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Recent Posts
- E.D.Okla.: Fire scene suppressed because of failure to show time line for Fire Marshal entry
- E.D.Mich.: Officer seeing a firearm in the car on a stop justified extending the detention
- TN: Passenger’s DL could be checked during traffic stop
- E.D.Mich.: A case dealing with the Sixth Circuit’s rebuttable presumption guns are usually kept at home; and the GFE swallows the rule
- E.D.Va.: Carpenter and Chatrie did not completely vitiate the third-party doctrine; it applies to social media account records
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com
Search and Seizure (6th ed. 2025)
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-26,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 600,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 50,000 posts since 2003 (29,000 on WordPress as of 12/31/25) -
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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own 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."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
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“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969) -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.”
– John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper -
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948) -
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
Website design by Wally Waller, Colorado Springs. 
Author Archives: Hall
E.D.Okla.: Fire scene suppressed because of failure to show time line for Fire Marshal entry
The USMJ recommends that this fire scene search be suppressed for the government’s failure to provide a time line of when the Fire Marshal entered after the fire was extinguished to show that it was justified. An explosive device was … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Officer seeing a firearm in the car on a stop justified extending the detention
The officer seeing a firearm in the car on a traffic stop justified extending the detention. United States v. Cuba, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244700 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 26, 2026). Taking fingerprints during a lawful arrest is not a Fourth … Continue reading
TN: Passenger’s DL could be checked during traffic stop
During a traffic stop, the driver and passenger could be ordered out of the car and their DLs checked. The passenger was thus properly arrested on an outstanding warrant. State v. Hurst, 2026 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 723 (Oct. 27, … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: A case dealing with the Sixth Circuit’s rebuttable presumption guns are usually kept at home; and the GFE swallows the rule
United States v. Day, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 245359 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 27, 2026)*:
E.D.Va.: Carpenter and Chatrie did not completely vitiate the third-party doctrine; it applies to social media account records
Carpenter and Chatrie did not completely vitiate the third-party doctrine. The third-party doctrine still applies to social media account records. United States v. Brooke, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 245217 (E.D. Va. Oct. 26, 2026). There was reasonable suspicion defendant was … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Computer SW was overbroad but necessary, and GFE saves it
This computer record search warrant was overbroad but not so bad the good faith exception shouldn’t apply. A lot of records had to be seized to be analyzed. United States v. Meadows, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244175 (E.D. Ky. Oct. … Continue reading
N-M: PC close, but there; exclusion has no deterrent value
The probable cause for this military search warrant was close and still existed, but exclusion would have no deterrent value. Mil. R. Evid. 311(a)(3) & 311(d)(5)(A). Moreover, omissions from the affidavit would have only strengthened the probable cause showing. United … Continue reading
Signal Akron: Akron blocks out-of-state searches from its Flock surveillance network
Signal Akron: Akron blocks out-of-state searches from its Flock surveillance network by Doug Brown (“Pause comes after revelation of thousands of immigration searches using information captured by license plate-reading cameras.”)
D.Kan.: DoL’s SDT was reasonable in scope and within the agency’s authority
The Department of Labor’s subpoena duces tecum was reasonable in scope and within the agency’s authority. United States DOL v. Smith, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243413 (D. Kan. Sep. 21, 2026):*
CA6: One who manages another’s social media account doesn’t have standing in it
One who manages another’s social media account doesn’t have standing in it. United States v. Lewis, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 31996 (6th Cir. Oct. 21, 2026). The state’s theory in response to the motion to suppress based on an arrest … Continue reading
NYTimes: Trump’s ‘Smart Wall’ of A.I. Cameras Is Watching the Border, and More Than a Million People
NYTimes: Trump’s ‘Smart Wall’ of A.I. Cameras Is Watching the Border, and More Than a Million People by Bora Erden & Nicholas Nehamas (with hi-res cameras that can look inside houses).
S.D.Ohio: Affidavit alleged only that drug dealers use cell phones, and that’s not PC; but GFE saves it
The affidavit for warrant for a cell phone relies entirely on the general use of cell phones in the drug trade. There’s no more, and that’s not probable cause. Still, however, the good faith exception saves it. United States v. … Continue reading
Reason: Iowa Voters Don’t Want Police or Flock Tracking Their Cars. Politicians Are Still Catching Up.
Reason: Iowa Voters Don’t Want Police or Flock Tracking Their Cars. Politicians Are Still Catching Up. by Davide Mamone (“Opposition to license plate surveillance is crossing party lines in Iowa, where police departments have built an extensive camera network with … Continue reading
Reason: The Founders Warned Against Secret Arrests. ICE Is Testing That Principle.
Reason: The Founders Warned Against Secret Arrests. ICE Is Testing That Principle. by Autumn Billings (“A lawsuit filed by The Marshall Project argues that ICE must disclose the names of immigrant detainees because you can’t check a government that won’t … Continue reading
UT: Lack of a bodycam doesn’t make officer not believable
The lack of a bodycam video of the search doesn’t mean the officer can’t be believed. On the totality, there was probable cause. The trial court found the officer credible, and that gets deference on appeal. The state statute on … Continue reading
W.D.La.: Gant search incident permitted for arrest for violation of supervised release terms
Defendant was stopped for a warrant for violation of the terms of his supervised release. A search incident of his car was permissible under Gant. United States v. Briggs, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 242751 (W.D. La. Oct. 22, 2026). Defendant … Continue reading
VA: Search incident between def’s shorts and underwear was reasonable
Search incident inside defendant’s shorts was reasonable where it didn’t become a strip search or exposed his genitals. Smith v. Commonwealth, 2026 Va. App. LEXIS 550 (Oct. 20, 2026) (unpublished). Plaintiff was taken to a mental health unit based on … Continue reading
Reason: Border Cops Seize Nurse’s Phone Filled With Psychiatric Patient Information
Reason: Border Cops Seize Nurse’s Phone Filled With Psychiatric Patient Information by Matthew Petti (“CBP allegedly told the nurse that “your lawyer cannot do anything” and agents can take the data ‘the easy way or the hard way.’”) Reason: The … Continue reading
MI: Handcuffing uncooperative def at scene of accident wasn’t unreasonable
Defendant was handcuffed because he was uncooperative during basic questions about the accident he was walking away from, where the officer believed he was involved. On the totality, this was not unreasonable. The officer here was responding to an OnStar … Continue reading
S.D.Ga.: Def’s car in driveway next to sidewalk was not on curtilage
Defendant’s vehicle in his driveway 2-3 steps from the sidewalk was not on the curtilage. United States v. Polk, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 238708 (S.D. Ga. Oct. 19, 2026). “The Court finds, based on the totality of the circumstances, that … Continue reading