Plaintiff’s car was suspected of being at the scene of several burglaries in 2002, and the police decided, after consultation with supervisors, to plant a GPS with a cellphone transmitter on the car. Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment claim failed under Knotts. Morton v. Nassau County Police Dep’t, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87559 (E.D. N.Y. November 27, 2007):
“A person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 281 (1983). The use of the GPS Device did not permit the discovery of any information that could not have obtained by following an automobile traveling on public roads, either physically or through visual surveillance (e.g. through the use of cameras or from a helicopter), conduct that neither requires a warrant nor implicates Fourth Amendment rights. “Nothing in the Fourth Amendment prohibit[s] the police from augmenting the sensory faculties bestowed upon them at birth with such enhancement as science and technology afford[s] them.” Id. at 282.
In Knotts, law enforcement officials placed a tracking device, or “beeper,” inside a barrel of chloroform which was sold to an individual suspected of manufacturing illegal drugs. After the suspect loaded the barrel containing the beeper into his vehicle, the police were able to track his movements. The Court in Knotts held that the law enforcement officials’ use of the beeper did not violate the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights, because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the movements of an automobile on public roadways, and that the placement of the device did not constitute an unreasonable seizure. Id. Accord United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 996 (7th Cir. 2007); United States v. Gbemisola, 225 F.3d 753, 758-759 (D.C. Cir. 2000); … Alexandre v. N.Y. City Taxi & Limousine Comm’n, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73642 (S.D.N.Y. September 28, 2007); ….
Plaintiff attempts to distinguish the instant case from Knotts on the basis that the beeper in Knotts was not actually attached to the suspect’s car, but rather loaded by the suspect into his own car, whereas here, the GPS Device was attached to Plaintiff’s car by the Defendants. This minor distinction is not sufficient to remove the instant case from the ambit of Knotts.
Thus, the use of the GPS Device was not an unreasonable search or seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and Plaintiff’s claims pursuant to the Fourth Amendment are dismissed.
Dog alert during a stop was sufficient to justify prolonging the detention. United States v. Aispuro-Medina, 256 Fed. Appx. 215 (10th Cir. 2007) (unpublished).*
Plaintiff’s mental health seizure was justified by probable cause to believe she was a danger to herself. Morrison v. Bd. of Trs. of Green Twp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87817 (S.D. Ohio November 29, 2007).*
“There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a license plate number which is displayed in plain view, and it is not illegal for a police officer to use license plate information to conduct a check on the vehicle’s ownership and registration.” The vehicle came back unregistered. United States v. King, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87629 (D. Del. November 29, 2007).*
“After careful consideration of Detective Boos’ testimony and a careful review of the application for a search warrant, I am convinced that the affidavit contained no false or misleading information, and that Detective Boos did not knowingly or intentionally or with reckless disregard for the truth include any false statements or omit any necessary or material information in the application for the search warrant. Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. at 171-72. Thus, I will deny the motion to suppress.” United States v. Charles, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87647 (E.D. Pa. November 29, 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.
