A reasonable belief of the consenter’s authority to permit entry to look for a fugitive is all that is required. The police are not expected or required to ask for proof of authority. Authority to enter looking for a fugitive is different that authority to conduct a general search. State v. Strader, 593 Pa. 421, 931 A.2d 630 (2007):
As Judge Klein notes, people in another’s home may or may not have much authority, for homeowners may or may not spell out for guests or people happening to be in their home exactly what authority they have. However, the question is what is apparent, not actual, and the reasonableness of the police belief in that apparent authority. From the perspective of police at the time of the encounter here, it was reasonable to conclude Thornton had the authority to control who entered the apartment. Thornton said he was in charge and he let police in. The totality of circumstances in each case controls whether police have a reasonable belief the person consenting to the search has authority to do so. We decline to adopt Judge Klein’s reasoning, which would require proof of actual authority, which is not the rule the United States Supreme Court has established.
We also note it is more reasonable for police to believe the person has the authority to grant consent to search for a fugitive; they did not seek to search through the homeowner’s private papers and other materials. As with any suppression claim, it is the information known at the time, not that learned after the fact, that controls the legal analysis. A search for a fugitive is generally short in duration, as it is hard to hide a person from view, particularly inside a smaller residence like an apartment. Entry here did not involve a search for drugs, even though probable cause for drugs became apparent after entry.
Police securing the premises pending getting a search warrant by having the locks changed and keeping the keys was reasonable under the circumstances. United States v. Tyson, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71637 (W.D. N.Y. September 26, 2007).*
Search of wrong house led to a jury verdict of $1. Motion for new trial is denied because the jury’s verdict is supported by the evidence. Smith v. City of Jacksonville, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71730 (E.D. Ark. September 25, 2007).*
Informant’s tip was corroborated by a controlled buy. United States v. Hart, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71599 (E.D. Mo. September 25, 2007).*
Directing a person to sit in a police car is not a de facto arrest, but it is governed by the reasonableness standard. Here, there was reasonable suspicion to have plaintiff sit in the car because of allegations he was involved in a domestic disturbance. Rakun v. Kendall County, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72061 (W.D. Tex. September 24, 2007).*
Defendant’s lane changes in traffic and his broken windshield justified his stop. State v. Collins, 2007 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 758 (September 27, 2007).*
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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.
