In Ohio, the state lost an appeal of whether an illegal search occurred that led to a forfeiture. In the trial court, the state sought relief from the judgment under Rule 60, essentially rearguing the case, because the property sought return of (a vehicle and cash) was not contraband per se. State v. Loza-Gonzalez, 2007 Ohio 1044, 2007 Ohio App. LEXIS 970 (6th Dist. March 9, 2007):
[*P12] In the state’s second assignment of error, it argues that the trial court exceeded its authority in ordering contraband returned to appellee. Contraband is any property, in and of itself illegal to possess, or property determined to be contraband based on its connection to a criminal offense. See R.C. 2901.01(A)(13)(a)-(k), 2933.43(C). There is nothing inherently illegal in possessing a vehicle or cash. See One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania (1965), 380 U.S. 693, 699 (“There is nothing even remotely criminal in possessing an automobile.”); State v. Roberts (1995), 102 Ohio App.3d 514, 518 (“Mere possession of cash is not unlawful.”). Thus, the property is not contraband per se.
[*P13] The property is also not derivative contraband because the state failed to demonstrate that the property had any connection to a criminal offense. See e.g. State v. Ali (1997), 119 Ohio App.3d 766, 770 (“Because the $ 15,000 was never linked to an underlying criminal offense, we cannot agree that the state proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the money was contraband.”). Furthermore, the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure extend to a forfeiture proceeding. See One 1958 Plymouth Sedan, 380 U.S. at 696.
[*P14] The state cannot circuitously use the illegally seized property to establish the underlying criminal act, in order to support forfeiture of the illegally seized property. In this case, the state offered no other evidence (independent of the illegal search) to link the property to a criminal act and support forfeiture. See contra United States v. Eighty-Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars (C.A.8, 1982), 671 F.2d 293, 296-297 (upheld forfeiture of cash arising from an illegal search since the state established, through independent evidence, that the cash was used to commit a crime).
[*P15] Without independent evidence, the state alternatively argues that a vehicle, modified with a hidden storage compartment, is inherently criminal based on the prevalence of such modifications for use in the drug trade. However, the presence of a secret compartment, without more, does not make possession of the vehicle criminal. See e.g. United States v. Maltais (C.A.8, 2005), 403 F.3d 550, 554-555 (the secret compartment was just one fact among a “constellation of facts” providing the officer with reasonable, articulable suspicion to detain the driver); People v. Conception (1997), 655 N.Y.S.2d 921, 925-926 (the compartment, a recognized car trap which could only be opened by the performance of a complex protocol, could enhance the arresting officer’s “predicate for arrest” where it was “supported by something more than mere guesswork”).
Officer taking possession of a child from his parent under a guardianship order was entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established that this action violated the constitution. Burch v. Moore, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16832 (S.D. W.Va. March 8, 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.
