VoteKansas.org

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to overhaul transportation programs and keep aid flowing to thousands of construction projects while strengthening highway and auto safety.

The 74-22 vote stepped up pressure for quick action by House because the government's power to collect about $110 million a day in federal gasoline ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man stabbed four people at a downtown office building Wednesday afternoon and was shot by a police officer at whom he lunged with his weapon, authorities and a witness said.

Three of the victims are in critical condition, and a fourth received minor injuries, Sgt. ...

Hollywood actor George Clooney on Wednesday accused the Sudanese government of committing war crimes in a mountainous border region, which he and U.S. officials said was teetering dangerously on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

Mr. Clooney, who returned this week from a trip to Sudan, told the Senate Foreign ...

BEAUMONT, Texas — A man at court with family members opened fire outside a Southeast Texas courthouse Wednesday, killing one person and wounding at least three others, police said.

The gunman also was injured in the incident outside the Jefferson County Courthouse in Beaumont, about 80 miles east of Houston, ...

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Virtual Curtilage: A Theory of Fourth Amendment Privacy in Public. SSRN Abstract:

This article proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment privacy in public that builds off the legal construct of curtilage around private homes. Curtilage involves a publicly observable area defined as a protected space outside the home in which intimate activity associated with the sanctity of the home and the privacies of life are conducted. Arising from principles of property law and privacy conceptions that pre-date the Fourth Amendment, the idea is a well-grounded legal fiction that protects individuals beyond the four walls of the home.

This article takes the principle of curtilage applied to property, and applies it to the rest of the Fourth Amendment protections covering “persons,” “papers,” and “effects.” The “virtual curtilage” theory has been developed in response to growing surveillance techniques in public spaces, as well as difficulties in protecting thoughts and writings in the digital realm. The theory looks at the development of an historic legal concept that expanded privacy protections based on fundamental principles of property and privacy – a concept based not on what could be searched, but what should be searched consistent with societal rules. That limiting principle of protecting a zone outside the literal four walls of a home has renewed urgency as surveillance technologies increase on our streets and in our digital lives. In addition, building off the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones and other cases that have refocused interest on the property based-nature of the Fourth Amendment, the idea of curtilage remerges as a central organizing principle for redefining a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — A jury found Virginia Tech negligent on Wednesday for waiting to warn students about a gunman during a 2007 campus massacre that left 33 dead.

Jurors deliberated for 3 ½ hours before siding with the parents of two students who were killed on April 16, 2007, in ...

BROOKVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A southeastern Indiana man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting five people during an apparent drug dispute was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole after telling a judge he deeply regretted the killings.

David Ison of Glenwood, Ind., avoided a possible death sentence by ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — After nearly two weeks of testimony, the case that kick-started national conversations about gay youths and Internet privacy went on Wednesday to a jury that must decide whether a former Rutgers University student is a criminal or just a young man who was confused by ...

NOME, Alaska (AP) — Mushers always pose with their lead dogs under the burled arch in Nome after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

When Dallas Seavey won Tuesday, he posed with Diesel and Guinness, but he could have used a little more podium space.

"I had five lead ...

SEATTLE — A 3-year-old boy fatally shot himself with a gun he found in a car while his family stopped for gas early Wednesday in Tacoma, police said. It was western Washington's third recent shooting by a child.

"It is incredible in light of the other ones," said Tacoma police ...

WASHINGTON — Actor and human rights activist George Clooney on Wednesday warned of a humanitarian crisis in the volatile border area between Sudan and South Sudan, where residents are taking refuge in the Nuba Mountains because of aerial bombardments.

Clooney, just back from a visit to the region, described how ...

CHICAGO (AP) — Hours after Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. announced it will stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopedia for the first time in more than 200 years, someone among the editing minions of free online rival Wikipedia made an irony-free note of that fact.

"It was announced that after ...

