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On remand from Kentucky v. King, the Kentucky Supreme Court finds no exigency and suppresses again. The state failed in its burden to show exigency. King v. Commonwealth, 2012 Ky. LEXIS 45 (April 26, 2012):

This case is before this Court on remand from the United States Supreme Court, Kentucky v. King, __ U.S. ___, 131 S. Ct. 1849 (2011), rev'g King v. Commonwealth, 302 S.W.3d 649 (Ky. 2010), to determine whether exigent circumstances existed when police made a warrantless entry into an apartment occupied by Appellant Hollis King. We conclude that the Commonwealth has failed to show circumstances establishing the imminent destruction of evidence. We therefore reverse the original ruling of the circuit court and remand.

. . .

Turning to the question at hand, we conclude that the Commonwealth failed to meet its burden of demonstrating exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless entry. During the suppression hearing, Officer Cobb repeatedly referred to the "possible" destruction of evidence. He stated that he heard people moving inside the apartment, and that this was "the same kind of movements we've heard inside" when other suspects have destroyed evidence. Cobb never articulated the specific sounds he heard which led him to believe that evidence was about to be destroyed.

In fact, the sounds as described at the suppression hearing were indistinguishable from ordinary household sounds, and were consistent with the natural and reasonable result of a knock on the door. Nothing in the record suggests that the sounds officers heard were anything more than the occupants preparing to answer the door.

The police officers' subjective belief that evidence was being (or about to be) destroyed is not supported by the record, and this Court cannot conclude that the belief was objectively reasonable. "[N]o exigency is created simply because there is probable cause to believe that a serious crime has been committed[.]" Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 753 (1984) (citing Payton, 445 U.S. 573). Exigent circumstances do not deal with mere possibilities, and the Commonwealth must show something more than a possibility that evidence is being destroyed to defeat the presumption of an unreasonable search and seizure.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A moderate earthquake has rattled Southern California.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude 4.1 quake struck 8:07 a.m. Saturday. It was centered along the San Andreas Fault near Devore, in San Bernardino County. Some buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles, about 60 miles to the ...

Just because the defendant attempted to elude the police before, there was no exigency to enter a hotel room without a warrant because there was no evidence that the defendant knew the police were tailing him. United States v. Ramirez, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 8451 (8th Cir. April 26, 2012):

"We review the district court's findings of historical fact for clear error, but the ultimate determination of whether the facts as found constitute exigent circumstances is reviewed de novo." United States v. Kuenstler, 325 F.3d 1015, 1021 (8th Cir. 2003). "The analysis of whether [the exigent circumstance] exception to the warrant requirement has been made out is an objective one 'focusing on what a reasonable, experienced police officer would believe.'" Id. at 1021 (quoting In re Sealed Case 96-3167, 153 F.3d 759, 766, 332 U.S. App. D.C. 84 (D.C. Cir. 1998)). "[T]he police bear a heavy burden when attempting to demonstrate an urgent need that might justify warrantless searches or arrests." Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 749-50, 104 S. Ct. 2091, 80 L. Ed. 2d 732 (1984). When the exigency at issue is destruction of evidence, police officers must demonstrate a sufficient basis for an officer to believe that somebody in the residence (or hotel room, in this case) will imminently destroy evidence. United States v. Clement, 854 F.2d 1116, 1119 (8th Cir. 1988).

. . .

Looking then at the remaining two bases for the district court's analysis, the circumstances relied upon by the district court are not exigent. "The urgency that would justify allowing the police officers, rather than a neutral judicial officer, to draw the reasonable inferences supporting this entry is not present in these facts." United States v. Duchi, 906 F.2d 1278, 1282 (8th Cir. 1990). At the time these officers attempted to enter room 220, they reasonably believed that two of the occupants of room 220 possessed heroin in their shoes, and the officers believed that the men had, possibly, attempted to elude the police either to flee themselves, which seems more tenable, or, more tenuously, to destroy the evidence at some point. That the officers tracked the men also does not impact our analysis. There is no evidence supporting the inference that these men knew the police were tracking them at all, which might lend credence to that line of reasoning as it relates to the imminent destruction of evidence. Also, knowledge that drugs were in the room does not suffice to conclude that destruction was imminent.

NORTH BEND, Wash. (AP) — Peter Keller spent eight years carving his hole in the side of the mountain, camouflaging the rugged underground bunker with ferns and sticks and stocking it with a generator and ammunition boxes sealed in Ziploc bags. Suspected in the deaths of his wife, daughter and ...

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Police in Tucson, Ariz., say underwater searches have turned up no sign of a 6-year-old girl who disappeared from her home a week ago.

