VoteKansas.org

Washington rejects the Thornton “exception” to Gant on scope of search incident under state constitution. State v. Snapp, 2012 Wash. LEXIS 293 (April 5, 2012) (dissent here):

In the consolidated cases before us, the issue we must decide is whether an equivalent to Gant's second exception, referred to here as Thornton 1 exception, applies under article I, section 7 of the Washington State Constitution. We conclude that no such exception is permissible under article I, section 7. Accordingly, we reverse the Court of Appeals in both cases, reverse the defendants' convictions, and remand these cases for further proceedings consistent with our decision herein.

. . .

The specific issue raised in the present consolidated cases is whether the Thornton form of the exception will apply under article I, section 7. We conclude that it does not.

First, the underpinnings of the Thornton version of the exception do not justify its existence under article I, section 7. The Court in Gant adopted the Thornton exception given "circumstances unique to the vehicle context."

. . .

However, although the automobile exception is recognized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, it is not recognized under article I, section 7. See Patton, 167 Wn.2d at 386 n.4; State v. Tibbles, 169 Wn.2d 364, 369, 236 P.2d 885 (2010) (in context of automobile search where suspect was not arrested; probable cause to search did not justify search of vehicle--"the existence of probable cause, standing alone, does not justify a warrantless search"); Ringer, 100 Wn.2d at 700-01. Although the Thornton exception is consistent with the rationale underlying the federal automobile exception under the Fourth Amendment, it lacks similar support under article I, section 7.

. . .

We also reject the State's proposal made at oral argument that a modified form of the Thornton exception, so to speak, be applied. The State proposed a vehicle search incident to arrest exception that would permit a warrantless search based on probable cause to believe that evidence of the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle, rather than a reasonable belief as stated in Gant. As we said in Buelna Valdez, "when a search can be delayed to obtain a warrant without running afoul of" concerns for the safety of the officer or to preserve evidence of the crime of arrest from concealment or destruction by the arrestee "(and does not fall within another applicable exception), the warrant must be obtained. A warrantless search of an automobile is permissible under the search incident to arrest exception when that search is necessary to preserve officer safety or prevent destruction or concealment of evidence of the crime of arrest." Id. (emphasis added). We emphasized that "time is of the essence" because in "some circumstances, a delay to obtain a search warrant might be shown to provide the opportunity for the arrestee to procure a weapon or destroy evidence of the crime." Buelna Valdez, 167 Wn.2d at 773 (emphasis added).

The search incident of defendant’s car for evidence of child enticement would be saved by Davis in any event, so the search is not suppressed. As to the search of his house, the good faith exception would apply there, too. [The court never goes to the merits of the searches.] United States v. Lebowitz, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6859 (11th Cir. April 5, 2012).* [Note: The 11th Cir. condones the stagnation of the Fourth Amendment since the merits go undecided. There is a perpetual gray area where searches are possibly unconstitutional, but we'll never know. I think it's really just judicial laziness or complete lack of judicial curiosity to decide real legal issues. GFE is easy and requires no thought because one's politics and constitutional apathy decides GFE questions.]

Officers had reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop based on collective knowledge of intercepted phone conversations with drug slang. United States v. Donaldson, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48083 (S.D. Ga. February 23, 2012).*

Search warrant for an apartment’s address was particular and with probable cause based on the address being in a Backpage.com ad. United States v. Latham, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48397 (D. Minn. April 5, 2012)* [Based on the opinion, this wasn’t remotely arguable.]

Plaintiff’s claims include a Fourth Amendment claim, but no facts suggest a seizure or a search so no Fourth Amendment violation, and that is dismissed. Wilfong v. State Bd. of Ethics, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47436 (M.D. La. March 5, 2012).*

Sixteen hour warrantless seizure of a FedEx package in transit for a dog sniff was unreasonable. The government directed FedEx to hold it, and that made FedEx its agent. (The government stipulated to one defendant’s standing, but it certainly appears to the court that she doesn’t have any. (n.1)) United States v. Poor, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48292 (E.D. Ky. March 9, 2012):

Here, law enforcement directed FedEx to act by holding the parcels on March 2. The question then becomes whether FedEx's intent in complying was "entirely independent of the government's intent to collect evidence for use in a criminal prosecution." Howard, 752 F.2d at 227-28, vacated on other grounds, 770 F.2d 57, 62 (6th Cir. 1985)); see United States v. Jones, 2011 WL 5967230, at *2 (W.D. Tenn.) (identifying factors as whether police "'instigated, encouraged, or participated'" in search and whether "'individual ... engaged in the search with the intent of assisting the police'" (quoting United States v. Lambert, 771 F.2d 83, 89 (6th Cir. 1985))). The Fourth Amendment does not apply if a private actor is "not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any government official." United States v. Jacobsen, 104 S. Ct. at 1652, 1656 (1984) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The burden of proving agency generally falls on the defendant. United States v. Aldridge, 642 F.3d 537, 541 (7th Cir. 2011) (citation omitted). Here, Hart's own testimony clearly establishes the agency relationship.

