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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)
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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
E.D.Mich.: No REP in Instagram postings, private or public
There was no reasonable expectation of privacy in defendant’s Instragram account postings and communications whether it was set private or not. United States v. Dixson, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178371 (E.D.Mich. Sept. 20, 2021):
E.D.Pa.: This judge wouldn’t have signed this SW, but that’s not the standard of review
While this judge wouldn’t have issued the search warrant on the information provided, that’s not the standard of review. There was, in fact, a substantial basis for finding probable cause. United States v. Moore, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178263 (E.D.Pa. … Continue reading
CA11: Mistaken identity arrest on 26 year old warrant was reasonable where names were same but DOB was not
This mistaken identity arrest was reasonable. The name and gender were the same but the DOB was not. The warrant was 26 years old. Sosa v. Martin County, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 28401 (11th Cir. Sept. 20, 2021):
NE: Time limited call and CSLI records were particular
The misstatements in the affidavit for the warrant here was negligence at worst, and that bars suppression. The affidavit for the warrant for defendant’s phone provided at least a “modicum” of information supporting probable cause. So, even assuming a lack … Continue reading
M.D.Tenn.: Harassment of a parolee as reason for exclusion has to come from something other than the alleged const’l violation
Defendant was on supervised release, and he was stopped for a traffic offense. The officer was admittedly courteous, but defendant still claims harassment as a reason to invoke the exclusionary rule. “[T[he Court concludes that if the exclusionary ‘may’ apply … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: A state DMV database that is 90-95% accurate on insurance records is close enough for RS
“Stone makes much out of the fact that the SOS database is only 90-95% accurate. The database’s high degree of accuracy would seem to work against rather than support Stone’s argument. As a practical matter, ‘probable cause does not require … Continue reading
E.D.Wash.: No REP in an ISP’s mere subscriber records
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in an ISP’s mere subscriber records. “The Government points out that it received Defendant’s name, address and telephone number as the subscriber of the subject IP address, but did not request or receive … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Subpoena for phone records not shown to be from independent source
Defendant’s motion in limine against AT&T records is granted. The government failed to show an independent source that it knew of information sought before an illegal search. “The government did not shown that the decision to subpoena the records was … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: NCIS obtained def’s phone passcode by 4A violation
NCIS obtained defendant’s passcode for his iPhone 6 by a Fourth Amendment violation by seeking to see him enter it when he was consciously trying to avoid them seeing it. Inevitable discovery also does not apply. United States v. Booker, … Continue reading
FL2: Failure to corroborate or support CI’s story defeats GFE
The complete failure to corroborate the CI’s story was thus a complete lack of probable cause, and the good faith exception did not apply. Chery v. State, 2021 Fla. App. LEXIS 13111 (Fla. 2DCA Sept. 17, 2021):
NJ: After a patdown, new facts at the scene can support a second one
After a patdown, new facts at the scene can support a second one. State v. Carrillo, 2021 N.J. Super. LEXIS 123 (Sept. 17, 2021). “Here, the totality of the circumstances—Traylor’s regular use of a vehicle that was observed recently at … Continue reading
CT: State const. protects against dog sniffs outside motel room doors
There is a privacy interest against a drug dog being employed in a motel hallway looking for drugs in rooms under the Connecticut Constitution. The court had previously found one in apartment buildings. The citizenry wouldn’t accept free wheeling dog … Continue reading
CA5: Even a mistaken critical fact to nexus can still be reasonable for GFE
An asserted fact in the search warrant affidavit that was critical to the target of the search and thus the place to be searched proved to be wrong, which the officer revealed when he learned. Still, the search warrant was … Continue reading
GA: Looking at CP while sitting in a car is PC for the device and car
Defendant was seen in his car looking at child pornography on his cell phone. That gave the police probable cause to enter to seize the phone. They later got a search warrant for it. State v. Palacio-Gregorio, 2021 Ga. App. … Continue reading
CA11: Govt proved inevitable discovery despite const’l violation
The government showed that the investigation would have revealed the evidence despite the constitutional violation of tracking a package inside a house without a warrant. United States v. Watkins, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 27797 (11th Cir. Sept. 16, 2021):
NJ: Officer’s randomly looking up LPNs was not unreasonable
The officer’s randomly looking up LPNs for validity was not an unreasonable search. Defendant’s refusal to answer questions at that point only made it all worse because there was a basis for the stop and questioning. State v. Boston, 2021 … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: A year delay in searching this cell phone was not unreasonable when def was in custody
A year delay in searching defendant’s cell phone was not unreasonable. He was a parolee, in custody, and had a significantly reduced privacy interest in the phone. United States v. Davis, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175204 (E.D.Mich. Sept. 15, 2021). … Continue reading
Stan. L. Rev.: The Chinese Exclusion Cases and Policing in the Fourth Amendment–Free Zone
The Chinese Exclusion Cases and Policing in the Fourth Amendment–Free Zone by Trillium Chang (2021 Student Essay Competition Winner), 73 Stan. L. Rev. (Sept. 2021):
N.D.Tex.: First dog alert was before the dog jumped in the window, so the original alert was independent of that
“Because a positive alert by a drug dog creates probable cause to search a vehicle—and this alert occurred before the dog’s nose entered Castaneda’s window—the Court finds that regardless of whether the dog’s breach of the window amounted to an … Continue reading