{"id":7180,"date":"2012-05-24T15:03:32","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T15:03:32","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T15:03:32","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=7180","title":{"rendered":"N.D.Ga.: Merely blocking a car doesn’t per se constitute a seizure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under Miller v. Harget<\/a>, 458 F.3d 1251 (11th Cir. 2006), a police car pulling behind defendant\u2019s car did not per se effect a seizure without more, such as lights and officers\u2019 aggressive actions. United States v. Flores-Uriostegui, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71162 (N.D. Ga. May 22, 2012):<\/p>\n

Based on these facts, the Eleventh Circuit held that “[c]onsidering the fact that the first contact between [the suspect] and [the officer] did not occur until [the suspect] lowered the window, the fact that [the officer] pulled up behind [the suspect] and turned on his ‘window lights’ does not demonstrate that [the suspect] was coercively detained.” Id. at 1258.<\/p>\n

The facts here are similar to the relevant circumstances in Miller. In both instances, the officers pulled their marked patrol car behind a suspect’s vehicle in such a way that the suspect could not leave. Unlike the officer in the Miller case, however, Officers Gray and Turman did not turn on their “window lights” or otherwise alert defendants to their presence. Thus, their approach was less intrusive than was the Miller officer’s approach. There is also nothing in the record to suggest that the delay here between the parking of the patrol car and the approach of defendants’ vehicle was anything other than “extremely brief.” Perhaps most important to the Miller court’s analysis was the absence of any display of authority prior to approaching the vehicle. Like the law enforcement official in Miller, Officers Gray and Turman did not draw their guns, give any directions to defendants, or activate their patrol car lights before approaching the vehicle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}