The Lawletter Vol 41 No 8

Jason Holder, Research Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     In State v. Loomis, 2016 WI 68, 881 N.W.2d 749, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin upheld the use of risk assessment tools at sentencing against a due process challenge. In doing so, however, the Loomis court noted that such tools are consistent with due process protections only if they are used properly and in accordance with certain limitations. Additionally, the court may have provided a possible road map for future challenges to the use of risk assessment tools at sentencing.

     Loomis had been charged with a number of offenses stemming from a drive-by shooting and ultimately pleaded guilty to two of the lesser offenses. A presentence investigation report was prepared and included a Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions ("COMPAS") risk assessment. In ruling out probation, the circuit court noted that it did so because "of the seriousness of the crime and because your history, your history on supervision, and the risk assessment tools that have been utilized, suggest that you're extremely high risk to re-offend." Id. ¶ 19, 881 N.W.2d at 755.

Mark Rieber, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     In United States v. Lambis, No. 15CR734, 2016 WL 3870940 (S.D.N.Y. July 12, 2016), a federal court, apparently for the first time, suppressed evidence obtained as the result of the warrantless use of a cell-site simulator to locate a target's cell phone. The court explained that a cell-site simulator—sometimes referred to as a "StingRay," "Hailstorm," or "TriggerFish"—is a device that locates cell phones by mimicking the service provider's cell tower (or "cell-site") and forcing cell phones to transmit "pings" to the simulator. The device then calculates the strength of the "pings" until the target phone is pinpointed.

     The court's holding relied mainly on Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), which held that a Fourth Amendment search occurred when government agents used a thermal-imaging device to detect infrared radiation emanating from a home. In Kyllo, the Supreme Court reasoned that "[w]here . . . the Government uses a device that is not in general public use to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a search warrant." Id. at 40.

     According to research released by two Louisiana State University economists, juveniles who are sentenced by judges who are college football fans received longer sentences after the judge's team had an unexpected loss. The researchers examined juvenile court decisions involving first-time offenders over a period of more than 15 years. Their research focused on judges who are alumni of LSU and demonstrates that for those judges, where LSU lost games it was expected to win based on rankings, the judges issued harsher sentences in the week after the loss. Unexpected wins or losses when the games were expected to be close had no impact. The paper is available at the National Bureau of Economic Research: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22611?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw.

The Lawletter Vol 41 No 4

Mark Rieber, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     In Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (2015), the U.S. Supreme Court recently stressed that a seizure justified only by a police-observed traffic violation becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation. The stop may not exceed the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made. In Rodriguez, the issue was raised in the context of whether the police unnecessarily extended the traffic-violation stop to conduct a dog sniff of the exterior of the vehicle for drugs.

     Lower courts applying Rodriguez have had the difficult task of determining whether a vehicle stop for a traffic violation was unnecessarily and unlawfully prolonged by police so that they could pursue unrelated suspicions, usually related to illegal drugs. While the courts often observe that there is no rigid time limit for determining when a detention has lasted longer than necessary to effectuate the purposes of the stop, they nevertheless often look to the total time of the stop and the length of what is deemed the unnecessary delay in determining whether the police conduct was lawful.

The Lawletter Vol 40 No 12

Mark Rieber, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     Two recent opinions in Arizona have come to different conclusions about the significance of the smell of marijuana in the determination of probable cause in light of the passage of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act ("AMMA"), albeit in very different factual situations. In State v. Sisco, 359 P.3d 1 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2015) the court held that with the passage of the AMMA, the mere scent of marijuana coming from a warehouse, standing alone, was insufficient to provide probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant to search the warehouse. The court observed that its holding accorded "with well-reasoned jurisprudence from several other jurisdictions." Id. at 8, ¶ 29 (citing cases).

     In State v. Cheatham, 353 P.3d 382 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2015), however, the court distinguished Sisco and held that the odor of burnt marijuana from inside a vehicle lawfully stopped by police provided probable cause to search the vehicle. The court explained that the AMMA does not decriminalize marijuana possession or use, but, instead, where applicable, it provides immunity for possession or use consistent with the immunity provision of the AMMA. Thus, the possession or use of marijuana remains a crime under Arizona law, albeit a crime subject to immunity if undertaken consistently with the AMMA. It is a defendant's burden to plead and prove immunity under the AMMA. "The fact that a registered patient under the AMMA with a valid registry identification card can affirmatively claim immunity for arrest, prosecution or penalty for possession or use of marijuana . . . does not eliminate the significance of the smell of marijuana as an indicator of criminal activity in this case." Id. at 386. Thus, the court concluded that the AMMA does not mean that the plain smell of marijuana is no longer sufficient to establish probable cause under Arizona laws.

