The fact it took five days to bring the defendant before a USMJ when he was arrested at sea hundreds of miles from the nearest one is not unnecessary delay. Here, the defendant was flown to Tampa. His confession was valid because there was no oppressive questioning in the interim. United States v. Lizarraga-Caceres, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45107 (M.D. Fla. June 8, 2007):
In determining whether the government violated [F.R. Crim. P.] Rule 5(a), courts look at the reason(s) for the delay. Purvis, 768 F.2d at 1239; Rogers, 330 F.2d at 538. In Purvis, the court looked at such factors as the distance from the place of arrest to the nearest United States territory, any reasons for delay during the transport, the treatment of the defendant during transport and whether the defendant was improperly interrogated. Purvis, at 1239. In considering the “outer limits” of any necessary delay during which an interrogation will be permissible, the court in Rogers considered the availability of a committing magistrate, the length of delay before the prisoner is taken before the magistrate, and the police purpose or justification, if any, for the delay. Rogers, at 538. When a judicial officer is available and detention is prolonged for the purpose of eliciting a confession through interrogation, Rule 5(a) is violated. Id. (citing Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449 (1957)).
In Purvis, the defendants were on a boat 350 miles from Key West when the boat was boarded and drugs were found. Purvis, 768 F. at 1239. Five days elapsed from the time the defendants were arrested at sea to the time they were brought before a federal magistrate. Id. at 1238-39. In concluding there was no unnecessary delay under Rule 5, the court determined that a large part of the delay was necessitated by the fact that the arrests were made at a significant distance from port and a portion of the delay was necessitated by the brief unavailability of the magistrate. Id. Additionally, the court noted that the defendants had not been mistreated during the delay, they were fed regularly, given mattresses to sleep on, and had access to bathrooms. Id. Further, there was no evidence of any improper or coercive interrogations; rather, the defendants were read their rights and interrogated by Coast Guard authorities after the arrest. Id.
Traffic offense justified stop, and defendant consented to a patdown. Before the patdown could occur, defendant apparently tossed baggies of crack to the ground, and it was abandoned property. United States v. Tisdale, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44781 (D. Kan. June 19, 2007).*
The date decal on an out of state license plate was partially blocked by a license plate bracket, and that gave cause for a stop under Kansas law. The officer could see it after the stop, and he told the defendant that he was not getting a ticket, but the officer asked for consent and got it. The consent was valid. United States v. Orduna-Martinez, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45156 (D. Kan. May 2, 2007)*:
Upon receiving the information from dispatch, Trooper Nicholas approached defendant who was standing at the back of the Explorer, gave him a warning ticket, returned all of defendant’s paperwork, and told him, “Have a safe trip.” Both started walking toward their respective vehicles. Trooper Nicholas then asked, “Hey, can I ask you some questions?” When defendant returned to the back of the Explorer, Trooper Nicholas motioned toward the tires and wheels in the back of the Explorer and asked, “Those fit a Honda? Can I look at them?” The defendant replied, “Yeah,” and opened the back of the Explorer. The trooper then asked, “You don’t have any drugs, guns, money or stuff like that,” and upon receiving a negative response from defendant, asked for and received consent to search.
During Trooper Nicholas’ examination of the tires, wheels and vehicle, he became convinced that there was a false compartment in the vehicle and called for backup. Back-up officers later arrived and the officers discovered cocaine in the concealed compartment. Defendant and the passenger were then arrested and defendant was given a Miranda card written in Spanish, which he said he understood. Defendant was not asked any questions at that time.
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"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, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"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]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"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)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
