Officers drove past defendant, turned around, stopped, and got out of the car to talk to him, one in front and one to the side. “The act of blocking one’s path to leave is conduct which indicates that a seizure has occurred.” A reasonable person would think he’d been seized, and this was without reasonable suspicion. State v. Goodloe, 2013-Ohio-4934, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 5129 (10th Dist. November 7, 2013)*:
[*P13] The act of blocking one’s path to leave is conduct which indicates that a seizure has occurred. State v. Allen, 9th Dist. No. 02CA0059, 2003-Ohio-2847, ¶ 13; State v. Lewis, 179 Ohio App.3d 159, 2008-Ohio-5805, ¶ 13 (6th Dist.) (seizure occurred when officer blocked defendant’s path to walk away); Guinn (act of blocking defendant’s path into apartment constituted seizure). Compare State v. Swonger, 10th Dist. No. 09AP-1166, 2010-Ohio-4995, ¶ 22 (concluding that no seizure occurred and noting that officers did not attempt to block defendant’s path). Here, not only did one officer stand directly in front of Goodloe, but another officer came up on his side and stood within one or two feet of him. This occurred after the officers pulled up their cruiser right next to Goodloe on the sidewalk and approached him. The presence of two uniformed officers positioned as found by the trial court would communicate to a reasonable person that he was not at liberty to ignore the police and walk away.
[*P14] We also note two other facts that support the trial court’s conclusion that the officers’ show of authority constituted a seizure. First, we note that the officers drove past Goodloe and then turned around, stopped their cruiser close to him, and then approached him as he walked on the sidewalk. See State v. Garcia, 8th Dist. No. 97912, 2012-Ohio-5066, ¶ 24 (noting this fact in its seizure analysis). These facts further indicate that a reasonable person would believe the officers had focused their attention on him and that he was not free to leave or ignore the officers. Similarly, upon approaching Goodloe, the officers asked him about criminal activity and then pointedly asked Goodloe if he had any firearms. The accusatory nature of the questioning also creates an air of authority that could further cause a reasonable person to believe that he was not free to leave and that he had to answer the officer’s questions. State v. Hurt, 2d Dist. No. 14882 (May 5, 1995) (noting that type of questions asked by officer during an encounter could indicate seizure). See also State v. Cook, 2d Dist. No. 20427, 2004-Ohio-4793, ¶ 15 (noting the officer’s inquiry changed from requests for information to commands).
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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.
