Defendant’s computer was seized and searched for child pornography. After the initial warrant, the government applied for permission to reexamine the computer media. The second look was justified, and the good faith exception applies because it involves reliance on a court order. United States v. Doub, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79235 (S.D. Cal. Apr. 25, 2025).
Whether Stone applies in a 2255 is an open question in the Second Circuit. That doesn’t have to be decided because the Fourth Amendment claim loses on the merits. Pierce v. United States, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79270 (W.D.N.Y. Apr. 25, 2025).*
2241 petitioner’s claim that the Fourth Amendment wasn’t complied with for bringing him to court isn’t a ground for relief. In re Lumpkin, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 10034 (11th Cir. Apr. 25, 2025).*
The officer’s finding marijuana in the passenger compartment supported a search of the trunk. United States v. Contreras, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79325 (S.D. Tex. Apr. 25, 2025).*
The use of a CI for a search warrant creates no confrontation issue. Williams v. State, 2025 Ark. App. 252, 2025 Ark. App. LEXIS 254 (Apr. 23, 2025).
It was appellate counsel’s choice to not pursue defendant’s search claim on appeal because it was futile, therefore no ineffective assistance. United States v. Martin, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 77946 (N.D. Ohio Apr. 23, 2025).*
On plain error review: “In this case, three investigatory steps preceded the search of Bey’s residence. First, Inspector Sherman had reasonable suspicion to pull the package from the mail stream for further investigation. Second, Maty’s alert during the blind lineup established probable cause to obtain a search warrant for the package. Third, the discovery of fentanyl in the package provided probable cause to obtain an anticipatory search warrant for Bey’s residence. Because all three steps complied with the Fourth Amendment, Bey’s argument fails.” United States v. Bey, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 10024, at 3-4 (6th Cir. Apr. 25, 2025).
WaPo: U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent by Ariana Eunjung Cha, Caitlin Gilbert and Fenit Nirappil (“Administration health officials walked back a plan to register people with autism after criticism from scientists, privacy experts and advocates for people with autism.” [It worked so well for the Nazis in Germany.]):
A “bare bones” affidavit for search warrant in a drug case attested to over Facetime with no real support showed “A lackadaisical approach to constitutional safeguards demonstrates a disregard for the judicial system.” Motion to suppress granted; no good faith exception here. United States v. Weaver, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 77779 (N.D. Miss. Apr. 22, 2025):
The Superior Court of San Francisco imposes electronic monitoring as a condition of pretrial release. Because it’s essentially a contract between the defendant and court, it’s consent to EM for release. It also does not violate state separation of powers. Conditions of release are a core judicial function. Simon v. City & Cty. of S.F., 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9657 (9th Cir. Apr. 23, 2025) (2-1).
Public hospital ER staff’s “routine inventory” of belongings of an accident victim was a private search that found methamphetamine. State v. Swaringen, 2025 S.C. App. LEXIS 30 (Apr. 23, 2025).*
Property seized for a criminal case can’t be returned while the case is ongoing. In re Search of 7319 Crow Canyon Ave., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78036 (D. Nev. Apr. 23, 2025);* In re Search of A 2017 Black Dodge Charger, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78044 (D. Nev. Apr. 23, 2025).*
Striking the alleged offending paragraph from the affidavit for warrant still leaves probable cause. Therefore, no ineffective assistance on this Franks claim. Ward v. United States, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 77988 (W.D. Mich. Apr. 24, 2025).*
Defendant doesn’t challenge the stop or the frisk, just the seizure of the baggie of drugs that the officer felt in his “watch pocket.” The officer could tell what it was by its feel. Affirmed. United States v. Williams, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9621 (3d Cir. Apr. 23, 2025).*
Defendant’s cell phone search in Malaysia isn’t shown to be a search by the U.S. Government, even though the phone was sent to NYC for prosecution. The delay in the return wasn’t unreasonable. United States v. Hiya, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76609 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 21, 2025).
