A prison security official’s accessing a potential visitor’s social media accounts to determine whether the visitor is some kind of security threat doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Lawrence v. Zack, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161377 (D. Conn. Sep. 9, 2024).
Petitioner had his full and fair opportunity to litigate his Fourth Amendment claim in state court and he did. He can’t retry it now in a 2254. Knox v. Dixon, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161769 (N.D. Fla. Aug. 20, 2024).*
In light of Bruen, it wasn’t unlawful for defendant to have a firearm on his person, so his detention and arrest for that was unreasonable. United States v. Shepherd, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161714 (E.D. Cal. Sep. 6, 2024).*
“‘The exclusionary rule applies in federal court to violations of the Indian Civil Rights Act’s Fourth Amendment counterpart.’” United States v. Jefferson, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161843 (W.D. Wash. Sep. 9, 2024) (recognizing rule).*
Based on circuit authority, a stop and arrest for fictitious tags justifies a search incident on the driver. United States v. Jones, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161352 (E.D. Wis. Sep. 9, 2024), quoting United States v. Travis, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 29386 (7th Cir. Nov. 3, 2023).
“[T]he Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule does not apply to the seizure of records from a third-party bank, even where the Government engages in chicanery to acquire those records. See, e.g, United States v. Nolan-Cooper, 155 F.3d 221, 229 (3d Cir. 1998) (discussing United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 735 (1980)).” Bush-Rowland v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161384 (D.N.J. Sep. 9, 2024).*
Defendant’s improper left turn was justification for his stop that led to reasonable suspicion she was under the influence. State v. Sugden, 2024-Ohio-4442 (9th Dist. Sep. 9, 2024).*
“First, on a fundamental level, Bressi’s Franks request is insufficiently specific for this Court to reconstruct the warrants. Bressi does not point to a specific search warrant he claims was obtained through Agent O’Malley’s intentional or reckless disregard for the truth. He only gestures vaguely to the ‘warrant applications,’ the ‘initial warrant applications,’ and ‘later warrants.’ As Bressi’s subsequent filing demonstrates, many search warrants were executed in this case. Bressi himself seems to acknowledge that his allegations apply to different sections of different warrants. But this Court cannot apply the Franks test by babbling about falsehoods in the abstract.” United States v. Bressi, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161286 (M.D. Pa. Sep. 6, 2024).
“The Affidavit provided all necessary facts to establish probable cause to support a warrant to search Mr. Pope’s cell phone.” It was associated with him and the crime by wiretaps and location information at the time of offenses. United States v. Pope, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161322 (W.D. Pa. Sep. 9, 2024).*
“We decline to rule on whether the initial removal of the Children violated Parents’ Fourth and Fourteenth amendment rights because Parents failed to raise the issue before the magistrate court.” Children v. Doe (In re Children), 2024 Ida. LEXIS 104 (Sep. 6, 2024).*
LATimes: She endured a traumatic cavity search when visiting a California prison. Now she won a $5.6-million settlement by Terry Castleman (“When Christina Cardenas visited her husband in 2019 at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, she was forced to undergo a traumatic, hours-long cavity search that involved her stripping, being X-rayed and squatting over a mirror, she said. [¶] On Monday, Cardenas’ attorneys announced a $5.6-million settlement of a lawsuit filed against the prison and the hospital system that supervised the search. [¶] ‘There’s no recompense that can fully heal the pain caused by the sexual violation,’ Cardenas said at a news conference Monday.”)
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AP: Ex-officer’s lies led to couple’s death in Houston drug raid, prosecutor tells jurors by Juan A. Lozano (“A former Houston police officer is responsible for the 2019 deaths of a couple during a raid of their home because his lies on a search warrant wrongly portrayed them as dangerous drug dealers, a prosecutor told jurors on Monday. [¶] An attorney for the former officer, Gerald Goines, admitted her client lied to get the search warrant but said his actions do not merit a murder conviction, and placed the blame for the deaths solely on the couple. [¶] Goines is charged with two counts of murder in the January 2019 deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his 58-year-old wife Rhogena Nicholas. Goines has pleaded not guilty.”)
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The state showed nexus to defendant’s iPhone and the crime by known recent calls between the co-conspirators and the victim and the phone being at the scene of the crime. State v. Young, 2024 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 397 (Sep. 6, 2024)* [Defendant also pled it as a Fourteenth Amendment due process claim, but the court took it as a Fourth Amendment claim]:
Plaintiff raised a search issue in her underlying criminal case and lost. Later, she pled nolo and thus could not appeal. That’s final enough for collateral estoppel to apply in her § 1983 case. Harr v. Washington Area Humane Soc’y, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159433 (W.D. Pa. Sep. 5, 2024).
