Defendant’s vehicle was stopped solely because of its make and color with no other justification, and thus lacking reasonable suspicion. People v. Mitchell, 2025 NYLJ LEXIS 261 (Queens Co. Jan. 22, 2025).*
The use of force here on a food deliverer was objectively reasonable. Walker v. Thibault, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1560 (2d Cir. Jan. 24, 2025).*
No ineffective assistance on failure to follow through with a Franks challenge that would have been unsuccessful for lack of materiality and prejudice. United States v. Kukoyi, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1557 (2d Cir. Jan. 24, 2025).*
Defendant was lawfully arrested for felon in possession after admitting he had a gun in his car. The inventory that followed was reasonable. United States v. Staats, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11840 (N.D. Ohio Jan. 23, 2025).*
Even if the officers (mis)handled the drugs during the search, they’d still come into evidence at trial. United States v. McDonald, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11844 (N.D. Ohio Jan. 22, 2025).
The trial court suppressed this cell phone search as overbroad and the good faith exception didn’t apply. The state appealed then confessed the trial court was right. People v. Burns, 2025 Mich. App. LEXIS 529 (Jan. 22, 2025).*
Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment privacy claim about a conversation in the police station that a police officer listened to was properly denied. Reed v. Swanson, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1295 (6th Cir. Jan. 21, 2025).*
There was reasonable suspicion to extend the traffic stop based on the totality of the circumstances, including one appearing under the influence of drugs and their nervousness and failure to make eye contact and their prior drug offense histories. State v. Rose, 2025-Ohio-143 (4th Dist. Jan. 9, 2025).*
The seizure of defendant’s safe was with probable cause. Getting a warrant to search it five days later was reasonable. United States v. Grundy, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1526 (6th Cir. Jan. 22, 2025).*
The totality of circumstances showed probable cause for search warrants, even with the misstatement about positive identification. Other factors supported probable cause, such as witness descriptions, defendant’s relationship with the victim, his movements captured on surveillance footage, and his efforts to establish an alibi. Commonwealth v. Kimmel, 2025 PA Super 18 (Jan. 24, 2025).*
The officer did not stop and seize defendant because defendant stopped on his own. Their encounter thereafter was by consent. State v. Edmonson, 2025-Ohio-176 (5th Dist. Jan. 23, 2025).*
Defendant’s Franks challenge here fails for lack of materiality. United States v. White, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12006 (W.D. Ky. Jan. 23, 2025).*
There was probable cause for the search warrant of defendant’s house. United States v. Woodard, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11846 (N.D. Ohio Jan. 23, 2025).*
Defendant succeeded in his Franks challenge on misleading statements about the CI as an observer rather than participant in the crime and the affidavit lacked corroborating investigative facts and omitted information about W1’s lies. All this was material to the probable cause finding. Suppression insures fairness in the process. People of the V.I. v. Osorio, 2025 VI SUPER 3, 2025 V.I. LEXIS 1 (Super. Ct. Jan. 22, 2025).
On this sparse record, it can’t be said that this 2255 petitioner’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim was frivolous. Remanded. United States v. McNeil, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1376 (4th Cir. Jan. 22, 2025).*
The officers are entitled to qualified immunity. One officer’s approach to check on plaintiff was reasonable under the community-caretaking exception. The inventory search of the car before towing it was lawful and conducted in good faith according to department policy. He consented to leaving his property with the police, so there was no unlawful seizure. The officers had probable cause to believe he stole the license plate, so seeking an arrest warrant was lawful. Wells v. Fuentes, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1371 (4th Cir. Jan. 22, 2025).*
Defendant deleting his email account to avoid a search warrant supported an obstruction conviction. United States v. Diaz, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1459 (9th Cir. Jan. 23, 2025).
Defendant was stopped in a high crime area without reasonable suspicion. There was no indication of a hand-to-hand transaction. United States v. Reyes, No. 24-cr-01992-JES, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11553 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 22, 2025).*
Whether defendant could raise Fourth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel in a motion to withdraw his plea here is a moot point because he wouldn’t succeed on a Fourth Amendment claim. “With probable cause to believe some crime existed before searching Magruder, as was patently the case here, the FBI agents could stop and search Magruder and his backpack immediately before formally arresting him and were not required to charge Magruder with the same offense that supported the initial probable cause.” United States v. Magruder, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1265 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 21, 2025).*
Calandra revisited [and I haven’t seen it since Calandra]: Exclusionary rule doesn’t apply before grand juries. United States v. Jones, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11132 (D. Nev. Jan. 21, 2025).
