The California Supreme Court held yesterday that an anonymous 911 call about a man waving a gun that put the caller in fear the gun would be used which also gave details was sufficient for police when they corroborated details when they arrived. Public safety permits it. People v. Dolly, 40 Cal. 4th 458 (February 1, 2007):
After balancing the public interest in safety and the individual’s right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law enforcement officers (see People v. Thompson (2006) 38 Cal.4th 811, 827), we determined in Wells that the relative urgency presented by drunk or erratic drivers could justify an investigatory detention based on an anonymous tip despite the absence of corroborating evidence of illegal activity. A tip’s reliability, we observed, need not depend exclusively on its ability to predict the suspect’s future behavior (see, e.g., Alabama v. White (1990) 496 U.S. 325, 332, 110 L. Ed. 2d 301 (White)) or the officer’s ability to corroborate present illegal activity (see, e.g., People v. Butler (2003) 111 Cal.App.4th 150, 162). Rather, the tip’s reliability depends upon an assessment of “the totality of the circumstances in a given case.” (Wells, supra, 38 Cal.4th at p. 1088; accord, U.S. v. Perkins (4th Cir. 2003) 363 F.3d 317, 325 [“A rigid rule demanding the presence of predictive information is thus unjustified by White and J. L., and it would be wholly inconsistent with the flexible nature of reasonable suspicion analysis”].)
Accordingly, Wells relied on the totality of the circumstances in distinguishing J. L. We explained first that a report of a possibly intoxicated driver weaving all over the roadway posed “a far more grave and immediate risk to the public than a report of mere passive gun possession.” (Wells, supra, 38 Cal.4th at p. 1087.) “‘[A]n anonymous report of an erratic or drunk driver on the highway presents a qualitatively different level of danger, and concomitantly greater urgency for prompt action. In the case of a concealed gun, the possession itself might be legal, and the police could, in any event, surreptitiously observe the individual for a reasonable period of time without running the risk of death or injury with every passing moment. An officer in pursuit of a reportedly drunk driver on a freeway does not enjoy such a luxury.’ ” (Id. at p. 1086, quoting State v. Boyea (Vt. 2000) 171 Vt. 401, 765 A.2d 862, 867.)
We said next that “doubts regarding the tipster’s reliability and sincerity are significantly reduced in the setting of a phoned-in report regarding a contemporaneous event of reckless driving presumably viewed by the caller. Instances of harassment presumably would be quite rare.” (Wells, supra, 38 Cal.4th at p. 1087.) Indeed, “the relatively precise and accurate description given by the tipster in the present case regarding the vehicle type, color, location, and direction of travel, all confirmed by the investigating officer within minutes of receiving the report, enhanced the reliability of the tip.” (Id. at p. 1088.) Based on that level of detail and the officer’s ability to corroborate it, we inferred that the observation of reckless driving must have come from a passing motorist. (Ibid.) In light of the tip’s detailed and contemporaneous description, the officer’s ability promptly to corroborate its innocent details, and the danger posed by a motorist under the influence, we were “convinced” in Wells “that the officer’s traffic stop was justified by reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.” (Ibid.)
Consideration of these (and other factors) convinces us that the detention should be upheld in this case.
Complaint stated a cause of action for race based DNA sampling when police were looking for a serial rapist. Plaintiff’s allegations concerning the encounter at his home, however, were insufficient to state a claim for relief that the encounter was nothing more than consensual with him free to refuse. Monroe v. City of Charlottesville, 471 F. Supp. 2d 657 (W.D. Va. 2007).
Arrest warrant justifed entry under Payton and others present could not insist on a search warrant. State v. Wallace, 950
So. 2d 135 (2d Cir. 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.