Plaintiff won his jury trial for unreasonable arrest at a fair where he was accused of taking pictures of children, which he wasn’t. All the defendant officer’s motions for directed verdict and JNOV were properly denied. Holmes v. Reddoch, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 22799 (5th Cir. Sep. 6, 2024).*
Defendant’s motion to reconsider pleads a Franks violation, but it fails: excising the challenged information still leaves probable cause. United States v. Butler, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160905 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 6, 2024).*
Defendant raised an equal protection claim about discovery of ShapChat search warrants. Defense counsel stated that an informal survey of defense lawyers handling about 1/4th of the cases in Suffolk County showed that 85% of the warrants were against black defendants and 15% against Hispanics. The trial court granted further discovery under state law and the DA refused. The case was dismissed as a discovery sanction. On appeal, the judgment is affirmed. “We reject the Commonwealth’s view of what types of police investigatory practices are subject to the revised Long equal protection framework. The Long standard applies to alleged discriminatory policing in the investigatory phase of a case. See Robinson-Van Rader, 492 Mass. at 20-21 (‘street-level’ investigations). It encompasses a claim that the police monitored social media accounts based on the target’s race or membership in another protected class.” Commonwealth v. Dilworth, 2024 Mass. LEXIS 348 (Sep. 6, 2024).
Ohio reiterates that a violation of a regulation or statute is not reason for applying the exclusionary rule. It is limited to constitutional violations. State v. Sheckles, 2024-Ohio-3339 (Sept. 6, 2024).*
ShotSpotter alert contributed to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Muhammad, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 158660 (E.D. Cal. Sep. 3, 2024).
“Collier also questions how Raptor alerted, suggesting that its alert was insufficiently ‘profound.’ … Our ‘probable cause inquiry is always fact specific.’ … Every dog is unique, and a dog that smells illicit drugs is not required to communicate with its handler in any specific way. … ‘Dogs alert in many different manners. One dog may alert in one manner while another dog may alert in another manner.’ … The reliability of a dog’s alert, not its manner, is what matters. See Holleman, 743 F.3d at 1156 (‘Fourth Amendment jurisprudence does not require drug dogs to abide by a specific and consistent code in signaling their sniffing of drugs to their handlers.’ …). Based on the record, we conclude that Raptor’s own unique manner of alert reliably signaled the probable presence of illicit drugs.” United States v. Collier, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 22709 (8th Cir. Sep. 6, 2024).
Plaintiff alleges enough to show that the arrest might have been illegal, but many of the people sued aren’t proper parties under her allegations. El-Bey v. Wallace, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160604 (S.D. Ohio Sep. 6, 2024).*
Defendant was stopped for expired tags. The officer found defendant was on probation, so the officer frisked him finding drug pipe. The frisk was reasonable, and that was probable cause. Guam v. Cepeda, 2024 Guam Trial Order LEXIS 153 (Aug. 28, 2024).*
Minor property damage from executing a search warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Carnett v. Chester Cty., 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 22720 (6th Cir. Sep. 5, 2024):
Misidentifying defendant’s cell phone for a search warrant as a Motorola when it was a Samsung is a mistake that can be overlooked. It had the phone number in the warrant and defendant’s pass code opened it. Finally, the good faith exception would save it anyway. United States v. Debevec, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159753 (D.S.D. Sep. 3, 2024).
Petitioner raises four challenges to the search in his case, including failure to raise a Franks issue, but that’s waived by his guilty plea. Strange v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159838 (E.D.N.C. Aug. 5, 2024),* adopted, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159263 (E.D.N.C. Sept. 4, 2024).*
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in jail calls defendant knew were being recorded. United States v. Rivers, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159907 (S.D. Ga. Sep. 5, 2024).*
Defendant’s motion to suppress admitting no knowledge of the facts is denied as speculative. United States v. Lipman, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 158940 (C.D. Cal. Sep. 4, 2024).
“Here, the totality of the circumstances indicates that Agent Oliver had a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity when he conducted the traffic stop of the van. The intersection itself presented evidence of illegal border crossing, namely the frequent fresh footprints just a half mile from the United States-Canada border and the backpack with a price tag in rupees. But location alone did not serve as the basis for Agent Oliver’s suspicion of smuggling.” United States v. Shand, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159443 (D. Minn. Sep. 5, 2024),* adopting 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160581 (D. Minn. July 23, 2024).*
Even the government doesn’t get a “second bite at the apple” on a suppression motion by a motion to reconsider. Parties need to make their arguments and then not come up with something for later if they lose. Here it was whether defendant was even seized. United States v. McElroy, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159560 (S.D. Miss. Sep. 5, 2024).*
Probable cause as to a group of people involved in a protest sweeps too broadly. Ybarra requires probable cause as to individuals. It was not reasonable to believe everyone in this particular group was violating the law. They couldn’t be described as “a unit” of protesters. As to cell phone seizures, there was no individual justification for seizing these phones. The fact there may have been videos or pictures of property description or violence isn’t enough to take all that they did. Dunn v. Does 1-22, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 22544 (8th Cir. Sep. 5, 2024), corrected, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 24778 (8th Cir. Sep. 30, 2024).
