Officers reasonably believed that the defendant finally figured out that he was under surveillance and his arrest was imminent, so the officers could enter without a warrant to prevent flushing of a half pound of meth. State v. Ruggirello, 341 Mont. 88, 2008 MT 8, 176 P.3d 252 (2008):
[*P22] “Exigent circumstances exist if the situation at hand would cause a reasonable person to believe that prompt action is necessary to prevent … the destruction of relevant evidence … or some other consequence improperly frustrating law enforcement efforts.” Stone, P18. Here, Detective Basnaw had specific and articulable facts which would lead a reasonable person to believe that prompt action was necessary to prevent the destruction of the half-pound of methamphetamine Ruggirello allegedly possessed. Based on information from confidential informants, Detective Basnaw knew that Ruggirello was coming to Montana with methamphetamine, that Ruggirello was aware that police officers were watching him, and that he had asked a third party to help him get rid of the drugs. Detective Basnaw was also given information that the amount of the methamphetamine was one half-pound, and knew that such an amount could be flushed down the toilet in a short period of time. Moreover, Basnaw had witnessed O’Connell and another occupant of the apartment already leave the scene, and their behavior indicated they were aware that police were watching them.
[*P23] These facts, taken together, would lead a reasonable person in Detective Basnaw’s position “to believe that prompt action [was] necessary” to prevent Ruggirello from destroying the methamphetamine he allegedly possessed. Stone, P18. The fact that officers never recovered a full half-pound of methamphetamine, or never witnessed Ruggirello actually destroying drugs, does not alter our conclusion that Basnaw reasonably believed exigent circumstances existed. The question is not whether Basnaw was certain that Ruggirello had a half-pound of methamphetamine and that he was destroying it, but rather whether it was reasonable under the circumstances for Detective Basnaw to believe that Ruggirello had illegal drugs and that prompt action was necessary to prevent him from destroying them. Ruggirello does not challenge on appeal the reliability of the information provided by the confidential informants; therefore, it was indisputably proper for Detective Basnaw to take account of this information in formulating his belief that prompt action was necessary and that exigent circumstances existed.
Comment: This case comes dangerously close to being an officer created exigency. How about they just make their presence known and then use that for an excuse? This leads to swearing matches that the officers will usually win, even when they manipulate the whole thing.
A Sheriff’s deputy’s observations of animals in defendant’s backyard confirmed allegations of mistreatment reported by defendant’s neighbor that brought the officer to defendant’s property. The prevailing harsh weather conditions provided the deputy with a reasonable belief that dogs heard barking in the backyard were in need of immediate aid to prevent their serious injury or death. Likewise, once the officer entered defendant’s backyard and observed the seriously deprived condition of the dogs, he was entitled to respond to the situation by having the dogs immediately seized. Morgan v. State, 289 Ga. App. 209, 656 S.E.2d 857 (2008), prior opinion Morgan v. State, 285 Ga. App. 254, 645 S.E.2d 745 (2007), remanding for further findings.
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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.
