Collect Call with Lawstache

Around 4:00 a.m. on April 23, 2013, three northern California law enforcement officers approached Defendant Eric Lundin's home without either an arrest warrant or a search warrant. They came onto his front porch and knocked on his door *1155 with the intent of arresting him. From the front porch where they were standing, the officers heard crashing noises coming from the back of the house. Th...

On March 8, 2008, Fuentes reported a domestic disturbance at his residence. The officers searched the residence and found a Nagant bolt-action rifle, ammunition, methamphetamine, a glass pipe with methamphetamine residue, and a metal pipe with marijuana residue. The officers believed the Nagant rifle was the same one that a third party had previously reported stolen. The officers arrested Fuentes,...

In New York, auditors discovered that the controversial gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter wasted officers’ time with false alerts, identifying gunshots correctly only 13% of the time. The city has spent more than $45 million on the technology, and must now decide whether to renew its contract.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/nyregion/nypd-shotspotter-guns.html  Mail fraught. Postal inspecto...

Adrick Ruckes ("Ruckes") was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possessing cocaine base with the intent to distribute following a search of his automobile. He moved to suppress the evidence discovered during that search: a 9mm handgun and over six grams of crack cocaine. After an evidentiary hearing, Judge Franklin D. Burgess of the Western District of Washington d...

The Fourth Amendment, of course, provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Supreme Court has recently emphasized that this text “establishes a simple baseline”—namely, “[w]hen the Government obtains information by physically intruding on persons,...

After an anonymous caller reported to the Miami-Dade Police that a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun, officers went to the bus stop and saw three black males, one of whom, respondent J. L., was wearing a plaid shirt. Apart from the tip, the officers had no reason to suspect any of the three of illegal conduct. The officers did not see a...

Justin Wells Grigg appeals the district court's denial of his motion to suppress an unregistered automatic firearm that police officers discovered while conducting an investigative stop of Grigg pursuant to a citizen's complaint that Grigg had been playing his car stereo at an excessive volume earlier in the day. Most of the constitutional principles at play in this appeal are well estab...

After Corban Elmore’s teenage son suffered a drug overdose at Elmore’s home, law-enforcement officers secured the scene and prohibited anyone from entering the house. The officers then continued to investigate and allowed almost eight hours to elapse before applying for a search warrant. Once they had a warrant in hand, the officers searched Elmore’s home and discovered two firearms in his bedroom...

Justice Department Publishes Proposed Rule to Reclassify Cannabis, Begins Accepting Public Comments The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) proposes to transfer marijuana from schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”) to schedule III of the CSA. If marijuana is transferred into schedule III, the manufacture, distribution, dispensing, and possession of marijuana would remain subject to the appl...

During the evening hours of January 5, 2019, officers were dispatched to Dane Arredondo's ("Dane") house on a neighbor's report of a woman screaming and crying inside the residence. When the officers arrived, they entered the home without consent to check on the woman. They found her downstairs, extremely intoxicated but apparently unharmed. While inside the house questioning D...

Ninth Circuit Holds Felon-in-Possession Unconstitutional as to Non-Violent Offenders After Bruen May 9th 2024, in United States v. Duarte, No. 22-50048 (9th Cir. May 9, 2024), a split panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that  under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), § 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment as applied to Duarte,...

The Fourth Amendment proscribes unreasonable searches and seizures, but it permits a warrantless search to which the suspect consents. “When conducting a warrantless search of a vehicle based on consent, officers have no more authority to search than it appears was given by the consent.” Thus, it is “important to take account of any express or implied limitations or qualifications attending that c...

When Andres Lopez–Cruz (“Lopez”) gave a border patrol agent permission to “look in” or “search” the two cell phones he had with him, the agent did not ask him whether he would also consent to the agent's answering any incoming calls. Nonetheless, when one of the phones rang while the agent was conducting his search, he answered it, passing himself off as Lopez. By answering the call, the agen...

Agent Brenneman told Mr. Harrison they were there because, "our office received an anonymous phone call there were drugs and bombs at this apartment," and he asked if Mr. Harrison "would mind if we look around the apartment." Id. at 19. The government concedes the ATF had no reason to believe there were bombs in the apartment, but Agent Brenneman testified he had planned to say...

Officer Harold Cheirs and his partner, Officer Robinson, tried to serve an arrest warrant on Phyllis Brown at 3171 Hendricks Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. When they got to Hendricks Avenue, they could not find a house with a 3171 address. They eventually found two houses on opposite sides of the street with a 3170 address, at which point, you might say, they were getting warmer. One of the houses...

Nora next contends that, even if the officers had probable cause to arrest him, they arrested him in violation of Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). The Court held in Payton that the Fourth Amendment forbids arresting a suspect inside his home unless the police first obtain an arrest warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement applies. Id. at 590, 100 S...

Robertson: Robertson encounters a fundamental obstacle: standing. A defendant must show standing even if the government has not pressed the issue in the district court. United States v. Nadler,698 F.2d 995, 998 (9th Cir. 1983). Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which may not be vicariously asserted. Rakas v. Illinois,439 U.S. 128, 133-34, 99 S.Ct. 421, 425-26, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978). Even...

The district court found inexplicable discrepancies between, on the one hand, the events as depicted in an audio recording and reports of agents nearly contemporaneous with the arrest and, on the other hand, later statements, reports and testimony of the agents. Accordingly, the district court discredited the later statements, reports and testimony, and confined its determination of probable cause...

Warrantless searches by law enforcement officers “are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment—subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States,389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). Under the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, “[t]he police may search an automobile and the containers...

The Supreme Court has held that police need no warrant to arrest a felony suspect on probable cause in a public place; United States v. Watson, 1976, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598; United States v. Santana, 1976, 427 U.S. 38, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 49 L.Ed.2d 300. In Coolidge the Court stated in dicta that "the notion that the warrantless entry of a man's house in order to arrest hi...

This appeal stemmed from two individuals' cross-country car trip. Inside the car were secret compartments containing bundles of methamphetamine. But to the casual observer, the car looked like any other car. The driver apparently knew about the secret compartments of methamphetamine, but did the passenger? It's possible, but there was no evidence that • the driver had told the passenger...

The Supreme Court itself has recognized that distinguishing a Terry investigative stop from a de facto arrest "may in some instances create difficult line-drawing problems." United States v. Sharpe,470 U.S. 675, 685, 105 S.Ct. 1568, 1575, 84 L.Ed.2d 605 (1985). As noted by the Court in the seminal case of Terry v. Ohio,392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1884, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), each case...

The Constitution's Fourth Amendment provides that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." U.S. Const. amend. IV. A "state search warrant being challenged in a federal court must be judged by federal constitutional standards." United St...

The Fourth Amendment's protections extend to brief investigatory stops that fall short of a traditional arrest. Ramirez v. City of Buena Park, 560 F.3d 1012, 1020 (9th Cir. 2009) (citing United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 , 122 S.Ct. 744 , 151 L.Ed.2d 740 (2002)). Courts must determine, based on the totality of the circumstances, whether a police-initiated stop is supported by the off...

In sum, under the most recent cases a seizure occurs only if: (1) a reasonable person would feel, under all the circumstances, he could not disregard the police inquiries and go about his business; (2) the restraints imposed upon him result from the police conduct itself rather than the happenstance of where the encounter occurred; and (3) the person actually reacted in a manner consistent with be...