Citizen Media Law Center: Another Go-Round with Recording the Police in Massachusetts by Jeffrey P. Hermes:

Last Thursday, according to the Shrewsbury Daily Voice, Irving Espinosa-Rodrigue was arraigned in Westborough District Court for making a recording of a police officer in violation of Massachusetts' wiretap law, M.G.L. c. 272, § 99. The audio/video recording was allegedly made secretly during a traffic stop by a female passenger in Espinosa-Rodrigue's car at his direction, and later uploaded to YouTube.

But wait a minute -- didn't we already deal with this issue in Massachusetts? Didn't the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over Massachusetts, pretty clearly state in Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011), that there's a First Amendment right to record the activities of the police in public?

McClatchy: Commentary: Welfare drug testing and the Fourth Amendment by Linda P. Campbell | The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst probably wouldn't admit it, but they want to engage in social engineering. They want people not to waste money on drugs, liquor, smokes or lottery tickets. Not everybody, mind you, but poor people.

That's because poor people can get taxpayer dollars to help feed their kids or tide their families over when they lose a job -- and we can't have them spending that money on things the rest of us disapprove of. ...

But the method of choice put forward by Perry, Dewhurst, Sen. Jane Nelson of Flower Mound and other Republicans is to drug-test people applying for public benefits such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and unemployment assistance. As though drug use is the main reason people with kids are poor or have been thrown out of work.

Defendant was subjected to a stop and frisk. A pen cap was removed from his person, and it was obvious that it was not a weapon. The officer’s further search of the pen cap was unreasonable. Officer working off-duty security at an apartment complex was acting as a police officer and the Fourth Amendment governed the search. Clanton v. State, 2012 Ind. App. LEXIS 565 (November 15, 2012):

In our view, the dispositive fact is not whether a container is open or closed, but whether the illicit nature of an item was immediately apparent to the officer or apparent only through further manipulation. See Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 379 (analogizing the plain-feel doctrine to the plain-view doctrine as limited by Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321 (1987), which held that the moving of stereo equipment to check serial numbers was an impermissible search under the Fourth Amendment absent probable cause to suspect the equipment was stolen when "the incriminating character of the stereo equipment was not immediately apparent").

Here, once Officer Price discovered that the sharp item in Clanton's pocket was a pen cap, he had dispelled his suspicion that the item was a weapon. Indeed, Officer Price testified that he kept the pen cap, searched it, and seized its contents because, "upon further investigation and looking at it," he saw a baggie hanging from the pen cap, and based on previous experiences of finding narcotics in baggies in pen caps, he suspected that this baggie contained narcotics. Tr. p. 11, 18, 47-48, 51. Officer Price also admitted numerous times that he could not tell what was inside the baggie when he first observed it hanging out of the pen cap. Id. at 18, 48. In fact, Officer Price realized that the baggie contained cocaine only upon closer examination. Id. at 11. Thus, like in Harris and Jackson where the illicit nature of the pill bottles was not immediately apparent to the investigating officers, here the contraband nature of the contents of the pen cap was not immediately apparent to Officer Price. As a result, the discovery of the cocaine violated Clanton's right to be free from unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment, and the trial court erred in admitting the cocaine into evidence. Thus, Clanton's conviction cannot stand.

“We conclude that defendant's detention at the scene of the traffic stop was lawful and did not constitute a de facto arrest. Defendant was placed in the back seat of a patrol vehicle without handcuffs after the police observed him leaving a residence subject to a search warrant, and they observed his furtive movements and those of the driver.” People v. Binion, 2012 NY Slip Op 7801, 100 A.D.3d 1514, 954 N.Y.S.2d 369 (4th Dept. 2012).

Defendant was handcuffed when he was stopped for five minutes until he attempted to flee. That was not an arrest and the time was not unreasonable. United States v. Lesane, 498 Fed. Appx. 363 (4th Cir. 2012).

Defendant drove down a street with police cars not lit up because they just arrived to an unknown problem. His car wouldn’t fit through the cars already there and the officer yelled at him to stop. The officer tapped on the window, and defendant rolled it down, and the officer could smell alcohol. That justified the stop. Ward v. State, 2012 Ark. App. 649, 2012 Ark. App. LEXIS 768 (November 14, 2012).*

Trial court erred in not applying the totality of circumstances standard to the conduct of the police during the search. Officers knocked at the door and got no answer, so they pushed the door open and saw a lit candle, so they entered to blow it out, seeing contraband. Remanded per curiam. State v. Washington, 2012 La. LEXIS 3083 (November 16, 2012)*:

The Louisiana and Federal constitutions prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures. State v. Lee, 05-2098, p. 14 (La. 1/16/08), 976 So.2d 109, 122; see U.S. Const. amend. IV and La. Const. art. I, § 5. Therefore, the pivotal question in this case is whether the police officers acted reasonably in the following series of events: 1) entering the front yard of a residence with an open front door and standing at the door; 2) announcing their presence and asking if anyone was inside; 3) hearing no response to their announcement, further pushing the door open; 4) viewing lit candles inside; 5) then entering the residence to extinguish the candles to prevent a fire; and 6) seizing contraband the officers viewed while extinguishing the candles. Given only these facts, we might well have found the third action by police of further pushing the door open unreasonable. See Lee, 05-2098 at 14-15, 976 So.2d at 122 ("Warrants ... are generally required to search an individual's home or person, 'unless "the exigencies of the situation" make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.'"). However, as found by the district court, these were not the only facts and circumstances prompting the officers to push the door open further. The district court erred in not considering the totality of the circumstances when ruling on the defendant's motion to suppress drug evidence seized from the residence at the end of the above-described series of events. See State v. Bush, 12-0720, p. 1 (La. 6/1/12), 90 So.3d 395, 396 (describing the standard on motion to suppress for admissibility of evidence seized without a warrant as a "totality of the circumstances" test).