Archives for: June 2012, 26

06/26/12

Permalink 12:06:43 pm, by fourth, 315 words, 340 views   English (US)
Categories: General

CA5 adopts RS as standard for prison employee search; underwire bra setting off metal detector enough at a prison

Plaintiff is a Texas DOC employee whose underwire bra set off the metal detector entering the prison for work. Her partial strip search was justified by reasonable suspicion of possession of a cell phone or other metal object. The Fifth Circuit adopts the majority rule that reasonable suspicion is required for a search of a prison employee, and all Texas prisons are on guard for smuggling of cell phones into prison which is contraband. Rouse v. Tex. Dep't of Crim. Justice Institutional Div., 479 Fed. Appx. 612 (5th Cir. 2012):

First, we agree with the district court that the prison officials were required to have reasonable suspicion that appellant was carrying contraband in order to justify the partial strip search of the plaintiff. Where visitors to the prison will be exposed to prison inmates, we have stated that "[t]o justify the stip search of a particular visitor under the reasonable suspicion standard, prison officials must point to specific objective facts and rational inferences that they are entitled to draw from those facts in light of their experience." Thorne v. Jones, 765 F.2d 1270, 1277 (5th Cir. 1985). The standard requires "individualized suspicion" specifically directed to the person who is targeted for the strip search. Varrone v. Bilotti, 123 F.3d 75, 79 (2d Cir. 1997). At least three circuits have held that reasonable suspicion is the appropriate standard for the partial strip search of prison staff. Leverette v. Bell, 247 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2001); McDonnell v. Hunter, 809 F.2d 1302 (8th Cir. 1987); Security and Law Enforcement Employees, District Council 82 v. Carey, 737 F.2d 187 (2d Cir. 1984). The appellant does not challenge the district court's conclusion that this is the appropriate legal standard.

We also agree that when appellant triggered the metal detectors, the prison officials had reasonable suspicion and were entitled to conduct the partial strip search. Under the facts recited above, the prison officials had the "individualized suspicion" of appellant to justify the partial strip search. ...

Permalink 11:33:43 am, by fourth, 162 words, 243 views   English (US)
Categories: General

D.N.M.: Copar Pumice attorneys fee award $111k for Fourth Amendment violation despite small verdict

The mining company’s long running Fourth Amendment case against New Mexico authorities resulted in a jury verdict of $1 but included attorneys fees for a state administrative proceeding of $16,000. The award was not nominal. The lodestar for fees is “Because the Court finds that Copar Pumice's claimed hourly rates are reasonable, and because the Court finds that its time spent in litigating this matter is reasonable, the Court calculates the lodestar amount to be $124,401.14 in attorney's fees with $2,380.17 in expenses,” but it is reduced 10%. Copar Pumice Co. v. Morris, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87098 (D. N.M. June 13, 2012).*

Consent search of passenger compartment produced cocaine and marijuana, so officer could search the trunk based on that probable cause. United States v. Denson, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87493 (E.D. Tex. May 21, 2012).*

Under the WV implied consent law, a driver who refuses a test is only subject to a test by search warrant, if one is sought. State v. Stone, 728 S.E.2d 155 (W. Va. 2012).*

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  Camreta v. Greene, 131 S.Ct. 2020, 179 L.Ed.2d 1118 (May 26, 2011) (ScotusBlog)
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  Davis v. United States, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (June 16, 2011) (ScotusBlog)

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  Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 130 S.Ct. 546, 175 L.Ed.2d 410 (Dec. 7, 2009) (per curiam) (ScotusBlog)
  City of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S.Ct. 2619, 177 L.Ed.2d 216 (June 17, 2010) (ScotusBlog)

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  Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (Jan. 13, 2009) (ScotusBlog)
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me

"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

"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]

“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
Pepé Le Pew

"There is never enough time, unless you are serving it."
Malcolm Forbes

"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)

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