Source: https://libraryofdefense.ocdla.org/index.php?title=Blog:Main&offset=20180514155124&limit=20
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 00:35:32+00:00

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Ohio State Trooper Hartford knew three things about Tyrone Warfield before stopping his car. He knew that Warfield, having recently exited a construction zone, was driving under the speed limit with both hands on the steering wheel. He knew that Warfield had touched the lane line twice. And he knew that Warfield was black.
There’s a new rule for ballistics experts who testify at trial.
“Take my word for it” is not enough.
During a December 2011 trial, state police firearms examiner Justin Barr testified that he believed the bullet recovered from the victim’s body originated from Jones’ gun.
Barr explained that experts look for “sufficient similarities” between bullets when trying to identify a match, but there is a level of subjectivity in the process.
On cross-examination, he explained firearm examiners don’t have to identify a set number of matching irregularities or scratches, nor do they have to count them in order to determine a match. He ended his testimony without identifying any individual characteristics between his test bullets and the one recovered from the victim’s body.
When a DCS w/in 1000 feet of a school is based on a Boyd delivery (that is, there is not a completed delivery but a substantial step towards a delivery), I suspect many of us erroneously compartmentalize two things we shouldn't. What I mean is, I think we first determine whether or not there was evidence of a substantial step toward a delivery and, if there was, whether defendant was within 1000 feet of a school.
But if we treat those two questions as separate, we potentially give up a possible defense in some DCS w/in 1000 feet of a school cases. Rather, we should ask ourselves -- did the substantial step take place within 1000 feet of a school?
How is that different? Well, assume defendant obtains substantial amounts of drugs, weighs them, bags them, makes arrangements to sell them, and all of this occurs far away from a school. But at some point, some small step occurs within 1000 feet of a school, and that's when he is busted. The state can easily prove a substantial step for a delivery. The state can also prove defendant was within 1000 feet of a school. But can the state prove that the "substantial step" occurred within 1000 feet of a school? Do all the steps that were taken before defendant was within 1000 feet of a school accumulate, so that -- even if the obtaining and weighing and bagging occurred somewhere else -- those steps can be counted toward determining if a substantial step has been taken near the school?
There are plenty of cases where this analysis will not help much. But I can imagine some cases where it would. The key steps a defense attorney would need to take are: (1) asking for a lesser-included of DCS; (2) asking for a jury instruction that states that all steps client took towards delivery can be considered in determining if there was a substantial step towards delivery, (3) but also asking for a jury instruction that says that only the steps taken within 1000 feet of a school should be considered in determining if defendant took a substantial step towards delivery within 1000 feet of a school.
What support do I have for the argument? The statute itself, the definition of attempt and the Boyd case itself. Altogether, they suggest that substantial steps toward a delivery must themselves occur within 1000 feet of a school, not merely the most recent step.
This Article considers whether government agents can conduct searches or seizures to enforce a different government’s law. For example, can federal officers make stops based on state traffic violations? Can state police search for evidence of federal immigration crimes? Lower courts are deeply divided on the answers. The Supreme Court’s decisions offer little useful guidance because they rest on doctrinal assumptions that the Court has since squarely rejected. The answer to a fundamental question of Fourth Amendment law – who can enforce what law – is remarkably unclear.
Notable Petition for Cert: Can the state seize internet traffic info without PC?
Issues: (1) Whether the warrantless seizure of an individual’s internet traffic information without probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether the Sixth Amendment permits judges to find the facts necessary to support an otherwise unreasonable sentence.
Go to link above to get the petition, which deserves extra points for the Princess Bride references.
The bulk of the ten-page affidavit supporting the search warrant explained Griffith's suspected involvement in the homicide committed more than one year beforehand. The affiant, a 22-year veteran of the police department, recounted the evidence and expressed his belief that Griffith had been the getaway driver. The affidavit also described the evidence that Griffith now lived with Lewis in her apartment.
Based upon your affiant's professional training and experience and your affiant's work with other veteran police officers and detectives, I know that gang/crew members involved in criminal activity maintain regular contact with each other, even when they are arrested or incarcerated, and that they often stay advised and share intelligence about their activities through cell phones and other electronic communication devices and the Internet, to include Facebook, Twitter and E-mail accounts.
Based upon the aforementioned facts and circumstances, and your affiant's experience and training, there is probable cause to believe that secreted inside of [Lewis's apartment] is evidence relating to the homicide discussed above.
