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- S.D.Ohio: Patdown on stop for fictitious tags was reasonable
- TX: 18 year old’s mother had apparent authority to consent to search of room
- LATimes: Federal judge blocks ICE from making racially discriminatory stops in Southern California
- E.D.Okla.: Fire scene suppressed because of failure to show timeline for Fire Marshal entry
- E.D.Mich.: Officer seeing a firearm in the car on a stop justified extending the detention
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
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Section 1983 Blog -
"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
S.D.Tex.: Compelling def to give up combination to safe during search violated 5A
Compelling defendant to give up the combination of a safe in his shared dwelling to search it under a warrant violated the Fifth Amendment. United States v. Villarreal-Resendiz, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174690 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 5, 2026):
CA5: Ptf’s forced drug test wasn’t justified by exigent circumstances
Plaintiff’s claim of being forced to do a drug test but not for protection of the children she cared for stated a claim and survived summary judgment. Knighton v. Benton Cty., 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 23741 (5th Cir. Aug. 6, … Continue reading
IN: Officers leaving car door open to facilitate drug dog entry into car violated 4A
During a traffic stop, officers left defendant’s car door open apparently so the drug dog would go in, and it did. This entry violated the Fourth Amendment. Boyd v. State, 2026 Ind. App. LEXIS 263 (Aug. 5, 2026). The inventory … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: A safe could be searched under a child porn SW
On a child pornography search warrant, search of a locked safe was reasonable. United States v. Villarreal-Resendiz, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174690 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 5, 2026). Stopping over the stop line was reasonable suspicion for this stop. United States … Continue reading
CA7: Smoking marijuana in public is still an arrestable offense; def’s backpack could be searched incident to it
Smoking marijuana in public is still an arrestable offense, and defendant’s backpack could be searched incident to it. United States v. Worku, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 23239 (7th Cir. Aug. 4, 2026).* Because the stop and frisk was reasonable, the … Continue reading
GA: Def in sex assault case has no standing to challenge alleged victim’s rape exam
“And here, it strains credulity for Young to claim that he has any standing to challenge the lawfulness of the victim’s sexual-assault examination.” Young v. State, 2026 Ga. App. LEXIS 401 (Aug. 5, 2026).* Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not … Continue reading
FL3: Frisk can occur immediately after stop
The stop was with reasonable suspicion, and the frisk can occur immediately. The trial court’s holding it couldn’t has no support in law. State v. Lyles, 2026 Fla. App. LEXIS 5911 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 5, 2026). The CI was … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Drug dog sticking head partially into open door area was at least with reasonable suspicion
“[W]here a dog only partially and briefly pokes their head into the interior of a vehicle, as Cody did here, such does not constitute a search. Fellmy, 165 F.4th at 506 (citing Caballes, 543 U.S. at 408-09) (finding a dog … Continue reading
D.Me.: Failure of drug dog to alert is a factor in totality
The failure of the drug dog to alert doesn’t completely undermine probable case, but it is a factor in the totality of circumstances. Here, the government didn’t meet its burden. United States v. Presby, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 172828 (D. … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Package covered by anticipatory warrant was moved to another house, and exigency permitted warrantless entry to seize
In this anticipatory warrant case, the package was delivered to the target residence but then moved to another residence. That created exigent circumstances for entry without a warrant. Officers also did a protective sweep and retreated to get a search … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: SW request to search cell phone seized two months earlier was unreasonable
“The government seeks a warrant to search two cellular phones that have been in its possession for more than two months since the time to execute a prior search warrant lapsed. In United States v. Smith, 967 F.3d 198 (2d … Continue reading
IN Tax: 4A claim over order to enter for tax assessment moot where it didn’t happen
There was an order to enter the taxpayer’s property for an assessment; however, the entry never occurred, so the Fourth Amendment issue is moot. Bolte v. Dubois Cty. Assessor, 2026 Ind. Tax LEXIS 35 (T.C. Aug. 3, 2026). “The record … Continue reading
Reason: Kansas Lawsuit: ALPRs Turn a License Plate Into the ‘Functional Equivalent’ of a ‘GPS Tracking Device’
Reason: Kansas Lawsuit: ALPRs Turn a License Plate Into the ‘Functional Equivalent’ of a ‘GPS Tracking Device’ by Jacob Sullum (“The Kansas Justice Institute argues that Wichita’s ‘warrantless ALPR dragnet surveillance program’ violates the state constitution’s privacy protections.”).
S.D.W.Va.: Admission to a little marijuana in backpack didn’t justify search of her car trunk
Defendant’s admission to the officers she had a little marijuana in her backpack didn’t justify a search of the trunk. United States v. Bowling, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 169576 (S.D. W. Va. July 30, 2026). Plaintiff’s § 1983 false arrest … Continue reading
CA7: Controlled buy justified stop, dog sniff, and search
The controlled buy off defendant gave probable cause to search his car after he left it, irrespective of an alleged pretextual traffic stop and use of a drug dog. United States v. Randle, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 22657 (7th Cir. … Continue reading
WaPo: How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking
WaPo: How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking by Drew Harwell, Douglas MacMillan and Aaron Schaffer (“Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were … Continue reading
Cal.1: Search condition for mental health diversion was within court’s discretion
The trial court acted within its statutory discretion imposing a search condition on defendant during his mental health diversion. His criminal history justified it. Thompson v. Superior Court, 2026 Cal. App. LEXIS 459 (1st Dist. July 30, 2026). One defendant … Continue reading
OH1: Even with MJ use being legal, driving under influence isn’t
While small amounts of marijuana are legal in Ohio, driving under the influence is not, so the smell of burnt marijuana in a vehicle is probable cause. Also, a blunt was seen in the ashtray. State v. Sawyer, 2026-Ohio-2913 (1st … Continue reading