag was dropped inside that had a gun. Defendant said “You got me” because he was a felon in possession. The officers lacked reasonable suspicion to believe that any crime had occurred before the stop. It was suspicious to them, but it didn’t add up to a crime on the totality. United States v. Ashley, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5531 (N.D. Tex. January 16, 2015).*
Defendant lacked standing to contest the search warrant for the subject premises based on visual surveillance and a trash pull because it wasn’t his place and he wasn’t an overnight guest. On the merits of the search warrant, there was probable cause for issuance of the warrant. United States v. Hamilton, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5693 (N.D. Ohio January 16, 2015).*
Defendant’s traffic stop was based on littering and window tinting, but the officer also believed that there were hidden compartments in the car. When he got up to the car, he could smell the faint odor of marijuana, so a dog sniff was lawful. United States v. Woods, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180639 (E.D. Mo. December 16, 2014).*
Defendant was already parked, so he wasn’t stopped, and the officer’s use of the emergency lights on his police car are not determinative of whether there was a “stop.” There was no display of weapons, touching of defendant, no coercive behavior. United States v. Cook, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180477 (D. Minn. November 17, 2014).
There was a factual dispute whether officers left a copy of the search warrant at the time of the search. They say they did; defendant says they didn’t. That’s hardly a violation of the Fourth Amendment even though Rule 41 requires it, even if the court credits defendant, which it doesn’t. How was defendant prejudiced? He doesn’t say. Therefore, it can’t be IAC for defense counsel to not have pursued the issue. United States v. Fernandez, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5594 (E.D. Wash. January 14, 2015).*
Since the search of defendant’s property was granted by his mother’s consent [without full explanation], any suppression motion would have been denied and there can’t be IAC. State v. Riley, 2015-Ohio-94, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 81 (7th Dist. January 2, 2015).*
Under the attenuation doctrine, incorporating a proximate cause analysis, inevitable discovery must ultimately control where there is both lawful and unlawful police action. State v. Strieff, 2015 UT 2, 2015 Utah LEXIS 4 (January 16, 2015): Continue reading →
Posted inAttenuation, Inevitable discovery|Comments Off on UT: Attenuation doctrine must ultimately bottom on inevitable discovery
Prior decisions of the Supreme Court addressing the constitutionality of the use of narcotics-sniffing dogs versus other law enforcement techniques have been on a theoretical collision course for years. On Wednesday, the Court will hear argument in Rodriguez v. United States and consider aspects of the issue once again: does the Fourth Amendment restrict the use of drug-sniffing dogs by the police at a roadside traffic stop, when the officer has finished issuing any citation and the stop is prolonged for a few minutes solely to conduct the dog sniff?
Posted inDog sniff|Comments Off on SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Dog sniffs and traffic stops – once more to the Fourth Amendment well
At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies are using hand-held radar to “see” the inside of houses, USA Today reports. The radar guns are just the latest in a long line of tech tools being quietly deployed across the country with little public scrutiny, raising questions about how the Fourth Amendment applies in the digital era.
Posted inSearch, Surveillance technology|Comments Off on WaPo: Law enforcement is getting new surveillance tools. But they don’t always want to talk about them
In December, in the midst of nationwide protests drawing attention to the broken relationship between the police and communities of color, the Supreme Court demonstrated an impressive disconnect with reality. It issued a decision in Heien v. North Carolina that tears at the fragile police-minority relationship, and will further erode confidence in government and law enforcement. And it came at just the time when the country needed to heal.
Posted inReasonable suspicion, Reasonableness|Comments Off on Salon: Supreme Court’s police debacle: How it quietly helped cops prey on poor people
The officer had just less than reasonable suspicion under binding authority that this judge doesn’t agree with, so the motion to suppress is reluctantly granted. United States v. Smith, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5512 (D. Mass. January 16, 2015)*: Continue reading →
Posted inStop and frisk|Comments Off on D.Mass.: No RS for stop; court disagrees with case it has to follow
An incoherent drunk wandered onto the Western Stock Show grounds mumbling and stumbling. The police were called and were going to arrest him for public intoxication. A patdown revealed a gun, and he was FIPF. The protective weapons search was reasonable. United States v. Gilmore, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 696 (10th Cir. January 16, 2015).
The evidence supports the conclusion that defendant consented to the taking of a DNA sample in a sex assault investigation of another airman (woman victim, that is; can I assume “airman” is generic?). United States v. Piren, 2015 CAAF LEXIS 50 (C.A. A.F. January 15, 2015).*
It was not objectively unreasonable for the DEA officer involved to seize certain records and things under the search warrant for plaintiff’s premises because they were arguably within the search warrant. Libretti v. Woodson, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 751 (6th Cir. January 15, 2015).*
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on CA10: Public intox arrest justified protective weapons search
At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies quietly deployed radars that let them effectively see inside homes, with little notice to the courts or the public.
WASHINGTON — At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance.
Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person’s house without first obtaining a search warrant.
To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. We think that obtaining by sense enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical “intrusion into a constitutionally protected area,” Silverman, 365 U. S., at 512, constitutes a search— at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. On the basis of this criterion, the information obtained by the thermal imager in this case was the product of a search.
A man was cited for allegedly distracted driving in Georgia when a police officer saw him eating a cheeseburger while behind the wheel, according to ABC affiliate WSB-TV.
The police officer in question, whose name has not been released, cited Cobb County’s distracted driver law, and the driver has a court date scheduled for Feb. 3, the Atlanta station said.
So, eating a cheeseburger while driving is reasonable suspicion or probable cause for a stop in Georgia?
"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.
