Must the State compensate individuals from whom property is seized as evidence? Pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officers routinely obtain warrants under a "probable cause" standard to seize items that may contain evidence of a crime. This is a taking of private property for public use (i.e., the public interest in prosecuting crimes) and therefore, pursuant to the Fifth Amendment, "just compensation" should be paid to the owner. I have come across examples in which police seize items from third parties (e.g., computer or video systems that may have captured evidence of a serious crime by unrelated suspects). As best I can tell, in practice so long as police assert that the seized item is potentially useful in their investigation of a crime (which, if serious but unsolved, may never be formally abandoned), they can avoid returning seized property – even if the ownership is uncontested and the items are not contraband. I.e., even when the owner is effectively permanently deprived of their property, I have not found any practical legal mechanism for them to seek compensation. (The only redress I have found is a right to petition for return of property, which is apparently denied so long as police assert the property has value in a criminal investigation or prosecution.) Are there any particular laws, rules, or procedures that provide for payment of compensation in these cases?
This is a good question, which I am going to answer from a practical perspective, rather than a theoretical one, which would probably justify a law review article (applications of the takings clause to criminal justice fact patterns is actually one of my pet areas of legal scholarship, but a lot of it calls for dramatic changes in established practice and precedents reached from other perspectives, making it impractical to pursue in real life). I recently had a case along these lines in my office where my client's property was seized as evidence in a criminal case against a third-party. The crime involved a gun shop where all of the guns that were in the possession of the shop owner for repairs at the time of the bust (i.e. as bailments), including ours worth several thousand dollars in addition to having some sentimental value, were seized as evidence of charges against a shop owner who was fencing stolen goods, making sales to felons off the books, falsifying excise tax returns, etc. He seemed legitimate and had been in business for many years in what was not a fly by night operation. He had all of the proper licenses. Who knew we were dealing with a crook? In that case, we intervened on behalf of our client in the primary case to seek the physical return of the property (basically a replevin claim), as have others affected by the bust. It took a few months and some legal fees, but we prevailed without too much effort, as have the other intervenors. Generally speaking, to make a 5th Amendment claim, you would have to show a total taking and move into some legal gray areas in this context, while it is usually hard for authorities to show a continuing need for possession of third-party property in the face of a demand for its return, especially when photography and other scientific tools can document the evidence in great detail these days. In that case, showing that our client's particular gun was not involved in any illegitimate transaction also simultaneously made it less important as evidence, although that would not necessarily be true in general in these kinds of situations. There is a pending case in Colorado posing similar issues, where a suburban police department essentially destroyed a guy's home in order to catch a felon with no relation to the homeowner whatsoever, who had fled into it and taken refuge there. But, that case, as far as I know, has not yet been resolved on the merits.
Anyone can be arrested, as long as the police (and in some cases, anyone) have probable cause to do so. This generally includes two points: You are in the process of committing a criminal act The police have probable cause, generally through evidence, that you are in the process of, about to, or have committed a criminal act. This usually requires obtaining a warrant for the arrest. However, it's important not to conflate searches with arrest. Arrests are when you are being taken into custody for the reasons mentioned above. Searches are when your personal belongings (i.e. property), are searched to collect evidence. It is not up to police to convict someone. This is the job of the judicial system. There's a bit of terminology here: convictions basically mean being found guilty of an offence. Police don't have the ability to convict someone of an offence. They do have the ability to arrest, and charge with an offence. To charge someone with a crime basically means to accuse them of having done something. Now let's get to the actual crime. Since you haven't mentioned a specific jurisdiction, I'm going to use Canadian cases and law, but in general, it should apply worldwide. If the police have reason to believe that you are engaging in unlawful hacking-related behaviour, then they have the authority to arrest you. They simply need to have a reasonable belief that you are engaged in the crime. Something such as connecting you with an IP address and connecting that you were online at the time is enough. If the police need to find out more information (which they generally do, to investigate further into the matter) - they can obtain a search warrant afterwards. With this, they can legally search into your computer, and investigate. Any evidence that they collect can be used in court. I've recently done some research into cyber crimes. One rather infamous case involved the attack on multiple large scale websites, including Dell, Yahoo, and Amazon, in 2000. This sparked a large scale investigations, between the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the FBI. The attacks were claimed by some to cause nearly 1.7 billion dollars of damage. The hacker was charged with 58 different offences. You can imply from the linked article that he was arrested before his computer was searched.
