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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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FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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General (many free):
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www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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
NYT: Facebook, Citing Societal Concerns, Plans to Shut Down Facial Recognition System
NYT: Facebook, Citing Societal Concerns, Plans to Shut Down Facial Recognition System (“Saying it wants ‘to find the right balance’ with the technology, the social network will delete the face scan data of more than one billion users.”)
AR: GFE applies to dispatch saying there was a search waiver when there apparently wasn’t
The officer relied in good faith, as in Herring, upon dispatch saying that defendant had a probation search waiver on file. She argued that she had a suspended sentence and never agreed to a search waiver and the suspended sentence … Continue reading
GA: When items not named in SW are found, standard is plain view not relevance
The trial court and court of appeals erred in determining whether a seizure of items outside a search warrant were “relevant” or whether regular plain view applied. It’s plain view, and the case is remanded to the trial court to … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Consent to search cell phone was voluntary after def was told of right to refuse and revoke consent once given
Defendant consented to a seizure and search of his cell phone after being told of his right to refuse and to revoke consent at any time. United States v. Fairbanks, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 210371 (D.Minn. Nov. 1, 2021). Plaintiff … Continue reading
D.Del.: Removing cell phone SIM card to find its phone number was not an unreasonable search
Assuming without deciding that removal of a cell phone’s SIM card is a search, it wasn’t unreasonable to merely obtain defendant’s telephone number off it to direct a search warrant to the phone. Defendant also complains of the protective sweep … Continue reading
Gothamist: Judge Tosses Staten Island Man’s Conviction Following NYPD Drug Planting Allegations
Gothamist: Judge Tosses Staten Island Man’s Conviction Following NYPD Drug Planting Allegations by George Joseph (“In a court decision on Friday, a Staten Island judge vacated a man’s 2018 conviction, citing body camera footage which appears to show an NYPD … Continue reading
CA9: Use of def’s suppression hearing testimony in penalty phase not unreasonable application of Simmons
The California Supreme Court’s holding that Simmons did not bar using defendant’s suppression hearing testimony in the death penalty phase of his criminal trial (People v. Ochoa, 19 Cal. 4th 353, 79 Cal. Rptr. 2d 408, 966 P.2d 442, 464, … Continue reading
CA9: “[T]he officer’s acknowledgment that he was looking for a reason to stop Ordaz does not contradict or otherwise undermine his testimony that he found one.”
“[T]he officer’s acknowledgment that he was looking for a reason to stop Ordaz does not contradict or otherwise undermine his testimony that he found one.” United States v. Ordaz, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 32449 (6th Cir. Oct. 29, 2021). Pre-Carpenter … Continue reading
ND: Federal tribal DTF officer could stop suspected DUI on state highway
“In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cooley, we conclude the federal law enforcement officer working as an agent for the tribal drug enforcement agency had jurisdiction to detain Suelzle for a reasonable time while awaiting a state officer … Continue reading
SD: Once investigation complete, SW materials have to be released and implicated person can’t keep them sealed
The local statewide newspaper sought search warrant materials involving a 2019 search warrant and four follow-up warrants in 2020. There was no showing by the issuing court to keep the information sealed under state statute. The person implicated in the … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Announcement of unlawful search here led to involuntary confession
“Here, the Agents did not, in the end, violate the Fourth Amendment. So, the question this Court confronts now is whether the announcement of an unlawful search, which is not in fact completed, render an elicited confession involuntary and inadmissible? … Continue reading
NYT: Former Shoe Shiner Wins Back Nearly $30,000 Seized by Federal Agents
NYT: Former Shoe Shiner Wins Back Nearly $30,000 Seized by Federal Agents by Michael Levenson (“Authorities at an airport last year seized a bag of cash that Kermit Warren was carrying to buy a truck. It was his life’s savings … Continue reading
Bloomberg Law: Police Turn on Hidden Cameras, Turn Off Fourth Amendment
Bloomberg Law: Police Turn on Hidden Cameras, Turn Off Fourth Amendment by Joshua Windham and Daryl James, Institute for Justice:
D.N.J.: Search of phone for phone and IMEI number was reasonable
Officers knew that defendant had communicated with the alleged minor on Grindr, an app allegedly on his cell phone, and that made the cell phone subject to seizure. “Wise next alleges that law enforcement officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights … Continue reading
LA4: SDT for tort ptf’s cell phone records was unreasonable and disproportionate
A subpoena duces tecum in a civil case for a plaintiff’s cell phone records was quashed and affirmed on appeal. Because of the substantial reasonable expectation of privacy in phone records, this was not proportionate to the case or the … Continue reading
NH: Enclosed porch is part of the house, not just part of curtilage
Defendant’s enclosed porch, which also was a living space, was part of the house and not just curtilage. Police entry was unreasonable. The fact there was another solid door to the main house isn’t determinative. There was no implied right … Continue reading
OH5: Def’s consent after being told drug dog was coming for her car wasn’t voluntary
The trial court held defendant’s consent was involuntary. She was asked for consent and told that a drug dog was coming so she might as well give it up. The conclusion is supported by the evidence and isn’t clearly erroneous. … Continue reading
NY3: Tossing backpack from one’s window into the window of the abandoned house next door to avoid seizure is a waiver of REP
When the police came to his house, defendant threw a backpack with a sawed-off rifle from his second floor window into a window of the house next door. He claimed that house was his uncle’s, but it was unsecured and … Continue reading
NYT: Pulled Over: The Demand for Money Behind Many Police Traffic Stops
NYT: Pulled Over: The Demand for Money Behind Many Police Traffic Stops by Mike McIntire and Michael H. Keller (“Busted taillights, missing plates, tinted windows: Across the U.S., ticket revenue funds towns — and the police responsible for finding violations.”):
NYT: Pulled Over: Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly
NYT: Pulled Over: Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly by David D. Kirkpatrick, Steve Eder, Kim Barker and Julie Tate (“Officers, trained to presume danger, have reacted with outsize aggression. For hundreds of unarmed drivers, the consequences have been … Continue reading