Ohio Criminal Appeals Lawyer Blog

The Fourth Amendment protects you from the government, but not when it comes to abandoned property. The Ohio Supreme Court stated the obvious today when it said "[a] warrantless search of abandoned property does not violate the Fourth Amendment because any expectation of privacy is forfeited upon abandonment." The OSC took the case to reinstate the convictions and sentence of one Dennis Gould who had been sentenced to a couple life terms for sex crimes. The Court of Appeals had reversed the convictions because it believed Gould had not abandoned the hard drive that contained incriminating evidence. The Ohio Supreme Court says that Gould did abandon the hard drive as you can read in State v. Gould, 2012-Ohio-71, here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

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The Eighth District Court of Appeals reversed a conviction for CCW because the trial court should have granted the defendant's motion to suppress. The police were looking for a suspect just after a shooting took place. The police admitted they were going to stop anybody that was in the area. They stopped a male based on a very general description. The description was too general to justify an investigative stop. And the man they stopped did not even fit the general description. Even with the legitimate concern for officer safety because of the recent shooting, "those concerns standing alone did not warrant the indiscriminate stopping of any person without regard to a more specific description." Read State v. Stewart, 2011-Ohio-2910 here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

The State appealed after a Cuyahoga County trial judge granted a defendant's motion to suppress evidence found on his person after police stopped a van in which he was riding. Police stopped the van because an officer saw a man walk up to the van, make "hand to hand contact" with someone in the van, and then walk away. The police had a hunch a drug transaction had just taken place and they stopped the van. But it takes more than a hunch to justify a stop of a vehicle. The trial judge did not believe the officer could see what was exchanged or that anything was exchanged between the men. The officer testified that there was a "hand to hand" transaction, but labeling behavior this way is not enough to justify a stop for Fourth Amendment purposes. The trial judge found, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that the officer lacked "specific and articulable facts to support his reasonable belief that a crime may be occurring." The stop and search violated the Fourth Amendment and the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's decision to grant the defendant's motion to suppress. Read the decision in State v. Carmichael, 2011-Ohio-2921, here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"The police."
"The police who?"

(Noises start supposedly coming from inside the residence that sound like someone is frantically trying to dispose of contraband because the police knocked on their door.)

"The police who are going to break down your door because once we announced the police were at your door, you started making sounds in there like you were destroying evidence. Therefore, you created exigent circumstances and an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, and anything we see in plain view once we are get in there will be used as evidence against you at your trial."

Read the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Kentucky v. King, 131 S.Ct.1849, here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

Centerville Police got a tip that "Tony Curtis" was trespassing at the Chevy Chase Apartments. One officer blocked Curtis's vehicle with his police cruiser. Another officer took his ID and confirmed that "Tony Curtis" had not been trespassed from the Chevy Chase Apartments. The Centerville Police continued to block Curtis's car and they still had his driver's license. They had no "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that Curtis was engaged in criminal activity so they had no right to detain him at that point. Eventually they found contraband in his car.

Curtis filed a motion to suppress the evidence. The Montgomery County trial judge, Connie S. Price, overruled the motion to suppress because she said a reasonable person would have felt free to leave so Curtis was not detained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Second District Court of Appeals for Montgomery County reversed the decision of the trial judge since a reasonable person would not have felt free to leave under the circumstances and so Curtis was illegally detained when officers found the contraband. The contraband should have been suppressed because it was found as the result of the illegal detention. Read the decision here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

The Second District Court of Appeals of Clark County ruled that drugs seized from a defendant's home should have been suppressed because they were fruit of the poisonous tree. Springfield police had probable cause to arrest the defendant in January and February of 2008, because the defendant sold drugs to a confidential informant (CI). But they did not arrest him until April of 2008. The police arrested him without an arrest warrant even though there were no exigent circumstances requiring them to make the arrest without a warrant. Without an arrest warrant, the arrest was illegal and all evidence discovered as a result of the unlawful arrest was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Read the decision here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private attorney. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

A "Terry Frisk" or Terry pat-down search is a limited search for weapons. Sometimes police can do a pat-down search of a suspect for safety reasons. During the pat-down, if an officer feels an object which could be a weapon, the officer can make sure it is not a weapon. If the officer feels an object which is likely not a weapon but which could possibly be some other illegal item, the officer cannot manipulate the item or investigate further. This is because the limited Terry frisk allows a search only for weapons and it does not give police permission to conduct searches in violation of the Fourth Amendment. But if the officer conducts the pat-down and feels something which she immediately knows is contraband - just by feeling it through the clothing - the officer can retrieve it because at that point the officer has probable cause to make a lawful arrest.

In a case out of Shelby County, a police officer was conducting a proper Terry pat-down and he felt an object. It turned out to be drugs in a sock which were hidden in the defendant's coat. But the prosecutor never presented evidence that the officer conducting the pat-down thought the sock could be a weapon. And the prosecutor never presented evidence that the officer knew immediately that the item he was feeling was contraband. Therefore, the Third District Court of Appeals ruled that the defendant's motion to suppress should have been granted as you can read here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private attorney. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

Dayton criminal defense lawyer Vic Hodge of the Montgomery County Public Defender's Office successfully argued on appeal that Dayton police violated his client's rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States when they initiated an "investigatory detention" on a car without "a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity to warrant an investigatory detention under Terry." Dayton cops did a "Terry stop" on a car parked in the area of West Hillcrest and Salem Avenue in Dayton, Ohio, because they were checking on a report of a woman in a green shirt that appeared to be ill. They found a woman in a green shirt who did not appear ill, but who appeared to be arguing with someone in the parked car. With guns drawn, the police started barking orders at these citizens. It turns out the dude in the back seat had a gun that he hid under the driver's seat once police showed up. But the Dayton aw enforcement officers jumped the gun and violated the dude's Fourth Amendment Rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and so his motion to suppress should have been granted by Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Connie S. Price as you can read here.

