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ID: Forty minute loss of sight of defendant was not hot pursuit

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Officers' entry into defendant's apartment was not justified by hot pursuit because the officers had not seen defendant in 40 minutes (United States v. Johnson, 256 F.3d 895, 908 (9th Cir. 2001) (30 minutes not hot pursuit)) and they were going door to door at 4 a.m. looking for him. Consent obtained from defendant's wife based on officers' threat to get a warrant was valid because the officers by then had enough probable cause to get a warrant. The subsequent consents were valid, too. State v. Ballou, 2008 Ida. App. LEXIS 50 (May 22, 2008). Defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in files on a computer somebody else let him use in the other person's house, and that person could consent to a search of the computer. As for password protected files, the police had no duty to inquire into whether some files might have been password protected by defendant on another person's computer before EnCase was used to make a mirror image of the hard drive...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).