Lt. Fabian Pacheco said Friday that investigators working on Isabel Mercedes Celis' disappearance spent the night combing through the lake at a ...

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A 200-pound black bear that wandered onto the University of Colorado campus has been relocated to the nearby Rocky Mountains.

State wildlife official Jennifer Churchill said Friday that the male bear was tagged and taken to a remote area of ponderosa pines, oak brush and chokeberry ...

This week we’ve gotten a bunch of publicity which has driven our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project to over 93% funded. Check out the new Cartoon Info-Graphic by our son and daughter Ben & Hope.

If you haven’t been to visit it yet, go to http://smf.me where you can see a video of our farm, photos and description of our project. You can get great rewards including our pastured pork, bacon, hot dogs, sausage, T-shirts, ivory tusks and more.

Please back our project, even if only for a little bit. Help make the butcher shop at Sugar Mountain Farm a reality. We’re almost there!

Thank you!

-Walter

Score one for the family farm:

Under pressure from farming advocates in rural communities, and following a report by The Daily Caller, the Obama administration withdrew a proposed rule Thursday that would have applied child labor laws to family farms.

Critics complained that the regulation would have drastically changed the extent to which children could work on farms owned by family members. The U.S. Department of Labor cited public outcry as the reason for withdrawing the rule.
-DailyCaller.com

Be ever vigilant. Once the government gets their nose under the tent they rarely retreat. Rather they tend to force themselves more and more into control of our private lives. Government’s eyes should be looking outward, not inward at citizens lives.

Warrantless installation of a GPS tracker on defendant’s vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment under Jones, but it wasn’t the cause of defendant’s stop. He was being followed, and committed a traffic offense that led to his stop, and a drug dog was ultimately called in. State v. Adams, 2012 S.C. App. LEXIS 107 (April 25, 2012):

Here, the tracking device was installed while Adams's vehicle was parked in a public parking garage, and the device was used to monitor the vehicle's movements while it was on public streets and highways. Under Jones, the Department's installation of the device on Adams's vehicle and use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements constituted a "search." Therefore, the Department's failure to obtain a warrant made that search unreasonable and resulted in a violation of Adams's constitutional rights. Nevertheless, we must still determine whether that violation required suppression of the drugs seized from Adams's person. For the reasons below, we find it did not.

. . .

Here, Sergeant Blair had probable cause to stop Adams's vehicle because he witnessed Adams commit two traffic violations. The officers acted reasonably in instructing Adams to step out of the vehicle while they waited for a license and registration report. Sergeant Blair was also permitted to walk his drug dog around the vehicle while waiting for the completion of Adams's license and registration check. The first alert occurred a mere five to six minutes after the traffic stop began, and no evidence in the record indicates the drug sniff extended the duration of the stop. Consequently, the officers' conduct up to that point was within constitutional bounds. Whether the drugs were admissible depends upon whether the resulting pat-down complied with Adams's Fourth Amendment rights.

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An unusual flying object came to New York from Washington on Friday — the space shuttle Enterprise.

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Growth in the U.S. economy slowed to 2.2 percent in the first quarter from 3 percent at the end of last year, even as unusually mild winter weather gave a strong boost to consumer spending and car sales, the Commerce Department reported Friday morning.

The growth slowdown primarily was due ...

Applying the “unique” Pennsylvania independence source rule, and pending two years before it was decided, is Commonwealth v. Henderson, 2010 Pa. LEXIS 3074 (April 25, 2010)*:

In the present circumstances, we are unwilling to enforce a "true independence" rule in the absence of police misconduct and on pain of the Commonwealth being forever barred from obtaining non-evanescent evidence connecting Appellant with his crimes. In answer to the specific question presented, we hold that suppression is not required on account of Detective Evans' status as a member of the same police department as Detective Johnson. Rather, in light of the factual circumstances before the Court in both Melendez and Mason, we deem it appropriate to limit the independent police team requirement to situations in which the rule prevents police from exploiting the fruits of their own willful misconduct. Where such malfeasance is not present, we agree with the Superior Court that the Murray standard strikes the appropriate balance between privacy and law enforcement. See Lloyd, 948 A.2d at 881-82. Ultimately, we believe the "twin aims" of Article I, Section 8 — namely, the safeguarding of privacy and enforcement of the probable-cause requirement — may be vindicated best, and most stably, by taking a more conservative approach to the departure this Court has taken from the established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Defendant denied he had a connection to the house at the time of the search, and that indicated that he had no standing. United States v. Sayles, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57596 (S.D. Ind. April 25, 2012).*