The government's argument in support of probable cause to search the apartment rests on the prospect of finding one specific item there: a cell phone owned by Griffith. Yet the affidavit supporting the warrant application provided virtually no reason to suspect that Griffith in fact owned a cell phone, let alone that any phone belonging to him and containing incriminating information would be found in the residence. At the same time, the warrant authorized the wholesale seizure of all electronic devices discovered in the apartment, including items owned by third parties. In those circumstances, we conclude that the warrant was unsupported by probable cause and unduly broad in its reach.
In light of the distinctness of the inquiries, probable cause to arrest a person will not itself justify a warrant to search his property. Regardless of whether an individual is validly suspected of committing a crime, an application for a search warrant concerning his property or possessions must demonstrate cause to believe that “evidence is likely to be found at the place to be searched.” Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 568 (2004). Moreover, “[t]here must, of course, be a nexus ․ between the item to be seized and criminal behavior.” Warden, Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 307 (1967).
Those concerns about the distinct requirements for a search warrant are particularly salient in this case, for two reasons. First, the warrant application sought authorization to search a home, which stands at “the very core” of the Fourth Amendment's protections. Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961); see Groh, 540 U.S. at 559. Second, the scope of a permissible search depends on the specific spaces in which the object of the search might be found. See Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84-85 (1987). Authorization to search for an item fitting in the palm of a hand, like a cell phone, thus can entail an intrusive inspection of all corners of a home. (And here, as explained below, officers sought and obtained authorization to continue their search until they found every cell phone and electronic device in the apartment.) This case, in short, involves the prospect of an especially invasive search of an especially protected place.
Wait! Is the court really saying there must be some evidence that this particular suspect owned a cell phone?
That brings us back to the warrant application's reliance on cell phones—in particular, on the possibility that Griffith owned a cell phone, and that his phone would be found in the home and would contain evidence of his suspected offense. With regard to his ownership of a cell phone, it is true that, as the Supreme Court recently said, cell phones are now “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2484. We do not doubt that most people today own a cell phone.
But the affidavit in this case conveyed no reason to think that Griffith, in particular, owned a cell phone. There was no observation of Griffith's using a cell phone, no information about anyone having received a cell phone call or text message from him, no record of officers recovering any cell phone in his possession at the time of his previous arrest (and confinement) on unrelated charges, and no indication otherwise of his ownership of a cell phone at any time. To the contrary, the circumstances suggested Griffith might have been less likely than others to own a phone around the time of the search: he had recently completed a ten-month period of confinement, during which he of course had no ongoing access to a cell phone; and at least one person in his circle—his potential co-conspirator, Carl Oliphant—was known not to have a cell phone.
We are aware of no case, and the government identifies none, in which police obtained authorization to search a suspect's home for a cell phone without any particularized information that he owned one. In the typical case, officers will have already come into possession of a suspect's phone after seizing it on his person incident to his arrest. See, e.g., id. at 2480-82; United States v. Bass, 785 F.3d 1043, 1049 (6th Cir. 2015). Officers also might receive reliable indication of a suspect's possession of a cell phone. See, e.g., United States v. Mathis, 767 F.3d 1264, 1269 (11th Cir. 2014); United States v. Grupee, 682 F.3d 143, 145-46 (1st Cir. 2012). There was no such information here about Griffith.
Orin Kerr believes the gov't should prevail in the potentially explosive case of US v. Carpenter, argued in November at SCOTUS. But oral argument suggested that the court had a majority in favor of Carpenter. Orin Kerr -- who is always worth reading but particularly on cases where electronic devices and the 4th Amendment intersect -- proposes a way that the court could rule for Carpenter that he thinks makes the most sense.
If the Court wants to rule for Carpenter, I think the best rule would be that the Fourth Amendment gives individuals Fourth Amendment rights in records solely useful to the government to identify that individual's physical location at a particular time. The question would be objective: Is that category of record something that ordinarily is solely useful to the government to determine a person's location? If the nature of that kind of record means that it is of a type ordinarily only of government use to identify a person's physical location, then it is protected by the Fourth Amendment unless there has been consent to the search. On the other hand, if government collection of that kind of record ordinarily has a non-location purpose, then this special rule would not apply and the third-party doctrine would continue to apply.
