The Oregonian: Eugene verdict clarifies legal protections for protesters who turn video cameras on police by Bryan Denson:

Camcorders, smart phones and live-streaming gizmos bob atop seas of demonstrators these days in Oregon, often capturing hostilities between police and demonstrators from various angles.

State law permits protesters to record police in public places. But courts have made few rulings on what officers can do with the recording devices they seize from people during arrests.

The rules of engagement became clearer in Eugene's U.S. District Court last week, when a civil jury determined that a city police sergeant violated an environmental activist's constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure during a 2009 leafletting campaign outside a bank.

[Note: This is so obvious, there is no qualified immunity. It isn't even close.]

Whether or not the parole officer violated the parole officer’s field manual really doesn’t matter if the search otherwise complied with the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Wade, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11552 (N.D. Ga. January 31, 2012).*

Plaintiff was a potential suspect under the suspect exception of the Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa(a)(1). Her status as a photojournalist did not automatically protect her under the Act. Sennett v. United States, 667 F.3d 531 (4th Cir. 2012) (unpublished).

The trial court’s incomplete findings of fact left the appellate court unsure how it was applying the facts in crediting defendant (no violations of the law) or the officer (three traffic offenses). The fact that the trial court applied a reasonable suspicion standard rather than a probable cause standard suggested either that the trial court misapplied the law or disbelieved some or all of defendant’s testimony. The law that applied depended upon whose version of the events was to be believed, and the trial court failed to make any credibility determinations in the first instance. State v. Payne, 2012 Ohio 305, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 247 (9th Dist. January 30, 2012).*

Under Jones, the person complaining has to have standing to contest installation of the GPS in the vehicle. The members of the robbery crew here had no standing. United States v. Hanna, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11385 (S.D. Fla. January 30, 2012):

Under either approach recognized by Jones, an essential component of the Fourth Amendment claim requires that one's own personal "effects" have been trespassed (e.g., one's automobile when a GPS tracking device was secretly installed), or that one's own expectation of privacy was impinged (e.g., one's own movements were continuously monitored and tracked for a material period of time). That is principally where these Defendants' attempt to benefit from the Supreme Court's decision in Jones fails. Neither Ransfer nor Hanna was either the owner or exclusive user of the Ford Expedition. To the contrary, the record shows that members of the robbery crew consistently referred to the Expedition as co-Defendant Middleton's truck. It is undisputed, and the Court has found, that neither Ransfer nor Hanna was in possession of the Expedition at the time that the alleged trespass (the installation and subsequent use of the tracker) occurred. It is also undisputed that Middleton owned that vehicle at all relevant times. Thus, to the extent that Jones relies upon a theory of trespass upon private property, neither Ransfer nor Hanna has standing to challenge a trespass upon property as to which they had no rights.

Moreover, Defendants Ransfer and Hanna also lack standing to challenge the installation and use of the GPS device on the Ford Expedition because — under a traditional Katz analysis — they had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the vehicle. In Jones, five members of the Court concluded that Justice Scalia's trespass theory did not form a sufficiently comprehensive analysis of the Fourth Amendment implications of GPS monitoring and argued that GPS monitoring should also (in the case of Justice Sotomayor) or only (in the case of Justice Alito) be analyzed to determine whether it has invaded a reasonable expectation of privacy. Under this traditional test as well, neither defendant Ransfer nor Hanna had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the Ford Expedition or its movements, and thus neither has standing to challenge the installation and use of the GPS device.

Defendant was accused of hunting baited bears on his own land, and the land was clearly open fields under Oliver. State v. Ballance, 2012 N.C. App. LEXIS 60 (January 17, 2012).*

When defendant was paroled, he agreed to be searched without cause. Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843 (2006). Even if reasonable suspicion was necessary, the officers had it. United States v. Wade, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11561 (N.D. Ga. January 4, 2012).*

Under the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act, there was probable cause to believe defendant’s vehicle was used in the commission of a drug crime so the vehicle was “contraband,” and that justified its impoundment. United States v. Allen, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152604 (M.D. Ga. December 5, 2011).*