A contractor doing remodeling to a Bearded Dragon online business told the City about health code violations on the premises after he walked off the job. A health department officer walked through with permission and noted no violations. Later, an administrative warrant was obtained by the buildings department off the complaint of the contractor. “Even assuming the [contractor’] report turned out to be fabricated, the Amended Complaint does not plausibly allege that any Defendant knowingly or recklessly included false statements in the warrant application that were necessary to the probable cause determination.” Fleming v. Town of Oxford, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74106 (D. Mass. Mar. 31, 2026).*
The government got the credibility call on whether the search warrant was executed after 6 am. Also, that’s a rule violation, not a constitutional one. Defendant’s asserted errors are inconsequential. United States v. Jones, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9643 (8th Cir. Apr. 3, 2026).*
Conversing on a cell phone with a co-conspirator was nexus to the cell phone. United States v. Rodriguez, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73075 (D. Mass. Apr. 2, 2026).*
Plaintiff was arrested for murder of his wife, but the case was dismissed without prejudice. He claimed a civil Franks violation. There was still arguable probable cause even with that which was omitted. No claim. Morphew v. Chaffee Cty., 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9820 (10th Cir. Apr. 6, 2026).*
Officers had preexisting knowledge of defendant being involved in a drug operation before the traffic stop, so there already was reasonable suspicion. United States v. Deaver, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72540 (N.D. Tex. Apr. 2, 2026).*
In Ohio, at least, a drug dog can sniff any car during any traffic stop as long as it doesn’t prolong it at all. Here, defendant was stopped at a convenience car, and he refused commands to stay with the car and walked into the stop accusing the police of stopping him because he was black. He prolonged the stop. State v. Craft, 2026-Ohio-1205 (7th Dist. Apr. 2, 2026).*
“We agree with Kimberley that the Apple search warrant was insufficiently particularized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. However, we hold that, in the circumstances of this case, the Government has shown the good faith exception to the warrant requirement applies and thus the evidence from the Apple account did not need to be suppressed and excluded from the evidence presented at trial.” United States v. Tew, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9804 (10th Cir. Apr. 6, 2026).*
Police entered, secured the premises, then sought a warrant. Defendant claims that defense counsel was ineffective for not getting bodycam videos that could have shown others entering the house while police were waiting and planted the drugs is incredible. United States v. Pickett, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73295 (W.D. Va. Apr. 1, 2026).*
Nervous and evasive behavior is a “pertinent factor in determining reasonable suspicion” on the totality (Wardlow) but more is required. Here, defendant was in a high crime area and gave conflicting stories about his criminal history. This was all reasonable suspicion. United States v. Kendrix, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74016 (W.D. La. Mar. 18, 2026).*
In the Fulton County ballot seizure case, the court refuses to vacate its order for a Rule 41(g) hearing on return of the records. Pitts v. United States, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74137 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 20, 2026):
Posted inRule 41(g) / Return of property|Comments Off on N.D.Ga.: Court refuses to vacate Rule 41(g) evidentiary hearing on return of Fulton County ballots
This search warrant didn’t go stale in the three days between the controlled buy and its execution. United States v. Lawrence, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9780 (6th Cir. Apr. 3, 2026).*
The BAC blood draw statute includes drawing and testing, and that’s imported into the warrant. Testing could also be done. State v. Allen, 2026 Utah App. LEXIS 105 (Apr. 2, 2026).*
Plaintiff was served with a writ of ejectment under state law which he can’t challenge in federal court. He has a state remedy. Lee v. Hitt, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73760 (D.S.C. Mar. 13, 2026).*
2254 petitioner is barred from a Fourth Amendment claim because he litigated it below, he just disagrees with how it was done, and there was no “unconscionable breakdown” in state procedure. Smith v. Warden, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73815 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 3, 2026).*
There was probable cause for search of an Uber for drugs based on police surveillance. Defendant’s mention of supposed gaps in surveillance don’t mitigate the probable cause. “Their lack of an airtight case against the defendant, at the time of the search, does not bar a finding of probable cause.” United States v. Gagot, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73881 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 3, 2026).*
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging a search warrant that clearly would have failed on the merits. Vice v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72196 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 2, 2026).*
The government sought a DNA warrant to compare defendant to firearms, and there was probable cause connecting him to the firearm police were looking for. The firearm warrant never mentioned his DNA so there’s an independent source. United States v. Watson, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9597 (7th Cir. Apr. 2, 2026).*
The Guardian: ‘Creepy surveillance’: why some cities are shutting down Flock cameras amid privacy concerns by George Chidi (“In recent city council meetings in Dunwoody, Georgia, a spokesman for Flock Safety, a Georgia-based firm that provides automated license plate readers, has found himself in the hot seat again. For two months running, some residents of the affluent north Atlanta suburb in the region’s tech corridor have been demanding an end to the city’s contract with the security firm, which has drawn similar protest from California to New York. Between a recent change in terms of service that removed a line assuring customers that the company does not own and will not sell customer data – done to eliminate redundancy, Flock says – and videos circulating of hackers showing how they had obtained access to live video feeds from Flock cameras, Dunwoody residents and some members of the city council have been in in revolt.”)