The Puerto Rican coffee importing business his sufficiently regulated that Burger applies. The beans here were seized after an administrative inspection under PR law. United States v. 323 "Quintales" of Green Coffee Beans, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47775 (D. P.R. March 30, 2012), R&R 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47765 (D. P.R. March 9, 2012):

The Supreme Court stated in Burger that an administrative search qualifies as an exception if: (1) the state has a substantial interest in regulating the industry (2), the inspection is necessary to further the regulatory scheme, and (3) the inspection is properly limited in scope and puts the business owner on notice that the search is being made. Burger, 482 U.S. at 702-703. The second part of this last requirement is satisfied if the regulatory scheme is "sufficiently comprehensive and defined that the owner of commercial property cannot help but be aware that his property will be subject to periodic inspections undertaken for specific purposes." Id. at 703 (quoting Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594, 600 (1981)).

The laws of Puerto Rico contain a comprehensive set of provisions pertaining to the regulation of the coffee industry. P.R. Laws Ann. Tit. 5, § 320 et. seq.; Tit. 13, §§ 2201-2205. The laws relating to coffee production express the need to protect the local coffee industry and eradicate plant pests and diseases on coffee plantations. P.R. Laws Ann. Tit. 5, §§ 319-319g. The Court agrees with the Magistrate's determination that these provisions evince a substantial government interest in regulating the coffee industry in order to meet local consumption needs and promote the economic health of the industry.

(Lorenzo J. Palomares-Starbuck appeared for the beans.)

“[W]e adopt the Harris exception to the exclusionary rule for certain evidence obtained after a Payton violation. We hold that, where police had probable cause to arrest before the unlawful entry, a warrantless arrest from Felix's home in violation of Payton requires neither the suppression of statements made outside of the home after Felix was given and waived his Miranda rights, nor the suppression of physical evidence obtained from Felix outside of the home. Assuming without deciding that Felix's warrantless arrest from his home was in violation of Payton, we conclude that, pursuant to the Harris rule, the following evidence that police obtained outside of his home is admissible: Felix's signed statement, made after Felix was given and waived his Miranda rights, the buccal swab obtained at the police station, and Felix's clothing seized at the jail, as well as any derivative evidence.” The court declines to adopt a separate rule under the state constitution. State v. Felix, 2012 WI 36, 2012 Wisc. LEXIS 29 (April 3, 2012).*

Petitioner’s Fourth Amendment claim was decided on the merits in state court, so it could not be considered on habeas. Rashad v. Lafler, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6765, 2012 FED App. 0093P (6th Cir. April 5, 2012).

Seizure of defendant’s cell phone at the end of his interrogation was reasonable and based on exigent circumstances. Officers has probable cause to believe that the phone contained evidence and that it should be seized. United States v. Robison, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47092 (D. Minn. March 16, 2012).*

The court finds defendant was free to leave when his papers were handed back to him, but he agreed to stay when the officer asked if he could ask a few questions. Defendant said that consent had to come from the other person which was agreeing to continue the encounter. United States v. Quintero-Felix, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46377 (N.D. Iowa April 3, 2012).*

“Prior to conducting a warrantless probation search, an officer must have probable cause to believe the probationer lives in the residence to be searched.” United States v. Gibson, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47138 (N.D. Cal. April 3, 2012).*

Defendant’s IAC claim was that it somehow violated the Fourth Amendment for police to continue to keep records lawfully seized for several years was rejected. No case even suggests that was unlawful, so how could defense counsel be ineffective? United States v. Lecroy, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47030 (N.D. Ga. March 30, 2012).*

New law review article: The Missed Opportunity of United States v. Jones--Commercial Erosion of Fourth Amendment Protection in a Post-Google Earth World by Mary Leary on SSRN. Abstract:

The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. These protections, therefore, are only triggered when the government engages is a “search” or “seizure.” For decades, the Court defined “search” as a government examination of an area where one has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Such an expectation requires both that the individual demonstrate a subjective expectation of privacy and that the expectation is one society finds reasonable. In 1974, Anthony Amsterdam prophesized the unworkability of this test, warning of a day that the government would circumvent it my merely announcing 24 hour surveillance. Similarly, the Court has stated that it would adjust the definition of a search if the government tried to “condition” citizens to have no expectation of privacy.

