Kidd is scheduled to take a one-way, first class flight (costing approximately $5,000) to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, March 16, 2003, at approximately 6:00 EST. He is scheduled to fly from Dulles International Airport to JFK International Airport in New York and then to Saudi Arabia.... It is believed that if al–Kidd travels to Saudi Arabia, the United States Government will be unable to secure his presence at trial via subpoena.
Today, I am announcing several steps that we are taking to enhance our ability to protect the United States from the threat of terrorist aliens. These measures form one part of the department's strategy to prevent terrorist attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the street ... Aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks.
• Ashcroft's immediate subordinate, FBI Director Mueller, testified before Congress that al-Kidd's arrest (rather than, say, the obtaining of the evidence he was supposedly going to provide against Al–Hussayen) constituted a “major success[ ]” in “identifying and dismantling terrorist networks.” Mueller Testimony, supra. Cf. KRL, 384 F.3d at 1114–15 (prosecutor contemporaneously admits on radio program that follow-up search warrant was part of “a stand-alone investigation”).
In conducting qualified immunity analysis ..., courts do not merely ask whether, taking the plaintiff's allegations as true, the plaintiff's clearly established *965 rights were violated. Rather, courts must consider as well whether each defendant's alleged conduct violated the plaintiff's clearly established rights. For instance, an allegation that Defendant A violated a plaintiff's clearly established rights does nothing to overcome Defendant B's assertion of qualified immunity, absent some allegation that Defendant B was responsible for Defendant A's conduct.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
[T]he term “probable cause,” according to its usual acceptation, means less than evidence which would justify condemnation; and, in all cases of seizure, has a fixed and well known meaning. It imports a seizure made under circumstances which warrant suspicion. In this, its legal sense, the Court must understand the term to have been used by Congress.
Whether that arrest was constitutionally valid depends in turn upon whether, at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it—whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense.
This Court repeatedly has explained that “probable cause” to justify an arrest *967 means facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge that are sufficient to warrant a prudent person, or one of reasonable caution, in believing, in the circumstances shown, that the suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit an offense.
the stop's primary law enforcement purpose was not to determine whether a vehicle's occupants were committing a crime, but to ask vehicle occupants, as members of the public, for their help in providing information about a crime in all likelihood committed by others. The police expected the information elicited to help them apprehend, not the vehicle's occupants, but other individuals.
To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom. But confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to gaol, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.
[t]here are special costs to subjective inquiries of this kind.... Judicial inquiry into subjective motivation therefore may entail broad-ranging discovery and the deposing of numerous persons, including an official's professional colleagues. Inquiries of this kind can be peculiarly disruptive of effective government.
a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant. In other words, the regulatory statute must perform the two basic functions of a warrant: it must advise the owner of the commercial premises *987 that the search is being made pursuant to the law and has a properly defined scope, and it must limit the discretion of the inspecting officers.
Respondents, however, contend ... that because the Customs officers were accompanied by a Louisiana State Policeman, and were following an informant's tip that a vessel in the ship channel was thought to be carrying marijuana, they may not rely on the statute authorizing boarding or inspection of the vessel's documentation. This line of reasoning was rejected in a similar situation in Scott ... and we again reject it.
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