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- Cal.L.Rev.: Your Robotaxi Is Watching You. Does the Fourth Amendment Care?
- 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
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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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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)
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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
Law.com: Analysis: Recent Woes for Prosecutors in Cellphone Searches
Law.com: Analysis: Recent Woes for Prosecutors in Cellphone Searches (“Three recent district court decisions exemplify how courts have struggled with the Fourth Amendment questions raised by the intrusive nature of cellphone searches.”)
CA6: 4A does not apply to a growing tree; it is not an “effect”
The Fourth Amendment does not apply to a growing tree which is part of the real property. “But the Supreme Court has told us that real property is not an ‘effect’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Oliver v. … Continue reading
FL1: Drug dog sniff of motel door from common hallway reasonable
Drug dog sniff outside motel room door from common hallway invaded no reasonable expectation of privacy. Jardines inapplicable. Robinson v. State, 2021 Fla. App. LEXIS 13874 (Fla. 1st DCA Oct. 13, 2021). Defendant’s actions of pacing and reaching into his … Continue reading
OH5: Furtive movement alone during traffic stop not RS
Defendant’s furtive movements alone during a traffic stop did not rise to reasonable suspicion to extend the stop. State v. Snow, 2021-Ohio-3644, 2021 Ohio App. LEXIS 3559 (5th Dist. Oct. 8, 2021). The officer was drawn to encounter defendant because … Continue reading
CA9: Retired LEO as civilian employee qualified under collective knowledge
A retired LEO experienced in drug cases who was now a civilian employee of the department could here be included within the collective knowledge doctrine. United States v. McCoy, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 30364 (9th Cir. Oct. 12, 2021). Probable … Continue reading
W.D.Ark.: Scar on defendant’s thumb could be photographed on booking
During fingerprinting on defendant’s arrest when he came in with defense counsel, DHS officers noticed a scar on his thumb, and they photographed it as a part of the identification process. This violated neither the Fourth or Sixth Amendment under … Continue reading
CNS: High court hears debate over civil rights claims for dismissed charges
Courthouse News Service: High court hears debate over civil rights claims for dismissed charges by Alexandra Jones (“In a case lodged by a father who says he was wrongly accused of sexually abusing his infant daughter, the Supreme Court heard … Continue reading
AL: Searching coat of OD victim for source was reasonable
Paramedics and an officer arrived at a medical emergency call. While defendant was being prepared for transport, the officer checked defendant’s coat and felt a pill bottle which he looked at in case it had anything to do with his … Continue reading
Pretextual arrests: WaPo: Ex-D.C. firefighter to receive $390,000 from Fairfax County over wrongful arrest
WaPo: Ex-D.C. firefighter to receive $390,000 from Fairfax County over wrongful arrest (“Elon Wilson spent 21 months in prison after being wrongly pulled over by then-Officer Jonathan A. Freitag”)
N.D.Ind.: The Rodriguez question is: Did the use of the dog prolong the stop
“The answer to this question doesn’t hinge on ‘whether the dog sniff occurs before or after the officer issues a ticket’ but whether the dog sniff ‘prolongs’ the stop. [Rodriguez] at 357. The answer today is undoubtedly no. Deputy Samuelson, … Continue reading
D.Utah: Officer finding an arrest warrant led to inevitable discovery
“As outlined above, Smith has put forth no evidence that he could have made a successful Fourth Amendment challenge to the stop and search of his vehicle. Even if he did, Smith could not demonstrate prejudice. As noted above, Trooper … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Stop in the recheck line at JFK shortly after clearing customs was still within the border search area
Defendant’s stop in the recheck line at JFK shortly after clearing customs was still within the border search area. United States v. Newton, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 195145 (E.D.N.Y. Oct. 8, 2021). Reversed yet again for lack of proper findings … Continue reading
CA6: Safe that could have held object of SW could be broken into
A firearm in defendant’s bedroom is at least probable cause for constructive possession. A search warrant for the premises here permitted police to break into a safe that could have held the object of the search. United States v. Mitchell, … Continue reading
D.Minn.: On “four corners review,” the affidavit is not misleading and it shows PC
On four corners review of the affidavit for search warrant, “This Court concludes that the statements made in the affidavit about Defendant living at the Euclid address were not untruthful or recklessly made; therefore, they permissibly allowed a judicial officer … Continue reading
DC: PC from the fair inference def had more than the “permissible amount” of MJ
“From all the foregoing, Officer Lojacono could reasonably believe that there was a fair probability that the amount of marijuana he saw in the car exceeded the legally permissible amount” of two ounces. Thus, the automobile exception applied. Harris v. … Continue reading
DC: Police on the scene in less than 30 seconds after Shotspotter alert was RS here
It was reasonable for officers to conclude that reasonable suspicion existed when they arrived within 30 seconds of a Shotspotter alert. “This immediacy also limits the possibility that the culprit (or culprits) could have fled before the officers arrived. In … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Particularity and GFE are lacking; hearing set on motion to suppress
Neither the affidavit nor search warrant apparently sufficiently limit the search. The court has difficulty applying the good faith exception without a hearing on the motion to suppress. United States v. Mokbel, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 191789 (S.D.Tex. Oct. 5, … Continue reading