Today, those concerns have come to bear, but not in the way Amsterdam or the Court predicted, and the Court has failed to respond. Today, private commercial entities, not the government, have utilized technology to “condition” citizens to have no expectation of privacy. They have done so on two particular levels. First, these commercial entities have obtained private data about citizens, i.e. information from their “digital dossier.” They have then revealed the information to others resulting in citizens feeling as though “nothing is private.” Second, when these entities obtain the data, they do not afford the individuals the opportunity to “demonstrate” their subjective expectation of privacy. Since a “search” requires a demonstration of a subjective expectation of privacy, and these commercial entities have used today’s technology to strip citizens of any expectation of privacy or ability to demonstrate one, then little the government examines will constitute a “search” and trigger Fourth Amendment protections.

This article identifies this assault on the expectation of privacy due to “corporate conditioning” of the consumer and proposes a viable legislative solution. It examines the Court’s existing approaches, including a thorough analysis of the recently articulated frameworks announced in the majority and concurring opinions of United States v. Jones, noting their inadequacy for today’s technological challenges. Utilizing the example of satellite imaging technology, it demonstrates the threat to privacy expectations unanticipated by the Court. This article proposes a new legislative framework for respecting privacy protections in response to these corporate induced privacy affronts. This framework, supported by analogous American law and European proposals, calls for an opt-in model. Before a citizen can be assumed to have voluntarily sacrificed his privacy, he must meaningfully opt in to the sharing of his private data. Such an opt-in must not conditioned upon the service but must be uncoerced.

This approach advocates for addressing this unanticipated problem further upstream than other solutions by focusing on the commercial entities and not the later police action. It is rooted in the concept of ownership of one’s digital footprint and, therefore, the right to control one’s data.

New law review article: A Spectacular Non Sequitur: The Supreme Court's Contemporary Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule Jurisprudence by David C. Gray on SSRN and forthcoming in American Criminal Law Review. Abstract:

Much of the Supreme Court’s contemporary Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule jurisprudence is constructed upon an analytic mistake that H.L.A. Hart described in another context as a “spectacular non sequitur.” That path to irrelevance is paved by the Court’s recent insistence that the sole justification for excluding evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment is the prospect of deterring law enforcement officers. This deterrence-only approach ignores or rejects more principled justifications that inspired the rule at its genesis and have sustained it through the majority of its history and development. More worrisome, however, is the conceptual insufficiency of deterrence considerations alone to justify core components of the Court’s Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule doctrine, including the good faith exception, the cause requirement, and the requirement to show standing. That conceptual deficit has produced an opaque body of doctrine that is often incoherent and always speculative and unpredictable. Faced with these results, the Court has two options. First, it can abandon almost a century of doctrine in favor of a dramatically expanded exclusionary rule cut loose from general rules and exceptions; or, second, the Court can preserve the bulk of its Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule jurisprudence by adopting a hybrid theory of the exclusionary rule that embraces retributive principles. This Article argues for the latter course and explores the consequences. Principal among them is that the Court must accept the exclusionary rule as the natural and necessary sanction for Fourth Amendment violations rather than a contingently justified judicial doctrine. Although some Justices and their academic supporters may think this a steep price to pay, this Article argues that the costs are more than justified by the rewards of doctrinal coherence, added clarity, and predictability.

Randolph requires the objecting defendant be actually present. Objecting elsewhere not enough. The court thus joins CA7 and CA8. United States v. Shrader, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6734 (4th Cir. April 4, 2012)

Shrader urges us, however, to expand the holding of Randolph and conclude that his earlier refusal vitiates his aunt's later consent, even though he was absent from the premises. Physical presence may not be dismissed as a mere function of the facts of Randolph, however. That presence reflected the "widely shared social expectations" that informed the Court's ruling. Randolph, 547 U.S. at 111. The Court noted that "a caller standing at the door of shared premises would have no confidence that one occupant's invitation was a sufficiently good reason to enter when a fellow tenant stood there saying, 'stay out.'" Id. at 113; see also id. at 114 ("[T]he co-tenant wishing to open the door to a third party has no recognized authority in law or social practice to prevail over a present and objecting co-tenant.") The Court plainly gave careful thought to the scope of the physical presence requirement that it articulated:

[W]e are drawing a fine line; if a potential defendant with self-interest in objecting is in fact at the door and objects, the co-tenant's permission does not suffice for a reasonable search, whereas the potential objector, nearby but not invited to take part in the threshold colloquy, loses out. This is the line we draw, and we think the formalism is justified. Id. at 121.

