Defendant’s motorcycle was towed when he was stopped for fumbling as a novice rider without insurance or a motorcycle endorsement. He declined consent to search compartments on the bike, but the officer elected the tow under SOP of the Springfield MO PD. The inventory complied with the procedure despite the lack of an inventory record because what was found led to seizure of money and then a search warrant for his motel room producing drugs. All along, he was a suspect in a drug conspiracy, which the officer knew, but he didn’t have probable cause for that until the seizure and application for the warrant. United States v. Nevatt, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 17187 (8th Cir. June 1, 2020):
We have recognized that “inventory searches need not be conducted in a totally mechanical, all or nothing fashion.” Smith, 715 F.3d at 1117 (internal quotation omitted). As a result, “[e]ven if police fail to adhere to standardized procedures, the search is nevertheless reasonable provided it is not a pretext for an investigatory search.” Taylor, 636 F.3d at 465. “There must be something else; something to suggest the police raised the inventory-search banner in an after-the-fact attempt to justify a simple investigatory search for incriminating evidence.” Smith, 715 F.3d at 1117–18 (internal quotations omitted). In other words, “[s]omething else must be present to suggest that the police were engaging in their criminal investigatory function, not their caretaking function, in searching the defendant’s vehicle.” Taylor, 636 F.3d at 465 (internal quotation omitted).
. . .
“Even if [Officer Cooney] fail[ed] to adhere to standardized procedures, the search is nevertheless reasonable provided it is not a pretext for an investigatory search.” Taylor, 636 F.3d at 465. Nevatt argues that the following facts show pretext: the motorcycle was lawfully parked alongside the road, the vehicle was not a hazard to other drivers, the vehicle was not at risk of being stolen or vandalized, he was released at the scene, he was not under the influence, he was not cited for the lack of proper licensing or insurance, and he was not found to have any drugs in his possession. But the district court credited Officer Cooney’s version of events. Detective Copley requested that Officer Cooney conduct the traffic stop based on a belief that Nevatt was impaired. Although Nevatt was not impaired, a records check revealed that Nevatt lacked the proper endorsement and had no insurance. Officer Cooney decided to tow the motorcycle because it was in the street and was a safety hazard. Because Nevatt lacked insurance, he could not lawfully drive the motorcycle. Officer Cooney did write Nevatt a citation for operating the motorcycle without the proper license endorsement. Officer Cooney did not consult with the detectives before deciding to have Nevatt’s vehicle towed and searched. With these facts, the district court concluded that the inventory search was not a pretext for an investigatory search. We affirm this conclusion.
"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.
