The Coast Guard boarded defendant’s ship to look for safety issues under 14 U.S.C. § 89. It was not found to be pretextual. United States v. Overseas Shipholding Group, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95813 (E.D. Tex. October 4, 2006):
The Coast Guard’s exercise of its duties to carry out a vessel inspection in a safe and proper manner is considered to be a limited intrusion that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 579, 588, 103 S.Ct. 2573, 77 L.Ed.2d 22 (1983). While the inspections conducted by the Coast Guard are administrative in nature, they are not covered by the general administrative search exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement. United States v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 24 F. Supp.2d 155, 164 (D.P.R. 1997); see also Michigan v. Clifford, 464 U.S. 287, 291-92, 104 S. Ct. 641, 78 L. Ed. 2d 477 (1984); Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 511-12, 98 S. Ct. 1942, 56 L. Ed. 2d 486 (1978). Rather, Coast Guard searches are covered under the rubric of searches on the high seas or in United States territorial waters and fall under the regulatory rubric directed to safety inspections and ships. That criminal activity might be suspected is immaterial to the issue of the reasonableness vel non of the search. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 24 F.Supp.2d at 164; see United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. at 584.
. . .
It is difficult to conceive how the Coast Guard’s actions in this matter amount to a pretext search. The Coast Guard has statutory authority to board a vessel “for the prevention, detection, and suppression of violations of laws of the United States”. 14 U.S.C. § 89(a). The Coast Guard had clear authority to board the Pacific Ruby to examine equipment and review documents relating to discharges and other issues relating to the pollution equipment on board. Their purpose in boarding the vessel was to, in fact, examine that equipment and those related documents. The fact that they informed the Captain and crew that they were there to conduct a Non-Priority Vessel (NPV) Safety Exam or a “Random” Non-Priority Vessel (NPV) Safety Exam does not, in this Court’s view, make this search or inspection pre-textual. In addition, there is no authority for the proposition that the Coast Guard had a duty to disclose any of their suspicions that a crew member may have committed a crime before boarding and conducting an inspection under the relevant statutes. It is conceivable that such a disclosure, in some circumstances, could cause repercussions for the individuals on board the vessel who provided information to the Coast Guard.
Plaintiff denied consent and his girlfriend by affidavit denied she consented. The officers only made a swearing match, so their summary judgment is denied. Sledge v. Stoldt, 480 F. Supp. 2d 530 (D. Conn. 2007).*
Officer had cause to stop the plaintiff for a minor traffic violation and then arrest for DUI. Gregorie v. Goins, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24133 (D. S.C. March 29, 2007).*
Court appointed guardian ad litem has absolute immunity under § 1983 for a Fourth Amendment claim. Jenkins v. Whitley, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23952 (E.D. Tenn. March 27, 2007).*
Officers who never observed alleged use of excessive force could not be sued under § 1983 for failing to intercede. Cosby v. City of White Plains, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23770 (S.D. N.Y. February 9, 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.