The general rule is that a warrant is required to enter private property (absent constitutional case law exceptions to the warrant requirement such as exigent circumstances and consent), and that a warrant is available only when there is probable cause that a crime has been committed. Whether the neglect or abuse of an animal constitutes a crime within the meaning of this 4th Amendment requirement could potentially be seen as a gray area, since historically, in the absence of statutory authority in early common law, an owner of an animal had absolute authority to deal with his or her property (the animal) as the owner of the animal saw fit. The purpose of the statute is to clarify that this conduct by an animal owner constitutes a crime for 4th Amendment search and seizure purposes by making a state law determination that it is a crime, which states can do, even though they can't change the constitutional requirement under the 4th Amendment. Also, just because a state can authorize law enforcement to get a warrant for any search authorized by the U.S. Constitution, that doesn't mean it has to allow law enforcement to do so in every case where it is constitutional for the state to do so. The duty to get a warrant for law enforcement to enter onto private property at all arises not only from other state statutes, but also from the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (as incorporated to apply against state and local governments though the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). But, the constitutional requirement has case law exceptions, so it isn't required in all circumstances. In particular, exigent circumstances, and the consent to entry exceptions, which are allowed by constitutional criminal procedure case law, could apply to the requirement to get a warrant in the first place. But, law enforcement needs to have the authority to search at all with a warrant under state law, for an exception to the warrant requirement to be relevant. This statute appears to carry out that purpose by authorizing searches for this particular purpose. For what it is worth, it is not the best drafted possible statute to achieve this objective, and it could have been written to be more clear, but it still gets the job done. So, in answer to the top-line question, no, I wouldn't read this statute as requiring a warrant in every possible circumstance in order to go onto private property to check on an animal, although a warrant would be required in every case where an exception to the warrant requirement under 4th Amendment case law does not apply. Section 578. Is an animal related statute rather than people. The people involved are the property owners. The property owner's rights in their real property are potentially infringed if there is a warrantless entry. The human beings owning the animals are potentially violating a law which the State of Missouri wants law enforcement officers to be able to enforce (the relevant laws are the state animal cruelty and agricultural laws expressly referenced in the statute, so, it is irrelevant that &quot;Barry County Missouri has no animal control laws or leash laws&quot;). Among other things these statutes make it a crime if a person &quot;Has custody or ownership of an animal and fails to provide adequate care[.]&quot; As the question claims that: &quot;The definition &quot;Adequate care&quot; is vague as well.&quot; But the question also notes that: &quot;The 578 statute has been challenged for being unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary which was overruled but that was serious abuse case.&quot; The state has a right to decide what is and is not illegal. It is not prohibited from banning treatment of animals that is not serious abuse. The state has every right to make it a crime to fail to provide adequate care for an animal, even if that failure to provide adequate car does not constitute severe abuse. Also, keep in mind that a lawful search requires only probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and a good faith belief that an exception to the warrant requirement is present. If the law enforcement officer has a good faith belief that the animal will die or seriously suffer or be hidden by the owner in the time that the law enforcement officer reasonably thinks that it will take to get a warrant, the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement applies. The fact that the lawful search later reveals that a crime was no committed does not mean that the search was improper. A mere belief that an animal was abused or neglected and that exigent circumstance were present with a reasonable factual basis (e.g. a tip from a neighbor who seems credible and claims to have personal knowledge of the facts) will usually suffice to establish probable cause. So warrant needed or not? and if so, what legal action can be taken for trespass, rights violations under color of law etc. if any? If there is a search without a warrant or probable cause was not present, and an exception to the warrant requirement does not apply, and the property owner believes that their 4th Amendment rights were intentionally violated by law enforcement in the warrantless search in violation of clearly established law to the contrary, a civil lawsuit against the law enforcement officer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 can be brought in state or federal court. The employer of the law enforcement officer can be sued as well, under the same statute, if the warrantless search in violation of the clearly established constitutional right was made pursuant to an express policy of the law enforcement officer's employer. But the fact that the law enforcement officer violated someone's rights does not automatically make the law enforcement officer's employer civilly liable for the wrong. In most U.S. states, law enforcement officers are protected by state law governmental immunity from common law trespass lawsuits for their conduct while carrying out their official duties, but I haven't checked specifically to see if that is the case in Missouri. A claim of a 4th Amendment violation can also be a ground for suppressing evidence obtained with an unlawful search when defending a prosecution under some ordinance or statute that relies upon that evidence.
