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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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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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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)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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
Stone v. Powell decided 50 years ago today
Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), barring habeas review of Fourth Amendment claims was decided 50 years ago today.
TX1: Defendant had no REP in a package of drugs he never possessed and on another person
Defendant lacked standing to suppress 4,100 grams of ketamine seized from Brown because he never possessed the package, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in package of drugs carried by Brown, and the ketamine was recovered away from him during … Continue reading
DC: Officers were a good ways away from def when he fled without any apparent reason
“We now hold that the officers had the requisite reasonable articulable suspicion to justify their seizure of D.W. when they grabbed his leg. We reach that conclusion largely because D.W. ran upon the mere sight of police officers approaching from … Continue reading
Cell phone GPS: WaPo: This little blue dot on your phone is a revolutionary invention
WaPo: This little blue dot on your phone is a revolutionary invention by Katherine Dunn (“U.S. policy used to jam up GPS. Now, those signals beam into your pocket.”):
D.S.D.: No RS on totality when drug dog called for
The USMJ found that the officers abandoned the mission of the traffic stop (for Rodriguez purposes) when they called for the drug dog. So, the question is then whether there was reasonable suspicion at that point, and the answer is … Continue reading
Cal.4: State’s argument of exigency for DUI blood draw boiled down to “there’s always exigency”
“Ultimately, Mitchell’s references to ‘rival priorities,’ ‘more pressing needs,’ and ‘other pressing duties’ of police officers (588 U.S. at p. 856; see id. at pp. 840, 851), must be understood in the context of the opinion’s focus on an officer … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Standing has to be shown for the time of the search, not at some time in the past
“Earl was required to show, not that he had an expectation of privacy in the home at some time, but that he had that expectation at the time of the search. United States v. Brazel, 102 F.3d 1120, 1148 (11th … Continue reading
Fed.Cir.: VA’s determination here for mandatory in-home reassessment visits did not violate 4A under Wyman v. James
The VA’s determination here for mandatory in-home reassessment visits did not violate the Fourth Amendment under Wyman v. James. The statute gives the VA that discretion. Latham v. Sec’y of Veterans Affairs, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 17328 (Fed. Cir. June … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Full forensic search of a def’s university computer violated particularity and became a general warrant
The motion to suppress the search of devices for lack of particularity is granted, but the cloud search is not. Defendant is accused of hacking into student accounts on the University of Michigan’s computer system. The IT policy says that … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Cell phone tower dump was with GF; issue left open by Carpenter
A tower dump warrant is an issue left open in Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 316, and the police effort here was valid under the good faith exception. United States v. Campbell, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 146360 (E.D.N.Y. June 30, 2026):
OH6: RS not needed for dog sniff of car on curtilage during SW execution on house
Officers had a warrant for defendant’s house, and they didn’t need reasonable suspicion for a drug dog sniff of his car parked in the driveway. State v. Desarro, 2026-Ohio-1672, 2026 Ohio App. LEXIS 1692 (6th Dist. May 7, 2026).* “We … Continue reading
CA11: Yahoo not a govt actor in scanning emails for CSAM
Yahoo and NCMEC didn’t act as government agents when they scanned defendant’s email account for hash values of CSAM. They were not required to do so, but did so and warned customers they would. NCMEC passed on the information to … Continue reading
Treatise 25% off through 7/8
go here.
SCOTUS: Geofence warrants governed by Carpenter and are a search; remanded for resolution of issues (interesting take on third party doctrine, too)
A geofence warrant is a search because it captures location data. The mere collection of private data on the phone is not intended to be shared with third parties; essentially, a cell phone user has no control over that at … Continue reading
The Guardian: ‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears
The Guardian: ‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears by Jason Wilson (“An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s ‘department of government efficiency’ (Doge) has quietly … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Possibility of co-conspirators in mass murder justified emergency disclosure request to Apple, Verizon, and Facebook
In the Buffalo Tops Grocery mass shooting, the emergency disclosure request to Apple, Facebook, and Verizon was based on the possibility there were coconspirators. Even though defendant’s manifesto said he was acting alone, investigators didn’t have to take that at … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Flight out a window is exigency for police to enter
Defendant was wanted for a shooting incident in Flatbush, Brooklyn caught on video. When they came to where they suspected he was, he attempted to flee out a window. That gave exigency to enter. United States v. Richard, 2026 U.S. … Continue reading
W.D.Tenn.: A driveway isn’t always curtilage
A driveway isn’t always curtilage. If it’s not closed off, likely not. United States v. Lyons, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140145 (W.D. Tenn. June 24, 2026):
FL: Violation of knock-and-announce statute doesn’t require exclusion
A violation of the knock-and-announce statute for serving search warrants doesn’t require exclusion of the evidence under Hudson, which is followed. State v. Times, 2026 Fla. LEXIS 982 (June 25, 2026). “Idling” is not a crime for a passenger vehicle … Continue reading