The Supreme Court has recognized that overbroad or indefinite subpoenas can have Fourth Amendment implications. United States v. Baass, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73143, at *16 n.9 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 4, 2026) (§ 49.04 n.6):
The warrant included the application for it as defining its scope and it was attached. That limited the time and subject matter of the search. People v. Stauch, 2026 COA 22 (Apr. 2, 2026).
The inventory of defendant’s car was justified because it was valuable and could be a theft target. It was apparent to the trial court that the inventory was not a ruse for a criminal search. United States v. Riner, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9575 (9th Cir. Apr. 2, 2026).*
Defendant had an improperly licensed vehicle he illegally parked. When questioned by the police about it, he got a cigarette out of the car and walked off. The inventory was valid, and this was also an abandonment. State v. Garcia, 2026 Conn. Super. LEXIS 560 (Mar. 26, 2026).*
The cybertip to NCMEC did not lead to an unreasonable search even if the police exceeded the private search. And, even if it did, there was plenty of independent probable cause for the search warrant. United States v. Perez, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72190 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 2, 2026).*
The affidavit for warrant here was thin, but not bare bones boilerplate. There was something to go on, and it’s enough for the good faith exception to apply. The district court erred in suppressing. United States v. Weaver, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9614 (5th Cir. Apr. 2, 2026)*:
Cell phone search suppressed for lack of nexus. Merely having one isn’t enough. Everybody has one. United States v. Lacosta-Franco, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72244 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 2, 2026):
Defendant was pulled over and officers could see the magazine to a gun. They asked if he had a gun in the car and he said “I don’t admit to that.” He said it was home. He was a known felon. It was reasonable to believe that the presence of the magazine indicated the presence of the gun, too. The protective sweep of the car was justified. State v. Franklin, 2026-Ohio-1189 (8th Dist. Apr. 8, 2026).
