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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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
ID: The necessity of a nighttime search authorization can be inferred from the showing of PC as a whole
The request for a nighttime search can be inferred from the affidavit for the search warrant as a whole. “Reading the affidavit as a whole, it is reasonable to infer that the interests of justice were best served by the … Continue reading
MS: The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply in civil tort cases for wrongful conviction
“Sedric Sutton seeks compensation under Mississippi Code Sections 11-44-1 to -15 (Rev. 2019), Compensation to Victims of Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment, after his conviction of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute was vacated by this Court.” The … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Nothing about 911 man-with-a-gun call could be corroborated; backpack def set down when told to come outside was not abandoned
A 911 call about a man with a gun couldn’t be corroborated by anything at the scene. Officers got defendant outside and frisked him finding nothing. They searched his backpack, and that produced drugs. The government’s argument the backpack was … Continue reading
CA6 explains inevitable discovery and how it was confused here with attenuation
The district court erred by analyzing the search as attenuation when it should have been inevitable discovery, and that’s on the lawyers for not having filed adequate briefs. The court gives a thorough and helpful explanation of both and how … Continue reading
OK: Lawyer’s telephone call seeking arrest of officers for trespass while they were executing SW results in disciplinary action
Respondent in this disciplinary action is a criminal defense lawyer. A client’s house was subjected to a search under a warrant. Once told, he got to the scene during the search and sought a copy of it, but he was … Continue reading
CA7: RS present for border search of thumb drives of convicted sex offender
Defendant had a prior sex offense with a minor from 1997. HSI started investigating him in 2015 for his travels to Ukraine. “Skaggs frequently traveled overseas; Skaggs was the director of the Ukrainian Angels Resource Network, according to his LinkedIn … Continue reading
OH4: That stop was with RS isn’t arguing that it was continued with RS, and that’s waiver
Defendant started with the argument that the stop lacked reasonable suspicion, but he did not argue that the stop was continued with reasonable suspicion until the appeal. Failure to raise it that way in the trial court was waiver. State … Continue reading
CA6: There was PC and exigency for search of car even though district court didn’t say “automobile exception”
The smell of marijuana from defendant’s car was probable cause. The district court didn’t say “automobile exception,” but that’s what it meant. United States v. Hall, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 2983 (6th Cir. Feb. 2, 2022).* Defendant’s Franks allegation fails … Continue reading
CA3: PC for fraud by computer permits search of def’s house for computers
Defendant was suspected of committing fraud with his computer, and that was probable cause for searching for and seizing the computer in his home. United States v. Nyamekye, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 2966 (3d Cir. Feb. 2, 2022). Assuming reasonable … Continue reading
Reason: A SWAT Team Wrongfully Raided Her Home. Now Cops Say Footage From the Raid Is Private Since No One Was Killed.
Reason: A SWAT Team Wrongfully Raided Her Home. Now Cops Say Footage From the Raid Is Private Since No One Was Killed, by Elizabeth Nolan Brown (“In May 2020, a SWAT team burst into the Raleigh, North Carolina, home that … Continue reading
TX: Exclusionary rule is statutory and harmless error analysis required
The Texas exclusionary rule is statutory and not a constitutional remedy since 1922. Thus, harmless error analysis is required, and the case remanded for that. Holder v. State, 2022 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 72 (Feb. 2, 2022). “Accordingly, under the … Continue reading
NC: Objection to seized evidence without a motion to suppress is waiver
Defendant objected at trial to admission of evidence, but it was not a timely motion to suppress. It is waived. State v. Draughon, 2022-NCCOA-58, 2022 N.C. App. LEXIS 53 (Feb. 1, 2022). Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not moving to … Continue reading
CA5: 17-day delay of package for investigation and SW was still reasonable
This 17-day delay in holding a package for investigation and developing probable cause for a search warrant was not unreasonable. There was reasonable suspicion for the initial detention, and, despite the delay, it was still reasonable. United States v. Martinez, … Continue reading
D.Md.: Six-year delay in getting SW for cell phone unreasonable
Officers had defendant’s cell phone for nearly six years from 2015 to 2020, and he was in custody for much of the time. Searching the cell phone six years after seizure was unreasonable. United States v. Briscoe, 2022 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
D.S.D.: RS lacking: nervousness not enough, and remainder was minimal
USMJ’s report is rejected in part. On the reasonable suspicion finding: “Here, the government relies on several factors to establish reasonable suspicion. The court has found that some of these factors, such as the visibly pulsing heartbeat and rapid breathing, … Continue reading
IL: Officer’s interpretation of lane movement statute was unreasonable and stop suppressed
Defendant’s move within his lane was clearly not a violation of the lane change statute, so the stop based on that was not objectively reasonable. The product of the stop is suppressed. People v. Jackson, 2022 IL App (3d) 190621, … Continue reading
W.D.Okla.: Whether 14A or 4A applies to ptf’s excessive force claim on arrest before PC found by judicial officer, result the same
Plaintiff’s excessive force claim occurred after arrest but before a judicial determination of probable cause. “If so, Mr. Willis would not have been a pretrial detainee for purposes of Plaintiff’s excessive force claim. However, because the parties characterize him as … Continue reading
NM: Dismissal of § 1983 excessive force case was not collateral estoppel for a state tort claims act case
Dismissal of a § 1983 excessive force case in federal court was not collateral estoppel for a state case under the state tort claims act. Hernandez v. Parker, 2022 N.M. App. LEXIS 5 (Feb. 1, 2022). Extending this stop was … Continue reading
CA11: Failure to plead facts of standing or REP requires denial of motion to suppress
“If a defendant fails to plead sufficient facts to show a reasonable expectation of privacy, ‘a trial court may refuse a defendant’s request for a suppression hearing’ and deny his motion to suppress.” United States v. Robinson, 2022 U.S. App. … Continue reading