CHICAGO — Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich embraced the public spotlight one last time Wednesday, claiming on the day before he reports to prison that he always believed what he did was legal and expressing faith that an appeal of his corruption convictions will succeed.

The famously talkative Blagojevich seemed ...

“Espada was the resident of the searched premises, while Cruz was a temporary guest who admitted that he had no control over the residence. In leaving the residence with his belongings still in the bedroom, unlocked and exposed in a doorless closet, Cruz assumed the risk that Espada would consent to a search of her residence.” United States v. Cruz, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 4986 (3d Cir. March 9, 2012) (unpublished). [This is tenuous at best, and it deserved a better, more detailed analysis than brushing it off without much in a per curiam. A guest has standing, but are their personal belongings subject to the whim of the host? Not usually. Why would the police even think that the host had apparent authority over the guest's stuff? This is just wrong as written. Hopefully the defense will ask for rehearing or try for cert.]

Defendant being a known drug dealer in an area where there might have been a drug deal 2-3 hours earlier in a vehicle that only might have matched the color of the one they were looking for wasn’t probable cause. United States v. Allen, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32707 (M.D. La. March 12, 2012).*

Following CA7 (United States v. Reed, 539 F.3d 595 (7th Cir. 2008)) and CA8 (United States v. Hudspeth, 518 F.3d 954 (8th Cir. 2008) (en banc)) and not CA9 (United States v. Murphy, 516 F.3d 1117 (9th Cir. 2008)), CA5 finds that an absent cotenant who refuses to consent is not what was contemplated in Randolph. Defendant was in jail and refused to consent, so officers went to his house and got it anyway. [There is also a curtilage issue under Dunn.] United States v. Cooke, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 5269 (5th Cir. March 13, 2012):

We agree with the Seventh and Eighth Circuits that the objection of an absent cotenant does not vitiate the consent of a physically present cotenant under Randolph. First, as both courts noted, Randolph self-consciously emphasized the importance of Randolph's presence by repeatedly noting it when declaring and reiterating the holding. See Randolph, 547 U.S. at 106, 114, 121, 122, 123. Justice Breyer's concurrence confirms the importance of physical presence. Id. at 126 (Breyer, J., concurring). Second, the Randolph Court seemed to have structured the holding as an exception to the general rule of Rodriguez and Matlock that a cotenant may consent to the search of a residence, id. at 106, and that this exception was narrowly drawn along a "fine line." Id. at 121-22. Third, although it is a close question, social convention normally allows for a visitor to feel invited into a home when invited by a physically-present resident, even if an absent cotenant objects to it, rather than the visitor's assuming he is verboten forever until the objector consents.

Defendant was indicted for mail fraud for sending threatening letters. Investigators found threads under a stamp on the envelope. That and other things showed a nexus for a search warrant for defendant’s house. The fact that there had been a prior consent search did not mean that the police could not seek to come back if something had been overlooked. United States v. Carlson, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32734 (D. Minn. March 12, 2012), R&R 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32727 (D. Minn. February 7, 2012):

The prior consent search — during which no evidence was seized — is irrelevant. First, there is nothing to suggest the scope of the prior search was exactly the same as the search authorized by the warrant. Second, failure to find items during a prior search does not destroy probable cause for a subsequent search, if there is reason to believe the evidence could have been overlooked. See United States v. Blom, 242 F.3d 799, 807 (8th Cir. 2001). Here, the affidavit indicated that the home was extremely cluttered, making it likely that relevant evidence was overlooked. Third, even if the evidence was not in Carlson's home at the time of the prior search, that absence is immaterial. See United States v. Tagbering, 985 F.2d 946, 950 (8th Cir. 1993) (holding that evidence does not need to be at the location to be searched at the time the warrant issues, so long as there was probable cause to support a belief that it will be there when the warrant is executed). The Court finds that the affidavit as a whole supported a conclusion that the items listed were likely to be in Carlson's home at the time the warrant was executed, and the warrant was, therefore, supported by probable cause.