The Lawletter Vol 40 No 8

Mark Rieber—Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     The Fourth Circuit recently held that the Government's warrantless procurement of historical cell site location information ("CSLI"), for an extended period of time, recorded by the defendant's cell phone service provider, was an unreasonable search in violation of the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights, even though the CSLI records were kept by cell phone companies in the ordinary course of business. United States v. Graham, Nos. 12-4659 & 12-4825, 2015 WL 4637931 (4th Cir. Aug. 5, 2015). The court stated that the examination of a person's historical CSLI can enable the Government to trace the movements of the cell phone and its user across public and private spaces and thereby discover the private activities and personal habits of the user. Id. at *8.

The Lawletter Vol 40 No 6

Doug Plank—Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently held in Ohio v. Clark, 135 S. Ct. 2173 (2015), that statements that children have made to teachers about possible abuse can be used as evidence at criminal trials arising from the alleged abuse, even if the children are not competent to testify in court.

     The facts in Clark showed that the preschool teacher of a three-year-old boy had noticed bruises on his body, and when she asked him how he had gotten the bruises, he told her that his mother's boyfriend had hit him when his mother was not home. The teacher notified the police, and the boyfriend was ultimately charged with child abuse. At the boyfriend's trial, the State introduced into evidence the statements that the child had made to the teacher, but the child did not testify, because of a statute precluding the testimony of children under 10 years old if they "appear incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts and transactions respecting which they are examined, or of relating them truly." Id. at 2178 (quoting Ohio R. Evid. 601(A)). The trial judge determined that pursuant to this rule, the child was not competent to testify.

The Lawletter Vol 40 No 5

Suzanne Bailey, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     Section 237(a)(2)(B)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA") provides:

     Any alien who at any time after admission has been convicted of a violation of (or a conspiracy or attempt to violate) any law or regulation of a State, the United States, or a foreign country relating to a controlled substance (as defined in section 802 of Title 21), other than a single offense involving possession for one's own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana, is deportable.

8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i).¹ In Mellouli v. Lynch, 135 S. Ct. 1980 (2015), the U.S. Supreme Court held that INA section 237(a)(2)(B)(i) was not triggered by a Kansas state law drug paraphernalia conviction for concealing four orange tablets in a sock. The defendant acknowledged that the tablets were unprescribed Adderall, but the criminal complaint did not identify the substance as Adderall. In so holding, the Court reversed the judgment of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Mellouli v. Holder, 719 F.3d 995 (8th Cir. 2013), which had affirmed the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") upholding the deportation order.

The Lawletter Vol 40 No 4

Mark Rieber, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

      In Commonwealth v. Canning, 28 N.E.3d 1156 (Mass. 2015), the court held as a matter of first impression that with the Commonwealth's new medical marijuana law ("the Act") in effect, if the police seek a warrant to search a property where they suspect an individual is cultivating or possesses marijuana, then they must first offer information sufficient to provide probable cause to believe that the individual is not properly registered under the Act to possess or cultivate the suspected substance. The court rejected the Commonwealth's argument that any cultivation of marijuana remained illegal even under the Act. That argument further asserted that to the extent that the Act permits a limited class of properly licensed or registered persons to grow marijuana, the existence of a license or registration is an affirmative defense for a defendant charged with unlawful cultivation to raise at trial—the Commonwealth is not obligated to disprove such a status in, or to conduct a search at the outset of, the investigation.

The Lawletter Vol 40 No 2

Doug Plank, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

      In a recent case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the court held that a search warrant obtained to search the defendant's residence for evidence of child pornography was not supported by probable cause, because the information supplied by the affiant was stale. United States v. Raymonda, 780 F.3d 105 (2d Cir. 2015). In seeking the warrant, the affiant referenced a single incident when someone had accessed thumbnail images of child pornography on the Internet from the defendant's Internet protocol address, which had occurred nine months earlier. The affidavit also included boilerplate language about how persons who look at and collect images of child pornography generally hold on to such images indefinitely. The court concluded that the evidence was equally consistent with an innocent user inadvertently stumbling upon a child pornography website, being horrified at what he saw, and promptly closing the window, and it held that absent any facts to show that the defendant was a collector of child pornography likely to hoard pornographic files, a single incident of access did not create a fair probability that child pornography would still be found on the defendant's computer months later.