Archives for: August 2012, 05

08/05/12

Permalink 08:41:13 am, by fourth, 279 words, 805 views   English (US)
Categories: General

D.Ariz.: Use of emergency lights may make driver of stopped car think he can't leave, but that wasn't the intention of the officer

An officer was tailing two vehicles heading north from the border apparently in tandem, which was suspicious to the officer. An immigration checkpoint was ahead, so he didn’t intend to stop them. One pulled off when a “checkpoint ahead” sign was seen, and the officer stopped too. The emergency lights were turned on, and it was reasonable for the driver to believe he’d been stopped, but it was still consensual up to the point the officer saw marijuana. United States v. Holley, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107882 (D. Ariz. June 13, 2012), adopted 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107983 (D. Ariz. August 2, 2012):*

Although the Government's case here is arguably not as strong as it was in Al Nasser, it is similar to facts of Chan-Jimenez, but without the determinative retention of the license and registration. Though a closer case than either of those, the outcome is dictated by the application of the Ninth Circuit instruction that "[a] person is seized when he is 'meant to be stopped by [a particular law enforcement action] ... and [is] so stopped.'" Al Nasser, 555 F.3d at 731. Here, Holley voluntarily stopped and there is no evidence that indicates Agent Alvarenga activated his lights meaning to stop him. While the lights may have caused Holley, or any reasonable person, to believe he was seized, that was not the will of Agent Alvarenga and therefore the encounter was consensual and no seizure occurred until the agent saw the marijuana in the vehicle.

So this was consensual stop or not? Since the officer didn't mean to "stop" him and he was already stopped, it was consensual even though the driver thought he couldn't leave. I don't quite get it.

Permalink 08:24:46 am, by fourth, 184 words, 229 views   English (US)
Categories: General

CA7: Reasonably complete private search was not exceeded by the officers

Defendant was convicted of a child pornography offense in state court and sought habeas which was denied by the district court which granted a COA. The court reached the merits of the Fourth Amendment claim before turning to the AEDPA standard of review and found the evidence supported the conclusion that the private search before the police received it was reasonably complete so the police did not exceed the private search without a warrant. Rann v. Atchison, 689 F.3d 832 (7th Cir. 2012).

Plaintiff’s decedent was in a one-car crash that required the “jaws of life” to extricate him, but he was hogtied and allegedly physically abused by officers while unconscious. He ultimately died. There was no qualified immunity for the officers, but there was as to the EMTs for lack of a settled constitutional right as to them. Brown v. Jenne, 2012 Fla. App. LEXIS 12520 (Fla. App. 4th DCA August 1, 2012), on rehearing from 2011 Fla. App. LEXIS 17766 (Fla. 4th DCA Nov. 9, 2011).*

The alleged Franks error, if it was, was not remotely material to the finding of probable cause. United States v. Gordon, 493 Fed. Appx. 617 (6th Cir. 2012).*

Permalink 08:00:56 am, by fourth, 145 words, 194 views   English (US)
Categories: General

D.Ariz.: Use of emergency lights behind an already parked car not necessarily a stop

Pulling up to an already stopped vehicle and turning on the emergency lights is not per se a stop. United States v. Holley, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107983 (D. Ariz. August 2, 2012).*

Collective knowledge supported reasonable suspicion and probable cause for a stop and search in an alien smuggling case. A cell phone was recovered and a search warrant obtained. A mistake in the application as whether the passenger or driver was on the phone was not material for Franks purposes. United States v. Cruz-Grijalva, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107940 (D. Ariz. July 13, 2012).*

While the initial robbery report did not have a description of the car, police found a car with occupants matching their description and observed it, ultimately getting probable cause to believe that the car was involved, thus permitting a search of the car. United States v. Burnett, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107341 (E.D. Pa. August 1, 2012).*

Permalink 07:40:06 am, by fourth, 154 words, 165 views   English (US)
Categories: General

Zwillgen: "Twitter to Appeal Ruling That the Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Public Tweets"

Zwillgen.com: Law Across the Wire and Into the Cloud: Twitter to Appeal Ruling That the Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Public Tweets by Melissa Maalouf:

A lawyer for Twitter recently announced through a tweet that the company intends to appeal the recent decision of a New York criminal court that an Occupy Wall Street protester’s tweets are not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

In State v. Harris, the issue was whether Twitter must comply with a subpoena requesting all user information for the protester and tweets on his account between September and December 2011, including tweets that were no longer visible because new ones had crowded them out. In April, the court denied the protester’s motion to quash the subpoena, holding that he did not have standing because the subpoena was issued to Twitter. Following the ruling, Twitter filed its own motion to quash the subpoena.

Of course it's through a tweet.

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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."
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"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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