The police were sufficiently involved in the private search of defendant’s motorcycle saddlebag at work that it qualifies as a state search. People v. Tomasello, 2025 NY Slip Op 50570(U), 2025 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2514 (Erie Co. Apr. 2, 2025).*
Plaintiff was at a Texas fitness center with her child when police in tactical gear showed up to execute a DNA warrant from Louisiana, taking her into custody and removing her to a police station instead of just taking the DNA sample. They get qualified immunity because plaintiff can’t point to a case in point. Bass v. Jackson, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76786 (E.D. Tex. Mar. 25, 2025).* (This isn’t going in the supplement because: (a) it’s qualified immunity [which needs to be done away with, and this is one reason why], and (b) it’s just wrong [one shouldn’t need a case exactly on point when it’s intuitively just bad]. She can’t even move to suppress in a criminal case because she hasn’t been charged.]
Federal habeas, here § 2241, can’t be used in place of a pretrial motion to suppress. Poulson v. Ulbricht, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76512 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 6, 2025), adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75519 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 21, 2025):
“Przychocki alleges that defendants Kearns, Grimm, and Schill violated her Fourth Amendment rights by surveilling her property from the street to identify code violations. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. A government action is a ‘search’ only if it intrudes upon an area where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy. … Surveillance from a public street, even for a lengthy period of time, is not a search because it is not reasonable to expect privacy in what is plainly visible to the public. Id. (camera surveillance of home from a public place did not violate Fourth Amendment). Przychocki affirmatively alleges that defendants inspected her property from a public street, so her Fourth Amendment claim fails as a matter of law.” Przychocki v. Kearns, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76246 (W.D. Wis. Apr. 21, 2025).*
The affidavit for warrant was based on probable cause, and, even if not, it was good enough for the good faith exception. United States v. Jennings, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9544 (4th Cir. Apr. 22, 2025).*
“Defendant was seized when Officer Oyana placed his hand on Defendant’s arm and asked for Defendant’s identification.” United States v. Jackson, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75902 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 22, 2025).*
Defendant’s traffic stop was unreasonably extended without reasonable suspicion. “The Magistrate Judge could see ‘no objectively logical path of deduction that le[d] to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity’ at the Rodriguez moment. Id. at 2. In coming to this conclusion, the Magistrate Judge considered ‘the totality of the circumstances that existed both before the stop and during the initial eleven minutes of the stop-Sanchez’s nervousness and previous presence in high crime areas.’ Id. at 1-2 (citing United States v. Monsivais, 848 F.3d 353, 363 (5th Cir. 2017)). Because Officer Gonzalez did not have reasonable suspicion that a crime other than the traffic infraction had been, was being, or was about to be committed, the Magistrate Judge concluded that Officer Gonzalez could not prolong the traffic stop to wait for the K-9 unit to arrive and perform the free-air sniff. Id. at 2. The Magistrate Judge therefore found that the seizure violated Sanchez’s rights under the Fourth Amendment, and recommended that the evidence obtained therefrom, including the handgun found after the K-9 alerted to the presence of drugs in the car, be suppressed. Id.” Adopted. Essentially, the government sought a divide-and-conquer approach to reasonable suspicion on the totality. It just wasn’t there. United States v. Sanchez, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75942 (E.D. Tex. Apr. 22, 2025).*
Posted inReasonable suspicion|Comments Off on E.D.Tex.: Gov’t divide-and-conquer RS effort rejected
Downloading data from a planted GPS device violated no reasonable expectation of privacy. McNeely v. Loeschner, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9537 (9th Cir. Apr. 22, 2025). The facts of the planted device are below: McNeely v. City of Sparks, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85647 (D. Nev. May 13, 2024).*
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in information in a police database, so one’s name can be run. Brown v. Thornell, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75494 (D. Ariz. Mar. 11, 2025).*
This court previously held in 2001 that the exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to sentencing. Here it doesn’t apply to Miranda violations at sentencing either. United States v. Fowler, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9514 (10th Cir. Apr. 22, 2025).*
There was enough of a factual dispute for a jury to find that the force was excessive. Summary judgment properly denied. Est. of Harmon v. Salt Lake City, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9512 (10th Cir. Apr. 22, 2025).* Same for shooting of a pet dog. Love v. Grashorn, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9515 (10th Cir. Apr. 22, 2025).*
A confusing case presented from both sides, a cautionary tale: “this appeal is a mess.” Cave v. Valenti, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9405 (7th Cir. Apr. 21, 2025):
Wired: How to Protect Yourself From Phone Searches at the US Border by Lily Hay Newman & Matt Burgess (“Customs and Border Protection has broad authority to search travelers’ devices when they cross into the United States. Here’s what you can do to protect your digital life while at the US border.”)
