Archives
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Recent Posts
- 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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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
N.D.Cal.: If bumping def on a bike was a seizure, it ended when he ran away
The officer bumped defendant on a bike. It was potentially a seizure, but “Under Hodari D. and Torres, the seizure thus ended when Daniels got up and began running down the driveway.” United States v. Daniels, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA7: Despite govt’s not raising abandonment, the court finds it anyway
The government conceded no abandonment and sought other exceptions to the warrant requirement. The court of appeals finds abandonment anyway because the record is clear. In addition, an allegation of a Franks violation fails without alleging that probable cause does … Continue reading
Plead the Fifth Podcast: “May I search your phone, with good faith?”
Plead the Fifth Podcast: “May I search your phone, with good faith?” (“Can a police officer search a criminal suspect’s cell phone in full, when the only charge in the warrant was drug possession, and the affidavit provided barebone justification? … Continue reading
CA7: Detention after conviction is a due process question, not 4A question
Plaintiff’s detention after conviction is a due process issue (if at all) and not a Fourth Amendment issue. Jones v. York, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 13090 (7th Cir. May 16, 2022):
CA3: Younger abstention applies to bar federal litigation of red-flag gun seizure case
Greco v. Bruck, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 13074 (3d Cir. May 13, 2022), prior opinion Greco v. Bruck, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 33660 (3d Cir. Nov. 12, 2021) (posted here) reaffirms that state court proceedings bar federal litigation in a … Continue reading
CA5: SW affidavit at trial violated confrontation
The government violated the confrontation clause by putting into evidence a search warrant affidavit to seek to give context to the CS’s dealings with defendant. If that’s so important, then the government should call him. United States v. Hamann, 2022 … Continue reading
OH1: Doing nothing unusual or criminal 5 minutes after ShotSpotter alert wasn’t RS
Officers found defendant putting his kids in his car about five minutes after a ShotSpotter alert where no one had complained of gunfire. His ultimate frisk lacked reasonable suspicion. State v. Henson, 2022-Ohio-1571, 2022 Ohio App. LEXIS 1482 (1st Dist. … Continue reading
CA11: Health care fraud records SW permitted search of VCR tapes
After a year long investigation, officers obtained a search warrant for defendant’s medical clinic for health care fraud. They found videotapes in a cluttered backroom, and, based on the warrant, believed that they could contain evidence of the alleged fraud. … Continue reading
EFF: Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants are So Invasive, Even Big Tech Wants to Ban Them
EFF: Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants are So Invasive, Even Big Tech Wants to Ban Them by Matthew Guariglia (“Geofence and reverse keyword warrants are some of the most dangerous, civil-liberties-infringing and reviled tools in law enforcement agencies’ digital … Continue reading
Scientific American: Yes, Phones Can Reveal if Someone Gets an Abortion
Scientific American: Yes, Phones Can Reveal if Someone Gets an Abortion by Sophie Bushwick (“To protect personal information from companies that sell data, some individuals are relying on privacy guides instead of government regulation or industry transparency.”)
Rawstory: Georgia deputies infuriate school officials with ‘humiliating’ roadside search of Black lacrosse team’s luggage (updated)
Rawstory: Georgia deputies infuriate school officials with ‘humiliating’ roadside search of Black lacrosse team’s luggage by Travis Gettys:
ID: Calling for drug dog before RS existed extended the stop
During the traffic stop, the diversion to call for a drug dog was without reasonable suspicion and it extended the stop. State v. Still, 166 Idaho 351, 458 P.3d 220 (App. 2019), is overruled. State v. Karst, 2022 Ida. LEXIS … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Information from seller’s GPS tracker on used car didn’t require a SW
Tracking a used car by its GPS for repossession didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Defendant bought a used car apparently to use in a robbery. A license plate reader identified the car and the police easily tracked it back to … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: § 1983 claim officers dented a door during a raid is not a 4A violation
Claim officers denting a door during a raid is not a Fourth Amendment violation. Fulbright v. Hodges, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85727 (W.D.N.C. May 12, 2022):
CA2: County order to surrender firearms on losing pistol permit wasn’t a “seizure” of his effects
Plaintiff had his pistol permit revoked under New York law. The County’s requirement he surrender his long guns when that happens is not unreasonable. The court questions whether it’s even a “seizure” of his effects under the Fourth Amendment. (He … Continue reading
TX13: Stop was consensual but became unreasonable
“We therefore conclude that, although appellant’s encounter with police may have been consensual initially, it advanced into a ‘seizure’ for Fourth Amendment purposes before appellant made any incriminating statements. Because there was no warrant, reasonable suspicion, or probable cause to … Continue reading
DE: A reporter gets access to SW materials for Apple and social media companies in this murder case
In this two defendant murder case, the state obtained 18 search warrants for Apple and social media, but only one has been returned. A reporter sought access to the affidavits, and it’s granted. Defense counsel has already been given access … Continue reading
IA: Admission of SW affidavit at trial with CI’s version violated confrontation
Admission of the search warrant affidavit here at trial with inadmissible hearsay of the CI was a violation of confrontation. State v. Martinez, 2022 Iowa App. LEXIS 410 (May 11, 2022). These search warrant materials remain sealed for one year. … Continue reading