If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private attorney. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.

On May 10, 2009, Amy Habel got onto her bicycle in front of a "known drug house" in a "high crime" area known for illegal drugs in Dayton, Ohio. A Dayton City Ordnance prohibits riding bicycles on the sidewalks and a violation of that is a minor misdemeanor. Amy rode her bike on the sidewalk. This gave Dayton police a reason to stop her. Amy did not have her identification on her. Instead of asking for her name, social security number, and date of birth, the Dayton police put her into the back of their police cruiser for their convenience until they determined her identity. This gave the officers an excuse to conduct a pat-down or frisk her for weapons. During the frisk, the police found illegal drugs. Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Frances H. McGee sustained Amy's motion to suppress the drugs because the police had no justification to conduct the pat-down search. The Second District Court of Appeals for Montgomery County, Ohio, affirmed that decision as you can read here.

A Wood County woman was going on a trip. She recruited a couple of people to feed her cats while she was away. One of them was a "friend" of the woman. He was supposed to enter the home to give the cats food and water. The woman also asked him to turn off a light at the top of the stairs and he went upstairs to do so. In the upstairs bathroom he saw what he believed to be illegal drugs. So he called the police and "consented" to their entry into the house. The police did not get a warrant initially and entered because they believed that the pet sitters had authority to consent to the search by police. The trial court overruled defendant's motion to suppress the drugs. The Sixth District Court of Appeals reversed the trial court because the pet sitter did not have the authority to consent to the entry and search by police officers. Read the decision in State v. Huntington, 2010-Ohio-3922, here.

In a 4 to 3 vote (which is often the score in criminal appeals decided by the Ohio Supreme Court lately), the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that "[t]he warrantless search of data within a cell phone seized incident to a lawful arrest is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment when the search is unnecessary for the safety of law-enforcement officers and there are no exigent circumstances."

Read the decision in the case of State v. Antwaun Smith, 2009-Ohio-6426, here and watch the oral argument here.

Today the Ohio Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal by the Montgomery County Prosecutor's Office. Darnell Jones had been convicted of possession of between 100 and 500 grams of cocaine and he was sentenced by Judge A. J. Wagner to 4 years in prison and about $3,500.00 in mandatory fines. He pleaded "no contest" after his motion to suppress had been denied by the trial court.

On appeal to the Second District Court of Appeals, Jones had his conviction and sentence reversed and the case was remanded to the trial court on January 9, 2009, 2009-Ohio-61. But the Montgomery County Prosecutor filed a Notice of Appeal in the Supreme Court of Ohio on February 25, 2009. The Ohio Supreme Court hears a case like this only if it decides to, and it decided to hear this one on June 30, 2009. Oral argument was held in the Ohio Supreme Court on November 3, 2009, and you can see that argument by clicking here.

Today the Ohio Supreme Court decided by a 4-3 vote that it was mistaken in accepting the appeal. Therefore the decision of the Second District Court of Appeals stands. The Second District Court of Appeals, as you can read by clicking here, decided that police could not look into the Aldi shopping bag Jones had left in the motel room without probable cause or a search warrant. The Court of Appeals ruled that the cocaine in the bag should have been suppressed by Judge Wagner at Jones' suppression hearing. Police saw Jones walk out of the motel room with the bag and then Jones put the bag back into the room. The Second District decided the police could enter the motel room but could not look into the bag.

Supreme Court Justices Lundberg Stratton, O'Connor, and Cupp, disagree with the reasoning of the Court of Appeals so they would have heard this case in the Ohio Supreme Court to make it "right." But as Justices Moyer and O'Donnell pointed out during oral argument, this case did not raise any new issues of law the Supreme Court had to address and the prosecutor agreed. The role of the Ohio Supreme Court is not to "fix" what it thinks the Courts of Appeals do "wrong." And that is really what the Montgomery County Prosecutor wanted the Supreme Court to do here. Right or wrong, the decision of the Second District Court of Appeals in this case stands and Darnell Jones walks.

Ohio's Second District Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the trial court which overruled the defendant's motion to suppress evidence.  The Court of Appeals found that the defendant was arrested and the arrest was not supported by probable cause.  Therefore, any contraband found after the illegal arrest should have been suppressed.  Click here for the decision.

Upon remand, the State did not pursue prosecution.

So said Ohio's Second District Court of Appeals.  Police collected drugs and drug paraphernalia

in a dorm room after Resident Assistants discovered marijuana after a search they were conducting before Homecoming.  While the search by the Resident Assistants did not implicate the Fourth Amendment (since they were acting solely as private citizens), the police violated the Fourth Amendment when they entered the dorm room without a warrant to retrieve the contraband the Resident Assistants collected.  Upon remand, the charges were dismissed by the State.  You can see the decision by clicking here.