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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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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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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
N.D.Ga.: Two year delay in searching seized cell phone not unreasonable
Defendant’s cell phone was seized in April 2017 but not finally searched until April 2019. This was still reasonable under Rule 41. United States v. Dixon, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95041 (N.D. Ga. Apr. 15, 2021):
OR: Lifting jail curtain to see def in jail bathroom was not violation of State Const. or 4A
Partially lifting a curtain in jail to observe defendant in the bathroom was not a violation of his reasonable expectation of privacy under the State Constitution nor the Fourth Amendment. State v. Taplin, 311 Or. App. 542, 2021 Ore. App. … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: 5 yo child wandering in apt parking lot at 2:30 am was exigency when door was open to apt
A five year old boy found wandering at 2:30 am in an apartment building parking lot was exigency for the police to further open defendant’s partially open door when the apartment was found. United States v. Shorter, 2021 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
techdirt: DoD Is Buying Domestic Internet Metadata From Data Brokers
techdirt: Defense Department Is Buying Domestic Internet Metadata From Data Brokers by Tim Cushing (“Joseph Cox broke the news for Motherboard late last year: the US military was also making use of location data purchased from data brokers, joining a … Continue reading
Inside Hook: Amazon’s Ring Is Basically a Giant Civilian Surveillance Network
Inside Hook: Amazon’s Ring Is Basically a Giant Civilian Surveillance Network by Kirk Miller (“After partnering with almost 2,000 police departments, is this home security product a threat to democracy?”)
S.D.Ohio: Govt doesn’t overcome right of access to seek to seal SW materials
The defense moved for access to search warrant materials for a potential motion to suppress. The government moved to seal them. The government’s motion is denied. There is generally a right of access in search warrant materials by the defendant … Continue reading
CA3: SW including “any and all cell phones” could be overbroad, but not here where there were only two
“Taylor contends that the description of ‘any and all cellular telephones’ contained in this warrant is overly broad and thus lacks the requisite particularity. Although a warrant allowing seizure of ‘any and all cellular telephones’ may be overbroad, this record … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: Suppression motion issue selection is strategic choice under Strickland
“[C]ounsel was not ineffective as it relates to the search warrants at issue because counsel filed motions to suppress raising multiple arguments, and Movant failed to show that counsel’s strategic choice to pursue certain arguments over others—such as the Fourth … Continue reading
KS: Officer’s two calls to dispatch telling him there was a warrant was reasonable under Herring
Defendant’s arrest based on the officer’s two calls to dispatch insisting there was a warrant for defendant was reasonable reliance on a mistake of another under Herring. State v. Gilliland, 2021 Kan. App. LEXIS 21 (May 14, 2021). The French … Continue reading
WA: Unverified belief in existence of arrest warrant required suppression
Unverified belief there was an arrest warrant for defendant required that the arrest and search be suppressed. State v. Pines, 2021 Wash. App. LEXIS 1223 (May 17, 2021). “Here, while the record is unclear as to when the outstanding warrant … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: PC to arrest doesn’t equal PC to search the suspect’s house, but where do people normally hide things?
Explaining the competing interests in nexus is United States v. Reliford, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93053 (S.D. Ohio May 17, 2021). Probable cause to arrest doesn’t equal probable cause to search the suspect’s house, but where do people normally hide … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Videos referred to in criminal complaints in Capitol Riot Cases presumptively public records
The videos referred to in criminal complaints in the Capitol Riot Cases are presumptively public records. In Re: Press and Public Access to Video Exhibits in the Capitol Riot Cases, Misc. Action No. 21-46 (BAH) (D.D.C. May 14, 2021). A … Continue reading
CA11: Adding in the omitted information still showed PC
“Detective Tuck’s affidavit omitted some information favorable to Martelli, but even if we assume that those omissions were intentional or reckless, the claim still fails. It fails because, even including all the omitted information, a reasonable officer in Tuck’s position … Continue reading
LA5: Use of a flashlight on a car is still a plain view
Using a flashlight to look in a car was still a valid plain view. State v. Williams, 2021 La. App. LEXIS 767 (La. App. 5 Cir. May 13, 2021). Where the alleged OWI offender was incapacitated, Mitchell applies to his … Continue reading
WaPo: Amazon extends ban on police use of its facial recognition technology indefinitely
WaPo: Amazon extends ban on police use of its facial recognition technology indefinitely by Drew Harwell (“The tech giant said in June its freeze would last a year to ‘give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules.’ No federal laws … Continue reading
CA7: FBI’s enlisting govt employee to take records from another’s office was unreasonable search
A government employee, like a private employee, has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her office. A co-worker at the insistence of the FBI gathered evidence from defendant’s office and violated the Fourth Amendment. But for these illegal … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Window tint violations always require a stop
Window tint violations require a stop to verify. “But the Supreme Court has said that ‘[t]o be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: Omissions in Franks claims carry a higher burden
“Because defendant’s [Franks] claim relates to an alleged omission, he bears a heavy burden, as a Franks hearing is rarely merited in the case of an omission of exculpatory information. See Graham, 275 F.3d at 506. The Court does not … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Community caretaking function didn’t permit entry into unoccupied home to secure firearms when occupant left at request of police
The community caretaking function didn’t permit a warrantless entry into defendant’s home to secure his firearms after he left the home without them to get psychiatric help. He also asked that his guns not be seized when he left the … Continue reading