This case falls squarely on the permissible side of the line. Because Shrader was absent from the premises, and there was no evidence that he was arrested for the purpose of nullifying his refusal to consent to the search, his aunt's consent provided adequate permission for the police to search the house, notwithstanding his earlier objection.

In so holding, we join the Seventh and Eighth Circuits in adhering to the clearly drawn rule of Randolph and giving effect to the Supreme Court's explicit requirement that the defendant be physically present to dispute his cotenant's consent. See United States v. Henderson, 536 F.3d 776 (7th Cir. 2008); United States v. Hudspeth, 518 F.3d 954 (8th Cir. 2008) (en banc). We decline to adopt the more expansive view of the Ninth Circuit which permits a defendant's refusal to operate indefinitely, "barring some objective manifestation that he has changed his position and no longer objects." United States v. Murphy, 516 F.3d 1117, 1125 (9th Cir. 2008). This latter approach raises practical problems. How broadly is constructive knowledge of a suspect's prior refusal to consent to be imputed to other officers? Must a suspect expressly indicate that he has changed his mind in the future, or may that be assessed from the totality of the circumstances? Is there some point at which the passage of time renders a prior objection inoperative? The Murphy interpretation of Randolph would involve courts in such questions, diverting attention from the basic social expectations that underlie not only the opinion in Randolph, but the larger corpus of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Careful observance of the requirement that an objecting cotenant be physically present thus not only shows fealty to the Supreme Court's precedent, but also focuses police and courts on the customary norms that form the basis for this area of law.

Defendant’s driving 52 in a 65 zone in the left lane on I-10 was not reasonable suspicion to stop him where there was no showing that he impeded traffic. Delafuente v. State, 2012 Tex. App. LEXIS 2602 (Tex. App. – Houston (14th Dist.) April 3, 2012).*

Defendant was detained in the police car for five minutes while a DL check was run, and this did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Defendant’s unMirandized admissions of consumption of beer made then were admissible. While a pat-down search was conducted prior to defendant's statements, this search did not convert this routine traffic stop into a custodial situation as the search was nominally consensual, it was concluded in a few seconds, and nothing was found during the search. State v. Serafin, 2012 Ohio 1456, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 1295 (11th Dist. March 30, 2012).*

A license plate in the back window and not where it belongs is reason for a stop in Ohio. State v. Fredo, 2012 Ohio 1496, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 1314 (7th Dist. March 30, 2012).*

The remedy for an alleged Fourth Amendment violation for an unlawful stop is a motion to suppress, not a motion to dismiss. Reasonable suspicion is required for the stop, not probable cause, and the trial court erred. State v. Kilbarger, 2012 Ohio 1521, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 1327 (4th Dist. March 19, 2012).*

SFGate.org: Why cell-phone tracking should require a warrant by James Temple:

The American Civil Liberties Union released a troubling report this past weekend demonstrating that law enforcement agencies around the nation routinely track personal cell phones, often without warrants. Conspicuously absent from the survey was information about the tactics of Northern California police departments.

That's because, among the roughly 20 local agencies that received open records requests, only a handful provided substantive responses, said Linda Lye, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. The rest declined to shed light on their practices, she said.

Where a search under a warrant for a body under cement in a basement couldn’t possibly be completed in a day, it was not unreasonable for officers to return the next day. People v. Nevarez, 2012 Ill. App. LEXIS 251, 2012 IL App (1st) 93414 (March 30, 2012):

[**P48] This record indicates that the search team proceeded with diligence on the first day of the search, uncovered evidence the cadaver dog's "hit") that the body was indeed somewhere in the apartment, but was unable to complete the search that day because the long process of excavation had physically drained the searchers. They left for the night, but demonstrated their intent to continue the search the next day by boarding up the site and posting overnight police guards at both entrances. As the search could not have been completed in a single day, the resumption of the search the next day was not a separate search requiring a second warrant, but was simply a reasonable continuation of the original search for which no new search warrant was required. See United States v. Squillacote, 221 F.3d 542, 557 (4th Cir. 2000) (where search could not have been completed in a single day, "the subsequent entries were not separate searches requiring separate warrants, but instead were simply reasonable continuations of the original search").

