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- D.Alaska: With a SW for a cell phone, officers should ask, not make, def to open the phone with his finger
- CA2: Statement there was CP on computer was PC to seize it for a SW
- S.D.Iowa: Cell phone search for info on drugs and guns didn’t need second warrant when sex offenses stumbled upon
- N.D.N.Y.: DNA by SW in FL in CODIS could be used in NY; defense counsel not IAC for not making def’s argument
- D.Ariz.: Smell of alcohol in the car on Navajo Nation was PC
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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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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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"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
CA9: Chalking tires not a 4A violation
Disagreeing with the Sixth Circuit, the Ninth holds that chalking tires does not violate the Fourth Amendment. It was going on for nearly a century before anyone challenged it. Verdun v. City of San Diego, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 29803 … Continue reading
MO: Def’s arrest violated state law but not the 4A, so it was not unreasonable
“This appeal presents the question of whether a police officer necessarily violates the Fourth Amendment when he makes an arrest that is prohibited by state law. Relying upon Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164, 128 S. Ct. 1598, 170 L. … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: Right to livestream traffic stops debated at Fourth Circuit
Courthouse News Service: Right to livestream traffic stops debated at Fourth Circuit by Erika Williams (“A shouting match erupted between a judge and an attorney at a hearing over whether passengers in cars pulled over by police can broadcast their … Continue reading
IN: Male occupant’s consent to search his house didn’t include the purse of a woman that lived there
Male occupant’s consent to search his house didn’t include the purse of a woman that lived there. The officer could not reasonably believe that he had apparent authority over that. Cinamon v. State, 2022 Ind. App. LEXIS 345 (Oct. 25, … Continue reading
techdirt: Investigation: Child Protective Services Agencies Nearly Always Blow Off Warrant Requirements To Enter Homes
techdirt: Investigation: Child Protective Services Agencies Nearly Always Blow Off Warrant Requirements To Enter Homes by Tim Cushing:
The Guardian: California sheriff’s office stops Black drivers five times more often than white people, data shows
The Guardian: California sheriff’s office stops Black drivers five times more often than white people, data shows by Sam Levin (“A new report says sheriffs’ patrols spend more time conducting racially biased stops than they do responding to calls for … Continue reading
CA6: Search of building next door to def’s building wasn’t reason to suppress def’s search
Officers with a search warrant for 8537 Old Rutledge Pike, Knox County, Tennessee also searched what they believed was an outbuilding at 8533 with a power cord running between them with no indication it was different property. At worst, this … Continue reading
N.D.Okla.: Local officer’s arresting in Indian country prior to McGirt was with good faith
A local officer’s arrest of an Indian in Indian country prior to McGirt was with good faith. United States v. Little, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 192907 (N.D. Okla. Oct. 24, 2022). Drug interdiction officers working the Detroit Greyhound station because … Continue reading
PA: State’s statement of issues for review didn’t include the precise issue argued so it’s waived
The state in its statement of issues below addressed probable cause but did not mention inevitable discovery. That amounted to a waiver. “The inevitable discovery doctrine is not a subsidiary issue to a claim of adequate probable cause to support … Continue reading
FL2: Def counsel not ineffective where search evidence not objected to had no apparent prejudice to case
Defense counsel was ineffective in not moving to suppress one piece of evidence, but defendant can’t show he was prejudiced by it on the case as a whole. Szewczyk v. State, 2022 Fla. App. LEXIS 7180 (Fla. 2d DCA Oct. … Continue reading
VI: Anonymous tip given observing altercation was sufficient for stop when substantially corroborated at scene
The detailed anonymous tip here was sufficient to support a stop when it was substantially corroborated at the scene. The caller observed an altercation in real time and described the two vehicles involved. It was at the top of a … Continue reading
CA9: AZ GOP head denied injunction for Jan.6 committee subpoena for call logs in 1A challenge
The head of the Arizona GOP sued the January 6th Committee to block a subpoena to T-Mobile for her call records, not content, on First Amendment Free Association grounds. On appeal, the injunction is denied. This is similar to Eastman’s … Continue reading
techdirt: Mississippi Courts Are Helping Cops Keep Search Warrants Out Of The Public’s Hands
techdirt: Mississippi Courts Are Helping Cops Keep Search Warrants Out Of The Public’s Hands by Tim Cushing (“No-knock warrants remain under fire as they continue to needlessly increase the death toll of residents who often have no idea who’s violently … Continue reading
CO: Basement apt could be searched on SW for premises based on CP coming from IP address of premises
“When Dhyne encountered police outside the house, he told them that he (1) rented a separate unit in the basement and (2) used the same IP address as the subscriber. In our view, this second piece of information is critical. … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: Question is not actual reliability of police database, it is reasonableness of reliance on it
“As soon as [the officer] accessed [the database from the police car], he saw an alert suggesting that Defendant was armed. Defendant argues that Davis could not be sure of the accuracy of this information, but that hardly matters. Reasonable … Continue reading
IA: Breaking cell phone in half and throwing it out window of moving car shows abandonment
Removing a cell phone’s battery, breaking the phone in half, and throwing it out the window of a moving car is indicative of abandonment. State v. Hurdel, 2022 Iowa App. LEXIS 784 (Oct. 19, 2022). “While this [KC ordinance] provision … Continue reading
WaPo: They got a Ring doorbell alert, then opened fire on a bystander, police say
WaPo: They got a Ring doorbell alert, then opened fire on a bystander, police say by Justine McDaniel (“The incident may provide an extreme example of the type of neighborhood vigilantism sometimes cited by critics of doorbell cameras, the benefits … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Single telephone call 6 weeks before drug SW was stale
A single telephone call 6 weeks before the search warrant was sought was stale. Nothing in between. “In the context of drug crimes, ‘information goes stale very quickly “because drugs are usually sold and consumed in a prompt fashion.”’” And, … Continue reading