Yes and No See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967): What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. The glass has clearly been "knowingly exposed" and if that glass was, on the normal methods of examination by the officer (sight, smell etc.), evidence of a crime then it would be able to be used as evidence. However, any DNA on that glass is not "knowingly exposed" - finding the DNA requires a laboratory, specialised equipment and trained technicians.
It depends on the actual content of the tip and to what degree the police believe the tip to be reliable given the totality of the circumstances. I'll give two examples where tips (one actually anonymous, one deemed anonymous) were found to give probable cause or reasonable suspicion to support a search or seizure. Illinois v Gates 462 U.S. 213 (1983) established that the test for whether there is probable cause for issuance of a warrant is based on the "totality of the circumstances". In Gates, police received an anonymous letter disclosing that the defendant was selling drugs, along with some predictions about the defendant's future activity. After verifying that some of the predictions were correct, the police obtained a search warrant for the home. The court observed that "under the "totality of the circumstances" analysis, corroboration of details of an informant's tip by independent police work is of significant value." Navarette v California 572 U.S. ___ (2014) reiterated that "reasonable suspicion takes into account the totality of the circumstances, and depends upon both the content of information possessed by police and its degree of reliability. An anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates sufficient reliability, but may do so under appropriate circumstances" (quoting from the syllabus, with internal citations and quotations removed). In Navarette, an 911 caller asserted that a truck with a particular appearance was driving erratically and had run her off the road. The court said: "Even assuming for present purposes that the 911 call was anonymous, we conclude that the call bore adequate indicia of reliability for the officer to credit the caller’s account. The officer was therefore justified in proceeding from the premise that the truck had, in fact, caused the caller’s car to be dangerously diverted from the highway." They also observed that "a 911 call has some features that allow for identifying and tracing callers, and thus provide some safeguards against making false reports with immunity."
The wording is a little confusing, but I interpret it as saying the following: Normally, discovery in a court case allows either party to demand documents from the other, to be used as evidence. However, our courts have exceptions; certain documents might be 'privileged against discovery', meaning they couldn't be demanded in that way. If one of those exceptions would apply to a document under court rules, then you can't request it under Freedom of Access either. To know what those privileges are, and how broadly they apply, you'll have to consult the rules of court procedure for your state.
One legal notion of &quot;abandoned property&quot; pertains to tenants leaving things behind after they leave – clearly not applicable. A second regards e.g. bank accounts that haven't been used for a while, again, clearly not relevant. The law regarding goods dropped in the street, and so on, is here. The law starts by saying Any person who finds a thing lost is not bound to take charge of it, unless the person is otherwise required to do so by contract or law, but when the person does take charge of it he or she is thenceforward a depositary for the owner, with the rights and obligations of a depositary for hire. Any person or any public or private entity that finds and takes possession of any money, goods, things in action, or other personal property, or saves any domestic animal from harm, neglect, drowning, or starvation, shall, within a reasonable time, inform the owner, if known, and make restitution without compensation, except a reasonable charge for saving and taking care of the property. Any person who takes possession of a live domestic animal shall provide for humane treatment of the animal. Also relevant is the fact that stealing lost property is a crime: One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft. There is no specific legal definition of &quot;lost&quot;, so the courts would look at the facts and ask whether the property was indeed &quot;lost&quot; – clearly, it is not. Property that is intentionally placed somewhere and is unattended is not &quot;lost&quot;, and there is no law declaring open season on unattended property. This is true of bicycles, as well as unofficial ballot boxes.
It isn't clear that the example you give is illegal police action, but let's assume that it is for the sake of this question, since it doesn't affect the analysis. If possession is not compelled, then it is voluntary.