The search warrant was based on two controlled buys plus the CI’s information. Even if the latter was erroneous, the former was sufficient. United States v. Haskins, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1232 (7th Cir. Jan. 21, 2025).*
Defendant was walking behind closed businesses at 1:30 am with a shovel over his shoulder. When stopped by the officer he became belligerent and said he knew his Second Amendment rights. His frenzied actions where he was added up to reasonable suspicion. State v. McKenzie, 2025-Ohio-150 (5th Dist. Jan. 21, 2025).*
Defendant’s 2254 chain of custody argument conflates admissibility of evidence and the Fourth Amendment, and it’s denied as an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. United States v. Kramer, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9802 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 21, 2025).*
This jail strip search under the jail’s policy for safety purposes was reasonable. United States v. Sutton, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10974 (N.D. Iowa Jan. 22, 2025).* Not the countervailing considerations:
Here, there was the intervening circumstance of an arrest warrant. There was also probable cause. United States v. Howell, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10557 (W.D. Wash. Jan. 21, 2025)*:
Even if the officers failed to properly announce themselves and even if the defendants’ actions exacerbated the possibility of a dangerous confrontation, Ancheta’s action, the use of his gun, was an intervening cause of the deadly force. The defendants escalated the force that they applied in response to the force with which he resisted. The situation requiring them to use deadly force was not primarily of their own making. Plaintiff’s argument that for the first time, there was a fact question over who fired the first shot was waived because Ancheta did not raise it below. Ancheta v. Jones, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1280 (7th Cir. Jan. 21, 2025).*
Defendant’s second motion to suppress is filed too late. So it could be taken out of time, it needed to show need and prejudice. Need might be there, but it’s not addressed, and the statement of what would be shown is conclusory and tells the court nothing about the merits. Essentially just that defense counsel needs to file it. United States v. Stevenson, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10088 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 21, 2025).*
Police responded to a home invasion call. Defendant lived there and consented to a search of his backpack. That produced a firearm without a serial number, and that led to a search warrant for his place. That warrant was issued on probable cause. United States v. Perez, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9862 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 21, 2025).*
Police did a “hit and hold” on defendant’s house without a warrant, a tactic reserved for emergencies. This was not, but it was an isolated act of negligence so the exclusionary rule will not be applied. United States v. Walker, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9855 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 21, 2025):
Posted inExclusionary rule|Comments Off on E.D.Pa.: Warrantless “emergency” entry without an emergency violated 4A but no suppression for isolated negligent act
The anonymous report about a man threatening others in Queens adequately described defendant but it provided nothing to show that there was a crime in the offing. The stop and search was without reasonable suspicion. “On this record, it is clear that the officers lacked an objectively reasonable basis to conclude that Burvick was ‘presently armed and dangerous’ at the moment when, over four minutes into their encounter, Vanzanten finally decided to pat down Burvick’s legs and search inside Burvick’s pockets without his consent. Each of the government’s proffered justifications for the frisk are addressed in turn below.” United States v. Burvick, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9527 (E.D.N.Y. Jan. 17, 2025).
Defendant seeks to preclude admission of a “white binding agent” seized under a warrant from trial, but cites nothing in support. It comes in subject to cross examination. It’s relevant. United States v. Taylor, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9729 (D. Conn. Jan. 20, 2025).*
There was probable cause defendant’s truck was in the District of Delaware when the search warrant for it was issued. The warrant isn’t overbroad, and the good faith exception would apply. United States v. Morrison, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10138 (D. Del. Jan. 21, 2025).*
A patdown of a juvenile found with gang members being taken to his caregiver was reasonable for safety purposes under the community caretaking function. Commonwealth v. Demos D., 105 Mass. App. Ct. 193 (Jan. 17, 2025).
