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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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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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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
Slate: “Creepiness” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Privacy
Slate: “Creepiness” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Privacy by Neil Richards:
W.D.Tex.: Case on taking key from a child for police to enter house will go to a jury; no exigency, no QI
Using key obtained from a teenage daughter’s bra, in handcuffs a block away, the mom and two other daughters get to present their case to a jury that police used the key to unreasonably enter the house without announcement. E.R. … Continue reading
WA: No REP in text message exchange
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages exchanged with another, even under the state’s more protective constitution of “private affairs.” State v. Pouncy, 2021 Wash. App. LEXIS 2811 (Nov. 30, 2021) (unpublished).* The reasonableness of a traffic … Continue reading
TX5: SW for firearms in a vehicle permitted search and seizure of GSR although not specified
Officers had a search warrant for defendant’s car for firearms, but they also searched for gunshot residue which was not particularly described. Still, searching for GSR is reasonable on execution of the warrant. Brown v. State, 2021 Tex. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
Yale L.J.: “The Ostensible (and, at Times, Actual) Virtue of Deference” to police expertise
Anthony O’Rourke, The Ostensible (and, at Times, Actual) Virtue of Deference, Yale L. Journal (Nov. 30, 2021), at note 36:
Buying Data and the Fourth Amendment by Orin S. Kerr
Orin S. Kerr, Buying Data and the Fourth Amendment, Hoover Institution, Aegis Series Paper No. 2109 (Nov. 17, 2021):
FL1: Alleged statutory violation for seizing alcohol abusers not subject to any exclusionary rule
An officer’s alleged violation of statutory procedures for dealing with alcohol abusers they encounter is not subject to an exclusionary rule. Nothing in the statute even suggests it. Jones v. State, 2021 Fla. App. LEXIS 15097 (Fla. 1st DCA Nov. … Continue reading
PA: Sometimes a police-citizen encounter is “a legal fiction” in an “Alice in Wonderland scenario,” like here, but they’re bound by it
The officers’ seeing the outline of a gun on defendant’s person as they drove by justified their turning around and encountering him. Under existing law, “a legal fiction” in an “Alice in Wonderland scenario” the court is bound by, defendant … Continue reading
N.-M.: Statement attenuated from unlawful cell phone seizure
Defendant was arrested after NCIS forced entry into his barracks room arresting him at gunpoint coming out of the shower for allegations of sexual conversations with an minor. NCIS seized his cell phone without a search authorization. Ultimately, his cell … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: IAC claim over how to argue GFE fails
This 2255 petitioner argued his defense lawyer didn’t properly argue application of the good faith exception in the direct appeal, but doesn’t say how the case could have come out different. Also, the briefs and opinion on appeal show that … Continue reading
SC permits SW issuing judges to testify to PC. But why? It’s a question of law.
Search warrant issuing judges can testify in South Carolina to why they found probable cause. [Why? Probable cause is a question of law everywhere else in the United States.] The omission of some information didn’t change the probable cause analysis, … Continue reading
OR: Proximity to others probably committing a crime isn’t PC
“[T]he facts supporting [the officer’s] belief that defendant committed a crime were not specific to defendant and related instead to defendant’s proximity to drug use by others.” “Because the totality of the circumstances here fail to demonstrate a probability that … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: CI’s information showed almost nothing as to one property for SW, so no PC nor GFE
The affidavit for the warrant for one particular address in this case fails to even minimally show probable cause. “Here, there was not enough information in the affidavit to allow a reasonable officer to conclude that there was sufficient ‘ongoing … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Jardines does not prohibit a knock-and-talk
Jardines does not prohibit a knock-and-talk as long as the officers enter via the normal path. United States v. Hartford, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 226452 (D.Neb. Nov. 24, 2021). A protective sweep of defendant’s car was reasonable, despite his being … Continue reading
NY Bronx: Front stoop of a multifamily dwelling isn’t protected curtilage
The front stoop of a multifamily dwelling in the Bronx isn’t protected curtilage. In re of Y.N., 2021 NY Slip Op 51108(U), 2021 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 5975 (Bronx Co. Family Nov. 12, 2021) (unpublished):
N.D.Fla.: Temporary beachfront closure because of Covid restrictions not a 4A seizure
Temporary closure of part of plaintiffs’ beach use inland from the public beach because of Covid restrictions was not a Fifth Amendment taking nor a Fourth Amendment seizure. Ki Fla. Properties v. Walton County, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 226830 (N.D.Fla. … Continue reading
CA9: No standing in pole camera surveillance of house of another
Defendant doesn’t have standing to challenge prolonged pole camera surveillance of the property of another. Also, there was reasonable suspicion on the totality including collective knowledge to extend defendant’s stop for a drug dog. United States v. Cruz, 2021 U.S. … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: Syringe in back pocket was in plain view
The court finds the syringe in defendant’s back pocket was in plain view. United States v. Riggins, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 224594 (N.D.Tex. Nov. 22, 2021).* Defendant’s stop wasn’t unreasonably prolonged, so the dash and bodycam videos are not suppressed. … Continue reading
DE: Carpenter doesn’t apply to specific cell tower dumps obtained by SW
Carpenter doesn’t apply to specific cell tower dumps obtained by search warrant. “The warrants present in this case are not a top-to-bottom search of any and all stored data of the digital contents of the devices and ‘any other information/data … Continue reading