“Reasonable suspicion of criminal activity can found [sic] on the combination of a driver's extreme nervousness and contradictory statements. United States v. Morgan, 270 F.3d 625, 631 (8th Cir. 2001).” United States v. Felix, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46377 (N.D. Iowa April 3, 2012).*

Plaintiff’s claim he was a U.S. citizen wrongfully deported and rejected when he came back to the U.S. through ATL customs when they discredited his newly issued passport relying on the original bogus records survives as to the government under Bivens. Most of the officers get qualified immunity. Lyttle v. United States, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46211 (M.D. Ga. March 31, 2012):

After being detained for fifty-one days by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Homeland Security ("ICE"), Mark Daniel Lyttle ("Lyttle"), a United States citizen with diminished mental capacity, was flown to Hidalgo, Texas, transported to the Mexican border, forced to disembark, and sent off on foot into Mexico with only three dollars in his pocket. Wearing his prison-issued jump suit from the Stewart Detention Center, a privately managed ICE facility in Georgia, and speaking no Spanish, Lyttle wandered around Central America for 125 days, sleeping in the streets, staying in shelters, and being imprisoned and abused in Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua because he had no identity or proof of citizenship. Ultimately, Lyttle found his way to the United States Embassy in Guatemala, where an Embassy employee helped him contact his family in the United States to arrange for his return home.

In his Complaint, Lyttle alleges that ICE employees detained him without probable cause and subsequently deported him unlawfully to Mexico, knowing that he was a United States citizen with a diminished mental capacity. 1 Lyttle seeks damages from the responsible ICE officers in their individual capacities pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), for violating his constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment and his rights to due process and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment.

. . .

Defendants' motions to dismiss (ECF Nos. 47 & 49) are granted in part and denied in part. Specifically, the Court dismisses the following claims: (1) the official capacity claims against Defendants James Hayes, Eric Holder, John Morton, Janet Napolitano, and Thomas Snow; (2) the individual capacity Bivens equal protection claims as to all Defendants against whom they are asserted; (3) the individual capacity Bivens Fifth Amendment due process claims against Defendants Johnston, Keys, and Moore; and (4) the individual capacity Bivens Fourth Amendment unreasonable seizure claims against Johnston, Keys, and Moore. The following claims remain pending: (1) the Bivens Fifth Amendment due process claims against Defendants Collado, Moten, Mondragon, Simonse, and Hayes; (2) the Bivens Fourth Amendment unreasonable seizure claims against Defendants Collado, Moten, Mondragon, Simonse, and Hayes; and (3) the Federal Tort Claims Act claims against the United States for false imprisonment, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to Correct Formatting Error (ECF No. 62) is unopposed and moot after issuance of this Order.

The stop of two vehicles traveling together did not give each standing to challenge the stop of the other. As to one, the stop was invalid and suppressed, but not the other. United States v. Peters, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46977 (S.D. Ind. April 03, 2012):

When law enforcement conducts a traffic stop of a vehicle, both the driver of the vehicle and its passengers may challenge the legality of the stop. Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 251 (2007). Accordingly, as passengers in the respective vehicles, Mr. Holmes can challenge the stop of the Denali, and Mr. Peters can challenge the stop of the Scion.

Unlike Mr. Holmes, [dkt. 153 at 10], Mr. Peters contends that because the Scion and the Denali were traveling together, the occupants of each vehicle can challenge the search of the other vehicle, too, [dkt. 151 at 6-7]. Neither Mr. Peters nor the Government could direct the Court to any authority directly on point. Nonetheless, the Court's own research has revealed authority from the Seventh Circuit that, by analogy, requires the Court to reject Mr. Peters' claim. If absent owners of vehicles cannot challenge the search of their vehicles because "the intrusion a vehicle stop causes is personal to those in the car when it occurs," United States v. Powell, 929 F.2d 1190, 1195 (7th Cir. 1991), mere passengers in a separate vehicle in a convoy would likewise lack the ability to raise a constitutional claim about the stopped vehicle.