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Defendant was indicted for possession of drugs in a storage unit, but drugs and cash were also found in his house. That can come in under 404(b). United States v. Harris, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75696 (W.D. La. Apr. 21, 2025).
This case involves alleged Fourth Amendment violations as a result of one obtaining a California falconry license. It is on remand from Stavrianoudakis v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., 108 F.4th 1128 (9th Cir. 2024). The state is in the process of amending the regulations, so a stay is granted. Stavrianoudakis v. United States Dep’t of Fish, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75639 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 18, 2025).*
Even if the statement in the affidavit for warrant was false, it wasn’t material. United States v. Lee, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75564 (W.D. Pa. Apr. 21, 2025).*
2254 petitioner’s Fourth Amendment claim was presented to the state courts and can’t be relitigated here. Brown v. Thornell, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75494 (D. Ariz. Mar. 11, 2025).*
Squatters have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the property they’ve appropriated. Lewis v. Blakeslee, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75568 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 21, 2025).
In a written order denying an arrest warrant of a male victim of an alleged sexual assault by a female, the judge’s comments were offensive and he’s removed. In re Hanson, 2025 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 47 (Apr. 18, 2025),* also noted in Legal Profession Blog’s Magistrate Removed From Office.
“What Larry Anthany experienced amid the chaos the Springfield police encountered upon arriving at the Greer’s home was far from an obvious violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable seizure. At the very least-and even though he bears the burden of showing Officers Johnson and Valenti are not entitled to the defense of qualified immunity-Larry Anthany has not pointed us to a case that clearly establishes his right to be free from forcible, temporary detainment when he confronted police officers responding to a volatile situation with a baseball bat and then told the officers that he wanted to be released so he could go fight his sister’s boyfriend. We know of no case clearly informing the officers that their actions violated the Fourth Amendment. [¶] Quite the opposite. Our case law provides that officers may detain a person to ensure officer safety or the safety of others, so long as the infringement on the person’s liberty is proportionate to the safety concern.” Cave v. Valenti, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9405 (7th Cir. Apr. 21, 2025).*
Defendant’s backyard is curtilage, and the entry suppressed. United States v. Ringleb, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75030 (D.N.M. Apr. 18, 2025).
The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) Police Department conducted an entry under the basic lease agreement that permitted “‘a duly authorized CMHA agent, employee, or representative’ to enter his apartment to perform maintenance and conduct inspections. Absent emergencies, the lease required CMHA to provide St. John with 48-hour notice before entering his unit.” The officers get qualified immunity for their entry under the lease agreement. St. John v. Cuyahoga Metro. Hous. Auth., 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9351 (6th Cir. Apr. 18, 2025).*
Defendant’s traffic stop for not signaling coming out of an alley was objectively reasonable. Reasonable suspicion developed to extend the stop. United States v. O’Brien, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74972 (D. Idaho Apr. 18, 2025).*
Petitioner brings seven claims in a successor petition, including a Fourth Amendment claim. None of them satisfy the successor rule. In re Boswell, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9278 (5th Cir. Apr. 18, 2025).*
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on D.N.M.: Backyard is curtilage
In an excessive force civil rights prosecution, evidence of training on use of force was relevant and, here, admitted for a limited purpose. “So Martin’s testimony was relevant to willfulness, and the Court’s instructions—instructions Defendant and the Government jointly proposed—made clear that training standards do not inform the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard.” United States v. Williams, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73996 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 18, 2025).