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not pursuing a motion to suppress. Defendant only articulates one fact ignoring all the other evidence that it was all reasonable, and with a warrant. United States v. Jefferson, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71985 (S.D. Ohio Apr. 1, 2026).*
The force used to remove plaintiff from his car was justified. This started out as a traffic stop but escalated into obstruction of the officer. Barker v. City of Weatherford ex rel. Weatherford Police Dep’t, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9562 (10th Cir. Apr. 2, 2026).*
Passwords near a computer seen in a probation search around defendant’s domestic partner’s computer was reasonable suspicion defendant could have too. United States v. Berry, 24-2337 (8th Cir. April 3, 2026).*
Mandamus doesn’t lie to remedy petitioner’s constitutional claims. He has motions to suppress filed and handled, and he can appeal them. State ex rel. Alridge v. Sandusky Cty. Court of Common Pleas, 2026 Ohio App. LEXIS 1214 (6th Dist. Mar. 31, 2026).*
A prosecutor’s office can order a vehicle held onto as criminal evidence until they’re done with it without violating clearly established law. Rose v. Sapienza, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71775 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 30, 2026).*
Email in search warrant returns are admissible as statements of a party opponent via Fed. R. Evid. 802(d)(2)(D). United States v. Guanghua, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71871 (D.D.C. Mar. 29, 2026).*
“In 2018, the City of St. Louis passed Ordinance 70794, which created the Preserve and Rehabilitate Program.” “Broadly speaking, the Complaint highlights—at a minimum—gross mismanagement under the Preserve and Rehabilitate Program. But when focusing specifically on the purported conduct of each named Defendant, there is not enough to state a claim. [¶] First, JAG4 fails to plead that its property was seized by Watson or anyone else. At no point does JAG4 assert that anyone took possession of its property or that Watson himself did anything to directly interfere with its property interests. Instead, JAG4 merely alleges that a notice was issued, it performed work on its own property, and the City never followed up even after the work was not completed.” Therefore, no Fourth Amendment seizure. Jag4, LLC v. City of St. Louis, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71862 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 31, 2026).*
The requirement that a person sign in before speaking at a local body’s meeting is not a violation of the First or Fourth Amendments. Sgaggio v. Carlos, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71704 (D. Colo. Feb. 23, 2026).*
The court sides with the officer that the window tint was illegally too dark as the basis for the stop. The report didn’t say “illegal tint.” United States v. Jackson, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71696 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 9, 2026).*
Probable cause for a drug dealer’s cell phone is shown because it’s now commonly a “tool of the trade.” United States v. Jones, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9643 (8th Cir. April 3, 2026):
Plaintiff sued a public housing project which has sophisticated video surveillance but only in common areas. The court holds that it doesn’t rise to the level of the mosaic theory and is more akin to a pole camera. Pondexter-Moore v. D.C. Hous. Auth., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69893 (D.D.C. Mar. 31, 2026).
This commercial vehicle inspection resulted in reasonable suspicion the driver was impaired. State v. Welch, 2026 Iowa App. LEXIS 281 (Apr. 1, 2026).*
This search claim that the citizen informant was unpreserved in the trial court, but, what little there is in the record means the issue is going nowhere. Citizen informants are almost always presumptively reliable. State v. Allen, 2026 Iowa App. LEXIS 314 (Apr. 1, 2026).*
There’s no hard and fast rule that a person with a weapon needs to be warned before deadly force will be used. Rosete v. City of Homestead, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70901 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 12, 2026).*
Defendant was stopped walking and surrounded by three officers shining flashlights in his face, and all without reasonable suspicion. Only then did they discover a telling bulge from a weapon. Suppressed. United States v. Wilson, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69861 (D.D.C. Mar. 31, 2026).
Seizure of an older Android phone was justified by the warrant. Searcy v. State, 2026 Ind. App. LEXIS 99 (Mar. 30, 2026).*
A controlled buy from defendant’s house within the previous three days was probable cause to believe more would be there. United States v. Mooneyham, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69109 (E.D. Tenn. Feb. 2, 2026).*
No particular dog alert is required for the Fourth Amendment. It’s what the totality shows. United States v. Conchas-Mancilla, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 9312 (5th Cir. Mar. 31, 2026).*
Failure to cross-examine a trial witness about a potential Fourth Amendment violation is not ineffective assistance of counsel because a jury trial is not the place to resolve a search claim. Kawleski v. United States, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70540 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 30, 2026).
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not better challenging the searches of his car. Counsel raised all the issues that were apparent. Sharp v. United States, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68788 (N.D. Ohio Mar. 31, 2026).*
The trial court erred in finding the officer’s unrefuted testimony defendant crossed the centerline justifying the stop. It was raining and night and the video wasn’t clear on anything, thus inclusive. State v. Caughenbaugh, 2026-Ohio-1153 (5th Dist. Mar. 30, 2026).*
“Locked containers” on the premises includes a safe. United States v. Isa, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70216 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2026).*
Failure to better confront the good faith exception before conviction wasn’t ineffective assistance. Ramirez-Prado v. United States, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68941 (S.D. Ind. Mar. 31, 2026):
"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.”
"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.
