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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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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)
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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
MD: Tracking “court order” didn’t need to be called a “warrant” to be one
A “court order” for tracking defendant’s vehicle satisfied the warrant requirement, and it didn’t have to be called a search warrant. It was issued with probable cause, and the good faith exception applied. Whittington v. State, 2021 Md. LEXIS 255 … Continue reading
CA6: SW affidavit can suggest CI’s lack of credibility, but here it was overcome
It is possible for a search warrant affidavit to suggest the lack of credibility of the CI, but, here, the CI’s credibility was corroborated by other facts and her willingness to be identified. United States v. Woods, 2021 U.S. App. … Continue reading
WV: Exclusionary rule would not be applied in administrative child abuse proceeding for protection of children
The exclusionary rule does not apply to child abuse allegations in administrative proceedings. The court declines the request to apply it despite the rule that it doesn’t apply in civil cases generally because of harm to the children. In re … Continue reading
CA7: Omission of CI’s criminal history was “unfortunate” but not material for Franks
“[W]e agree with the district court that the ‘omission of information about the sources’ backgrounds, criminal histories, or motives does not change the probable cause determination.’ See also United States v. Sims, 551 F.3d 640, 645 (7th Cir. 2008) (omission … Continue reading
IN: Plain view applied to vehicle seizure in driveway
Plain view justified the seizure of defendant’s van in his driveway, even assuming it was on the curtilage. It was immediately apparent to the officers it was criminal evidence. Combs v. State, 2021 Ind. LEXIS 358 (June 3. 2021). n.5:
NY1: Cross-examination about potential suspects let go from scene of search opened door to suppressed statement
Defendant’s cross-examination about others not ultimately charged after the search opened the door to his suppressed statement. “First, defendant elicited that although the police arrested him and the other two persons who were in his apartment at the time a … Continue reading
CA3: Ghostwritten SW affidavit not a Franks violation because there was indisputably PC
A police officer’s admission at trial that the affidavit for search warrant was ghostwritten for him didn’t show a Franks violation because there clearly was probable cause. United States v. Ware, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 16568 (3d Cir. June 3, … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: DMV’s computer mistake def’s DL was suspended doesn’t invoke the exclusionary rule under Evans
DMV’s computer mistake defendant’s DL was suspended doesn’t invoke the exclusionary rule under Evans. United States v. Salazar, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103027 (N.D. Ohio June 2, 2021). Defendant’s “regenerating” activity in selling heroin made the warrant application not stale. … Continue reading
HPM: Former Houston Police Officer Pleads Guilty To Falsifying Records In Harding Street Raid Case
Houston Public Media: Former Houston Police Officer Pleads Guilty To Falsifying Records In Harding Street Raid Case by Lucio Vasquez (“Steven Bryant is the first officer to be convicted in the wake of the raid.”)
CA4: Trash out for collection at the curb is not on the curtilage
Trash out for collection at the curb is not on the curtilage. United States v. Holmes, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 16418 (4th Cir. June 2, 2021). The affidavit for a tracking warrant was misleading in one respect, but it wasn’t … Continue reading
WaPo: If facial recognition is not regulated now, it will never be used responsibly
WaPo: If facial recognition is not regulated now, it will never be used responsibly (“Facial recognition software is full of peril, but it’s also full of potential. with the powerful technology still in its infancy and regulation next to nonexistent, … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Tribal officers can stop and detain non-Indians on tribal lands
Tribal police have the inherent authority to stop and search non-Indians on tribal lands for potential violations of tribal, state, or federal law. United States v. Cooley, 2021 U.S. LEXIS 2816 (June 1, 2021). The syllabus:
E.D.Mo.: Sexual assault allegation by school official states 4A claim
Allegation of a sexual assault by a school official states a Fourth Amendment claim. Hermann v. Kirkwood R-7 Sch. Dist., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102574 (E.D. Mo. June 1, 2021). Officers with a search warrant for electronic devices could look … Continue reading
DE: Agency investigative SDT akin to GJ’s
An agency investigative subpoena duces tecum is akin to a grand jury’s, following Morton Salt and Powell. State Dept. of Finance v. AT&T Inc., 2021 Del. LEXIS 178 (June 1, 2021):
CA9: Suspicionless search of unconscious person in hospital bed violated clearly established law
“Thus, under binding precedent from this court and the Supreme Court, any reasonable officer would have known that Defendants’ suspicionless and warrantless search of Katzenjammer’s body, while she lay unconscious in a hospital bed, violated the Fourth Amendment.” Young v. … Continue reading
CA8: Visitor’s property could be searched under warrant for host’s place on RS they were involved in drugs, too
Defendant was a visitor at a friend’s house when the house was searched under a warrant for drugs. She was on the couch with a meth pipe next to her, so it was reasonable to search her lockbox under the … Continue reading
MA: No REP in a sent text message
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a text message sent to another cell phone. Commonwealth v. Delgado-Rivera, 2021 Mass. LEXIS 341 (June 1, 2021):
CA6: Detention with handcuffing on RS permitted putting def in police car
There was reasonable suspicion for defendant’s detention, including putting him in a police car while they sorted it out. That was not yet an arrest. United States v. Rogers, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 16160 (6th Cir. May 27, 2021). The … Continue reading