In an excessive force case, the Fifth Circuit finds a near unpublished case not part of the “robust consensus of persuasive authority” and reverses the qualified immunity determination. Still, it leaves open revival of the claims after discovery. Nevarez v. Dorris, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9267 (5th Cir. Apr. 18, 2025).*
Plaintiff prisoner’s claim about the alleged excessive use of restraints during his transport was an Eighth Amendment claim, not a Fourth. Lucas v. Quiros, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74089 (D. Conn. Apr. 18, 2025).*
Posted inAdmissibility of evidence, Excessive force|Comments Off on M.D.Fla.: In civil rights prosecution, 4A training information admitted for willfulness, not to prove a constitutional violation
While the question is close here, the protective sweep of defendant’s house during a search warrant was reasonable on the totality. Essentially, the search warrant doesn’t define the scope of a justified protective sweep. “[T]he Fourth Amendment permits law enforcement officers to conduct a protective sweep of a residence incident to an arrest when they possess a reasonable belief, based on specific and articulable facts, that the area to be swept harbors an individual who may pose a danger. Pruneda, 518 F.3d at 603 (citing Buie, 494 U.S. at 334); Walsh, 299 F.3d at 733).” United States v. Conroy, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74909 (N.D. Iowa Apr. 18, 2025).
Defendant changed lawyers two weeks before the original trial date, and pretrial proceedings were extended. No motion to suppress was filed. On appeal, he challenges scope of search as revealed at trial. The search was for weapons and ammunition. Some of the places searched wouldn’t hide a gun, but could have held ammunition. On the merits of the search claim, he’d have lost if a motion to suppress had been made. United States v. Jacobs, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9272 (7th Cir. Apr. 18, 2025).*
Defense counsel at trial couldn’t be ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress where inevitable discovery applies. State v. Lively, 2025 Del. Super. LEXIS 194 (Apr. 16, 2025).*
Defendant’s motion for new trial in her fraud case is denied. One claim is defense counsel’s failure to move to suppress a ring binder of information that came in at trial to help prove fraud. It was properly seized under the documents warrant because it was logically a place information could be found of where the defrauded money went. United States v. Fiore, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74801 (D. Nev. Apr. 18, 2025). The two opening paragraphs, and then to the Fourth Amendment claim:
Fifteen months to review a cell phone search “was accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. Although a review period of fifteen months is ‘certainly not brief,’ it was not unreasonably long considering ‘the challenges of searching ESI from electronic devices’ and the Government’s multiple attempts to extract the data in a reviewable format. United States v. Daskal, 676 F. Supp. 3d 153, 178-79 (E.D.N.Y. 2023) (finding that a review period of 23 months was reasonable). Moreover, courts in this Circuit regularly find that similarly lengthy review periods are reasonable. …” United States v. Fofanah, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74575 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 18, 2025).
Smell of marijuana from defendant’s car was probable cause for an automobile exception search. United States v. Warfield, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73725 (W.D. La. Apr. 1, 2025),* adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72831 (W.D. La. Apr. 16, 2025).*
No Franks hearing: “This time, though, Hitchcock misreads the affidavit. It did not purport to state that [Officer] Jousma had seen the drugs. It stated only that Jousma ‘observed Hitchcock do what appeared to be a hand to hand drug transaction.’” Probable cause was shown. United States v. Hitchcock, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9252 (6th Cir. Apr. 17, 2025).*
"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.