The dashcam video wasn’t perfect, but it was corroborative of the officer’s testimony about defendant’s traffic offense that led to the stop. United States v. Torres, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159071 (N.D. W.Va. Sep. 4, 2024).*
The dashcam video corroborated the officer that the window tint was too dark to see in the car at all, and the driver had to be instructed to lower the window. United States v. Goulbourne, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159165 (S.D.N.Y. Sep. 3, 2024).*
Handwritten alterations on the search warrant to match the same subjects as the affidavit were authorized by the issuing magistrate and were valid. And, even if this made it overbroad, it was still valid under the good faith exception. United States v. Taylor, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 158491 (S.D. Ind. Sep. 4, 2024).
“Because it was reasonable to believe that Martinez’s vehicle contained evidence of his drug trafficking offenses, arresting officers could search his vehicle consistent with the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Martinez, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 22407 (9th Cir. Sep. 4, 2024).*
Defendant’s stop was justified for a lane change without signaling, and the vehicle was too heavily tinted, as was apparent from the dashcam video. State v. Daniels, 2024-Ohio-3392 (1st Dist. Sep. 4, 2024).*
Defendant was arrested in a motel room without a warrant for domestic battery, and he battered the arresting officer. It was in “line of duty” for the state battery statute, and his claim it was an unlawful arrest isn’t even reached. Martin v. State, 2024 Ark. App. 402 (Sep. 4, 2024).*
Law360: How To Use Geofence Warrants In A Constitutional Manner by Robert Frommer (“Geofence warrants are powerful tools that let law enforcement identify devices located at a specific location and time based on data users send to Google LLC and other tech companies. But left unchecked, they threaten to empower police to invade the security of millions of Americans. Thankfully, there is a way that geofence warrants can be used in a constitutional manner, if only courts would take it.”)
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The data generated from the GPS attached to defendant as part of his post-conviction supervision can be accessed by law enforcement without a warrant. State v. Thomas, 2024 N.C. App. LEXIS 687 (Sep. 3, 2024).
The Tenth Circuit has made it clear that hearsay is admissible in suppression hearings, even after Crawford, quoting United States v. Lopez-Carillo, 536 F. App’x 762, 768-69 (10th Cir. 2013) (citing United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 172-77 (1974)). United States v. Quintana-Pena, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 156938 (D.N.M. Aug. 30, 2024).*
A panel of the Ninth Circuit held in Sanderlin v. Dwyer, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 22411 (9th Cir. Sep. 4, 2024),* that fact questions remained whether the police actions against plaintiff were retaliatory under the First Amendment at a George Floyd protest. Fact issues also remained on whether shooting plaintiff in the groin with a less than lethal round “was excessive in violation of the Fourth Amendment because (1) Panighetti’s act of firing a projectile at Sanderlin constituted a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, (2) a triable issue of fact existed as to the reasonableness of the force used by Panighetti, and (3) although subsequent legal developments narrowed the scope of seizures under the Fourth Amendment, the right violated was clearly established at the time of the incident.”
The inventory policy here wasn’t followed to remove valuables and let defendant keep them. Instead it appears to be a criminal evidentiary search and stopped when finding a gun and running the serial number and asking if defendant was a felon. Taylor v. State, 2024 Tex. App. LEXIS 6657 (Tex. App. – Amarillo Sep. 3, 2024).
Summary judgment for officers involved in entering plaintiff’s house to arrest him without probable cause at the time is denied. Taylor v. City of Montgomery, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157646 (M.D. Ala. Sep. 3, 2024).*
The officer here observed what he considered a likely hand-to-hand transaction in a car. When defendant was stopped, the officer’s questions were reasonably related to that, and checking a bag in the back seat was reasonably related to officer safety. United States v. Hicks, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157703 (D. Mass. Sep. 3, 2024).*
Defendant’s pretrial release conditions required he not frequent establishments where alcohol was the chief commodity (bars, liquor stores). A casino isn’t it. With the arrest being unlawful, the search of defendant’s car was unjustified. State v. Baldwin, 2024 MT 199 (Sept. 3, 2024).*
"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.
