North Dakota holds that a defendant’s consulting with an attorney after the police entered without consent purged the taint of the primary illegality. State v. Graf, 2006 ND 196, 721 N.W.2d 381 (September 13, 2006):
The district court said there was a short temporal proximity between law enforcement’s unlawful entry into the apartment and the time when officers began asking Parisien for consent to search the apartment. Although noting some courts have found a short temporal proximity resulted in a tainted consent to search, the district court nevertheless said that intervening circumstances may be sufficient to break the causal connection between unlawful conduct and consent. The crux of the court’s rationale for deciding Parisien’s consent purged law enforcement’s prior unlawful entry into the apartment is the court’s conclusion that Parisien’s consultation with an attorney before signing the consent to search was an intervening circumstance sufficient to purge the taint of the prior illegality.
. . .
Here, law enforcement permitted Parisien to consult with his mother and an attorney before he consented to the search of the apartment. According to one officer, the attorney spoke with the officer before speaking with Parisien, and the attorney spoke with Parisien for about ten to fifteen minutes in the hallway. According to Parisien, the attorney “took [Parisien] down the hall to the front steps to talk with [Parisien],” and Parisien “told [the attorney] what was going on [and the attorney] told [Parisien] to sign the consent to search because [the attorney] felt they were going to get the warrant anyway.” The attorney also served as a witness when Parisien signed the written consent to search the apartment. The nature of Parisien’s private consultation with an attorney is the crucial factor in this case. Under these circumstances, we conclude Parisien’s consent to search the apartment was voluntary and his consultation with an attorney was a sufficient intervening circumstance to purge the taint of the prior unlawful entry into the apartment. Moreover, on this record, we cannot say that the unlawful police activity was so flagrant as to require suppression of the seized evidence. We therefore conclude the district court did not err in denying the motion to suppress the evidence found in the apartment.
Defendant consented to further search of premises after parole officers entered with arrest warrant, and entry into bedroom was proper. State v. Young, 943 So. 2d 1118 (La. App. 1st Cir. September 15, 2006)* (This case has plenty of evidence of other potential felons on the premises and a protective sweep being required, but this is never discussed by the court.).
N.D. Ohio denies MSJ for officers in two shooting cases on the same day because of questions of fact over the justification for the shooting. Tomazic v. City of Cleveland, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65685 (N.D. Ohio September 14, 2006); Neace v. Perry Twp., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65678 (N.D. Ohio September 14, 2006).*
E.D. Tenn. grants MSJ for officers on the use of a dog that attacked plaintiff, finding that plaintiff was warned before the dog was released. Baker v. Snyder, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65872 (E.D. Tenn. September 14, 2006).*
E.D. La. holds that police had PC to arrest based on citizens identifying plaintiff from enhanced surveillance video of a store robbery run on New Orleans television. Gaines v. Asaro, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65784 (E.D. La. September 1, 2006).*
S.D. Ind. finds PC for plaintiff’s arrest, and grants officer’s MSJ. Hubble v. Rice, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65900 (S.D. Ind. August 29, 2006).*
"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.