Reasonable suspicion not required to run a LPN. State v. Miller, 2025-Ohio-141 (3d Dist. Jan. 21, 2025).* [This seems really settled, but it keeps coming up.]
The court of appeals can decide inevitable discovery on a different theory than the district court did, even if the government didn’t argue it. United States v. Perez, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1223 (10th Cir. Jan. 17, 2025).
Sec. 702 FISA searches require a warrant for U.S. persons. United States v. Hasbajrami, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 238018 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 2, 2024), filed with CISO and unsealed Jan. 21, 2025), on remand from United States v. Hasbajrami, 945 F.3d 641 (2d Cir. 2019):
Compelling defendant to unlock his phone was a testimonial act under Hubbell, and it had to be suppressed. (Deciding the Fifth Amendment claim moots need to decide the Fourth Amendment claim.) United States v. Brown, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1219 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 17, 2025):
Denying knowledge of the car involved was a lack of standing. United States v. Powers, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 237574 (M.D. Fla. Dec. 18, 2024), adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8322 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 16, 2025).
“The totality of the information in the affidavit provides a substantial basis to find that evidence of drug trafficking would be found at the two residences.” Defendants had standing in their residence that they temporarily vacated while HVAC repairs were being done. United States v. Evans, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 237583 (E.D. Tenn. Nov. 26, 2024),* adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8686 (E.D. Tenn. Jan. 16, 2025).*
The officer had reasonable suspicion to make this stop, and independent reasonable suspicion for continuing it developed. United States v. Smith, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9274 (S.D. Ohio Jan. 17, 2025).*
Where defendant was convicted of making threats over the internet to a Congressman, a two year computer monitoring condition was reasonable and did not violate the First and Fourth Amendment. United States v. Hall, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1109 (3d Cir. Jan. 17, 2025).
Fact questions remain whether the officer was justified in shooting a 22 pound dog that was wagging his tail and otherwise seemed friendly during a DV call. Brown v. Burmaster, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1129 (5th Cir. Jan. 17, 2025).*
Plaintiff inmate doesn’t yet state a Fourth Amendment claim for his prison search and strip search. “Allegations of a ‘very aggressive’ pat down do not plausibly state an excessive force claim.” Wilson-Walker v. Gambone, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9041 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 17, 2025).*
This email search warrant was particular as to the account to be searched and limited by time. United States v. Jama, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9102 (D. Minn. Jan. 17, 2025).*
It was not improper for the PO to turn defendant’s phone over to the FBI to search it when it was already lawfully seized. “This is not a stalking horse case.” The delay was not unreasonable. United States v. Fuller, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 237560 (D. Ariz. Dec. 30, 2024), adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7662 (D. Ariz. Jan. 14, 2025).
Plaintiff’s false arrest claim for domestic violence against police officers fails because there was probable cause. Shepard v. Does, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8884 (D.N.J. Jan. 16, 2025).*
Petitioner’s CoA request is almost summarily denied under Stone v. Powell. Diaz v. Lumpkin, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1084 (5th Cir. Jan. 16, 2025).*
The officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment in defendant’s arrest, and, even if they did, the specific act wasn’t clearly established at the time. Cantu v. Austin Police Dep’t, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 1127 (5th Cir. Jan. 17, 2025).*
Professor Robert Leider, who writes in both constitutional law and criminal law, passed along these comments on the Supreme Court’s recent oral argument in an excessive force case and I thought readers might be interested in them:
For scholars of both criminal law and federal courts, the Supreme Court’s oral argument yesterday in Barnes v. Felix will be noteworthy. The Supreme Court appears dangerously close to sleepwalking into a major revision of police self-defense law. For federal courts scholars, meanwhile, yesterday’s oral argument stood as a painful reminder of how the Court has corrupted certiorari review by detaching itself from deciding actual cases.
Posted inExcessive force, SCOTUS|Comments Off on Reason: “the Supreme Court’s oral argument yesterday in Barnes v. Felix will be noteworthy.”
by John Wesley Hall Criminal Defense Lawyer and Search and seizure law consultant Little Rock, Arkansas Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"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]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!” ---Pepé Le Pew
"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.