RollingStone: Mike Bloomberg's New York: Cops in Your Hallways by Matt Taibbi:

An amazing lawsuit was filed in New York last week. It seems Mike Bloomberg’s notorious "stop-and-frisk" policy – known colloquially in these parts by silently-cheering white voters as the "Let’s have cops feel up any nonwhite person caught walking in the wrong neighborhood” policy – isn’t even the most repressive search policy in the NYPD arsenal.

Bloomberg, that great crossover Republican, has long been celebrated by the Upper West Side bourgeoisie for his enlightened views on gay rights and the environment, but also targeted for criticism by civil rights activists because of stop-and-frisk, a program that led to a record 684,330 street searches just last year.

Now he’s under fire for a program he inherited, which goes by the darkly Bushian name of the "Clean Halls program." In effect since 1991, it allows police to execute so-called "vertical patrols" by going up into private buildings and conducting stop-and-frisk searches in hallways – with the landlord’s permission.

. . .

If you live in a Clean Halls building, you can’t even go out to take out the trash without carrying an ID – and even that might not be enough. If you go out for any reason, there may be police in the hallways, demanding that you explain yourself, and insisting, in brazenly illegal and unconstitutional fashion, on searches of your person.

Defendant’s cell phone was seized without a warrant on suspicion of having child pornography on it. They waited six days to get a search warrant for the phone. “Although we agree with Burgard that the officers did not act with perfect diligence, we do not find the delay here to be so egregious that it renders the search and seizure unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Burgard, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6555 (7th Cir. April 2, 2012).

Officers had an arrest warrant because of defendant’s indictment. While in his house on the arrest warrant, defendant consented to a search of the house, so his 2255 fails on this ground. [Default unmentioned.] Martinez v. United States, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45718 (S.D. N.Y. March 30, 2012).*

I get most cases from my stored Lexis search about 5:30 a.m., seven days a week. Some I get from Google alerts and list servs. I have no idea how Lexis gets its cases from the federal courts or any other court. Some are obvious because they're publicly posted, but sometimes Lexis has cases that aren't on court websites. Sure, they're on Pacer, but I can't afford to get them all, save them, and make a link, and with all those cases pending, does Lexis get alerts of all filings?

Today, a 2003 case came through for some reason, and it was about 28,200. 2011 cases were over 150,000. Somewhere in there I quit reporting on civil cases in the district court level because of the number.

NYTimes Editorial: Stop and Frisk, Continued:

The Bloomberg administration and its police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, have been disturbingly dismissive of complaints about the city’s program of stops, frisks and arrests that is ensnaring hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers each year.

CrimProf Blog: Murphy on Information Disclosure, the Fourth Amendment, and Statutory Law Enforcement Exemptions:

Erin Murphy (New York University School of Law) has posted The Politics of Privacy in the Criminal Justice System: Information Disclosure, the Fourth Amendment, and Statutory Law Enforcement Exemptions (Michigan Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

When criminal justice scholars think of privacy, they think of the Fourth Amendment. But lately its domain has become far less absolute. The United States federal code currently contains over twenty separate statutes that restrict both acquisition and release of covered information. Largely enacted in the latter part of the twentieth century, these statutes address matters vital to modern existence. They control police access to drivers’ licenses, education records, health histories, telephone calls, e-mail messages, and even video rentals. They conform to no common template, but rather enlist a variety of procedural tools to serve as safeguards – ranging from warrants and court orders to subpoenas and demand letters. But across this remarkable diversity, there is one feature that all of the statutes share in common: each contains a provision exempting law enforcement from its general terms.

Volokh: New Draft Article, “The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment” by Orin Kerr

I have just posted a new draft article, The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment, which is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review. Here’s the abstract:

In the Supreme Court’s recent decision on GPS monitoring, United States v. Jones (2012), five Justices authored or joined concurring opinions that applied a new approach to interpreting Fourth Amendment protection. Before Jones, Fourth Amendment decisions have always evaluated each step of an investigation individually. Jones introduced what we might call a “mosaic theory” of the Fourth Amendment, by which courts evaluate a collective sequence of government activity as an aggregated whole to consider whether the sequence amounts to a search.

This Article considers the implications of a mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment. It explores the choices and dilemmas that a mosaic theory would raise, and it analyzes the ways in which the mosaic theory departs from prior understandings of the Fourth Amendment. It makes three major points. First, the mosaic theory offers a dramatic departure from existing law. Second, implementing the theory requires courts to answer a long list of novel and challenging questions. Third, the benefits of the mosaic theory are likely to be modest, and its challenges are likely to be great. Courts should approach the mosaic theory with caution, and may be wise to reject it entirely.