Police officers sought a search warrant for defendant’s house to attempt to corroborate an allegation of sexual assault there. They were there to photograph the interior. Once inside, they found marijuana and guns in plain view. They got a second search warrant to seize them, and it was valid. United States v. Bogie, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57831 (D. Vt. April 25, 2012).*

The trial court did not err in crediting defendant’s statement to the officer that he consented and a search warrant was not required. State v. Wright, 2012 Ohio 1809, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 1587 (5th Dist. April 23, 2012).*

Recognizing the right of access to search warrant papers by the target of a search and the press, the state sought impoundment of the records for a brief time until indictment, and this was reasonable under the circumstances. [The case also contains a summary of the law on access to materials.] New England Internet Café v. Clerk of the Superior Court for Criminal Business in Suffolk County, 2012 Mass. LEXIS 343 (April 25, 2012):

In sum, we do not agree with the plaintiffs that the Fourth Amendment requires that the target of government searches be given access to the materials supporting them prior to indictment or that an analysis separate from our recognized "good cause" analysis is required whenever a Fourth Amendment interest is asserted. On the other hand, we do not agree with the Commonwealth that the privacy and property interests protected by the Fourth Amendment's constraint on unreasonable searches are irrelevant to a judge's balancing of the interests of the parties in the circumstances presented here.

With this in mind, we turn to the manner in which the judge balanced the respective interests of the parties before us. After reviewing both the warrant affidavits and the assistant attorney general's affidavit on good cause, the judge concluded that "the contents of the affidavits are unexceptional." As he explained, and we so conclude after our own review of the impounded materials, the affidavits portray a generic gaming experience at a public place of business; they are innocuous and do not expose any secretive investigative techniques or clandestine operations. In light of the judge's findings, and the opportunity he properly extended to the Commonwealth to suggest the redaction of information that it believed was particularly sensitive, the Commonwealth's interest in preserving the secrecy of its ongoing investigation as described in the affidavits, while ordinarily compelling, was considerably diminished. See In re Search Warrants Issued August 29, 1994, 889 F. Supp. 296, 302 (S.D. Ohio 1995) ("redaction of the original affidavit is feasible and would meet the government's concerns regarding any ongoing criminal investigation"). Contrary to the Commonwealth's contention that the judge overlooked critical information pertinent to the good cause analysis, his acknowledgment of potentially sensitive information worthy of redaction reflects an appreciation of the Commonwealth's purported needs, as well as his conclusion that the Commonwealth had failed to demonstrate good cause to shield the documents in their entirety.

On the other side of the scale, the judge properly considered the extent of the materials seized from the plaintiffs, the closure of the plaintiffs' businesses, and the fact that, nearly two and one-half months after the searches had been executed, the plaintiffs had not yet been charged with a crime. There was no abuse of discretion. The judge's order allowing the plaintiffs' emergency motion to modify or terminate the impoundment order is affirmed.

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — Calling it an "oversight," George Zimmerman's attorney said Friday the neighborhood watch volunteer did not disclose that a website had raised more than $200,000 for his defense, even though his family told the judge they would have trouble coming up with his bond.

"Quite honestly, with ...

Just because defendant had a state ID card with the address of the place searched doesn’t mean that he had standing. It is a factor, but it isn’t determinative. Here, the USMJ’s conclusion of no standing was supported by the record. United States v. Langford, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57894 (N.D. Ga. April 24, 2012).

Stop of bus at a border checkpoint also involved a stop of a Jeep following the bus. They were suspected to be traveling together, and a few facts were confirmed which drew that reasonable conclusion, and there was reasonable suspicion. United States v. Finley, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57926 (S.D. Tex. April 25, 2012).*

An IP address was associated with accessing child pornography, and it tied to an address. The police investigated the address and linked defendant to it. There was a substantial basis for issuance of the search warrant for the premises by the link of the IP address. United States v. Wunderli, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57964 (E.D. Mo. March 27, 2012).*

Richmond Times Dispatch: Police to end 'wake-up calls' effort by Reed Williams:

One day after a civil liberties group blasted the Richmond Police Department for knocking on doors late at night to tell residents they are at risk of car break-ins, the department said it's ending the practice next week.

Since when has any police group cared what any "civil liberties group" thinks? This is more fundamental a realization.

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Mitt Romney's finally the last man standing, and he finally found the voice he'll need to overcome the formidable Democratic weapons of money, guilt and gilt.

"After 43 primaries and caucuses," he told a boisterous crowd in Manchester, N.H., where the marathon began, "after many long days and more ...