This is an attractive argument. There is something particularly disturbing about the concept of perpetual surveillance. But of course such surveillance is complicated when we voluntarily carry around the instruments of such surveillance. Regardless, I'm linking to Mr. Kerr's argument not merely because it's always valuable to work through such issues (especially when the potential unravelling of the third-party doctrine could have such a big impact on the practice of criminal defense), but also because his analysis is useful for those of who might litigate the issue at the trial level and your client's location is exactly what the government was seeking.
I should note that the lead-crime hypothesis predicted this. In fact, I did predict this four years ago. As long as lead poisoning rates stay low, there’s simply no reason to think that crime rates will change dramatically because of stop-and-frisk or anything else.
Lead is no longer significantly responsible for changes in crime rates. That happened between 1990-2010 as the number of lead-poisoned children plummeted. But everyone under 30 today was born in a low-lead environment, and there’s not much lower for things to go. So when you see crime spikes either upward (Chicago) or downward (New York) it has nothing to do with lead exposure. Other factors are now far more at play.
However, what you can say is that, generally, low crime rates are here to stay. Better or worse policing can change things at the margin, but we’re just not ever going back to the 70s and 80s. Thanks, EPA!
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to revise its nearly 17-year-old standard for dangerous levels of lead in paint and dust within one year, a rare legal move that amounts to a sharp rebuff of President Trump and Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator.
The decision also called attention to the persistent threat of lead paint to children in millions of American homes, four decades after the federal government banned it from households.
Issue: Whether standardized criteria must guide police discretion to seize a vehicle without a warrant or probable cause after its operator has been taken into police custody.
Neither have been granted yet.
For the transcript of oral argument, go here.
For Dahlia Lithwick's take, go here.
A murder conviction was reversed last week, on the grounds that the search warrant for the cell phone was overbroad. State v. Allen.
Allen relied on the Court of Appeals opinion, State v. Mansor. Mansor is currently under advisement at the Oregon Supreme Court.
For an overview of the issue by an assistant district attorney, see this very new New York Law Journal article on the topic. It's useful if you're looking for out-of-Oregon opinions on the topic.
Given the advances in technology and the centrality of computers in the everyday lives of most people, computer searches have come under increased judicial scrutiny. The particularity clause of the Fourth Amendment has been asserted by the defense with new vigor in the context of digital raids authorized by search warrants. For the most part, though, courts continue to uphold reasonable specificity in particularity of the items to be seized that gives sufficient guidance to executing officers, and leaves them little discretion. Nevertheless, it is certain that this area of the law will continue to be scrutinized by the courts, and evolve in light of technological developments.
Assume your client is arrested for X. He is charged with something flowing out of the arrest, but before that something is litigated, he is acquitted of whatever he was originally arrested for. The jury is entitled to hear about the arrest, despite the acquittal, because it's highly relevant to the subsequent charges. Do the jurors get to hear he was acquitted?
Smith, 271 Or at 299.
When is it abuse of discretion for a judge to give a "witness-false-in-part" instruction over the defendant's objection?
Milnes, 256 Or App at 708-09 (emphases omitted).
On November 29, 2017, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument in one of the most important digital privacy cases in recent years. Carpenter v. United States has its origins in a string of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio that occurred over a period of several months in late 2010 and early 2011. As part of the resulting criminal investigation, the government requested and received a court order to obtain what is often called “cell site location information” (CSLI) for the mobile phone owned by Carpenter, who was one of the suspects in the investigation. The CSLI information, which placed Carpenter’s phone at a location within several miles of the crime scenes, was presented along with video evidence and eyewitness testimony at a federal district court trial in which Carpenter was convicted. After the Sixth Circuit upheld the conviction, Carpenter appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the government’s warrantless acquisition of CSLI violated his Fourth Amendment rights.
Defendant was a police officer who was suspected of sexual battery of a student ride along. There were text messages, and a search warrant was obtained for his cell phone. The lack of a time frame for the text messages didn’t make the warrant violate the Fourth Amendment because it was limited to one person’s text messages. State v. Swing, 2017-Ohio-8039, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 4392 (12th Dist. Oct. 2, 2017).
Defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy that society is now prepared to recognize as reasonable from installation of a pole camera across the street from his house and monitoring it for two months based solely on a tip that he was involved in drugs. The state, however, gets the benefit of the good faith exception because this is the first time this happened. State v. Jones, 2017 SD 59, 2017 S.D. LEXIS 115 (Sept. 20, 2017).
The rest of the details here.
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