On a stop and arrest with probable cause for odor of marijuana, officer had informant information that contraband would be hidden in the dashboard. This justified the officer looking into the air conditioning vent with a flashlight. Then, a hidden compartment in the dash was found with a gun hidden there. The entire search was justified under the automobile exception. United States v. Luna-Ilarraza, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86955 (D. P.R. November 27, 2007):
However, Officer Berrios’ additional reason for looking into the air conditioning vent, that a confidential informant had stated that there was a compartment in the dashboard which contained contraband, combined with her own knowledge and under the totality of the circumstances, also supplied probable cause for the search. The confidential informant described the vehicle in make and color, gave its licence plate number and location, and specified that there was marijuana in the trunk and contraband in the dashboard area. Having stopped the car described by the informant after spotting it at the identified location, verified that the licence plate matched the one given by the informant and discovered marijuana in the trunk, just as the informant had asserted, those portions of the information were corroborated as accurate. “In testing the sufficiency of probable cause for an officer’s action even without a warrant, we have held that he may rely upon information received through an informant, rather than upon his direct observations, so long as the informant’s statement is reasonably corroborated by other matters within the officer’s knowledge.” Jones v. U.S., 362 U.S. 257, 269 (1960) (overruled on other grounds by U.S. v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83 (1980)). Even if the officers did not know the identity of the informant, under the totality of the circumstances, including the corroboration of virtually every aspect of the tip, it was reasonable for them to believe that contraband was being housed within the air conditioning vents and gauge cluster in the passenger area of the vehicle. See U.S. v. Sandoval-Espana, 459 F.Supp.2d 121 (D.R.I. 2006). In sum, the totality of the circumstances of this case establish the probable cause necessary to sustain the warrantless search of both the trunk and the gauge cluster of defendant’s car under the automobile exception.
Lastly, the fact that the weapon was within a compartment does not invalidate the search. It has been clearly established by the Supreme Court that the privacy interest in closed containers within a car yields to the broad scope of an automobile search. California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 574 (1991). “[T]he law recognizes that a vehicle search under this exception may encompass all areas of the vehicle in which the suspected contraband is likely to be found.” U.S. v. Staula, 80 F.3d 596, 602 (1st Cir. 1996) (citing United States v. Maguire, 918 F.2d 254, 260 (1st Cir.1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 950 (1991)).
“An officer’s observation of a vehicle straying out of its lane multiple times over a short distance creates reasonable suspicion that the driver violated [the state statute] so long as the strays could not be explained by adverse physical conditions such as the state of the road, the weather, or the conduct of law enforcement.” United States v. Egan, 256 Fed. Appx. 191 (10th Cir. 2007)* (unpublished).
Even a bad seizure of cash can still lead to a forfeiture if the government can find untainted evidence to prove it. United States v. $172,760.00 in United States Funds, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86974 (M.D. Ga. November 27, 2007):
Evidence obtained in the course of a search that violates the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible in a civil forfeiture proceeding. One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693, 702 (1965). However, it is well-established that an illegally seized asset can still be the subject of a civil forfeiture proceeding if the Government can meet its burden of proof with untainted evidence. See, e.g., United States v. Monkey, 725 F.2d 1007, 1012 (5th Cir. 1984); ….
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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.
