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- C.D.Cal.: A Gerstein/McLaughlin violation for delayed first appearance requires a showing of prejudice
- CA11: Franks motion properly denied for lack of an offer of proof
- 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
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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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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)
ACLU on privacy
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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
Cal.4: Drunk in public with a vehicle justifies a vehicle search under the automobile exception
Drunk in public with a vehicle justifies a vehicle search under the automobile exception. People v. Sims, 2021 Cal. App. LEXIS 33 (4th Dist. Jan. 12, 2021). A search warrant that resulted in a search where three buildings were on … Continue reading
CNS: LA Police Commission Adopts Oversight Measures for Facial Recognition Tool
CNS: LA Police Commission Adopts Oversight Measures for Facial Recognition Tool by Martin Macias Jr. (“The LAPD’s promise of robust oversight for facial recognition technology in police work hasn’t quelled concerns from civil liberties groups that the tools will perpetuate … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Ptf’s injunction request against future illegal searches speculative
“Even if plaintiff had correctly labeled this claim as a Fourth Amendment one, he could not show that he is entitled to a preliminary injunction. ‘Speculative, remote or future injury’ is not enough to show irreparable harm. Phelan v. Sullivan, … Continue reading
CA8: Creighton U. security officers are private actors
Creighton University security officers are private actors in seizing and searching defendant. They did not act in concert with any law enforcement agency, and they called the police to take defendant away. United States v. Avalos, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA8: Direction to stay in car during a traffic stop wasn’t a seizure
Direction to defendant to stay in his car during a stop was not a separate seizure. United States v. Warren, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 701 (8th Cir. Jan. 12, 2021). There was probable cause for defendant’s arrest. Officers bought drugs … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: Def counsel not ineffective for not arguing Carpenter protects bank records because it doesn’t
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in bank records such that the government needed a warrant to get them. Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not arguing that there was such an interest. “Carpenter did not overrule Miller but merely … Continue reading
GA: When there is PC for an arrest, the validity of an arrest warrant is moot
There was probable cause for defendant’s arrest, so the validity of the arrest warrant doesn’t matter. Harper v. State, 2021 Ga. LEXIS 2 (Jan. 11, 2021). Defendant’s claim of lack of probable cause is really just an effort to construe … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: Def’s car that others were known to drive being outside house of another wasn’t reasonable belief he was there
Officers did not have a reasonable belief defendant was on the premises of another just because he was seen there a month earlier and what was somewhat believed to be his car was parked out outside just before the entry. … Continue reading
MA: Planning of homicide with co-conspirator was nexus for cell phone SW
It was reasonable for the magistrate to conclude that evidence of defendant’s planning of a homicide would be on his cell phone because he communicated with co-conspirators. Therefore, nexus to the phone was shown. Commonwealth v. Snow, 2021 Mass. LEXIS … Continue reading
GA: Cell phone believed to be on def’s person at time of robbery and murder is subject for SW for evidence of the crimes
The affidavit for the warrant showed probable cause and particularity for search of defendant’s cell phone for evidence of an armed robbery and murder [essentially on the officer’s experience]. The trial court suppressed a pre-warrant search of defendant’s cell phone, … Continue reading
NE: State failed in its burden of proof on inventory; the defense has no duty to clear up confusion in the proof
The state carried the burden, and it failed to prove that the inventory of defendant’s vehicle followed standardized procedure or was reasonable. The defense had no burden to clear up any evidentiary confusion because the state had the burden. State … Continue reading
AZ: Third party doctrine after Carpenter doesn’t require SW for IP addresses and subscriber info
The third party doctrine after Carpenter does not make IP addresses and subscriber information protected by the Fourth Amendment or the state constitution. State v. Mixon, 2021 Ariz. LEXIS 3 (Jan. 11, 2021):
KY: Smell of burning marijuana from a house alone is not exigency
The entry here could not be justified as a protective sweep because of a lack of reason to believe the person sought was there. It also can’t be justified by exigency because of the smell of burning marijuana alone. Nothing … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: 8A applies to excessive force claims in prison
The Eighth Amendment applies to excessive force claims in prison; the Fourth Amendment to free worlders. Rodriguez v. United States, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4100 (E.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2021). The court believes the officer over the defendant on whether … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: Address wasn’t required where picture of property was in SW
Defendant’s address wasn’t included in the affidavit for the search warrant, but its picture was and there was no mistake on the place searched. That was sufficient. United States v. Lingo, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3861 (E.D. Tenn. Jan. 8, … Continue reading
D.Del.: Videotaping an otherwise valid prison strip search isn’t a per se 4A violation
“Plaintiff does not allege that the search itself violated his rights but, rather, it is the recording of the search that he finds objectionable.” “[U]sing a camera to record a strip search in a prison does not, by itself, amount … Continue reading
CA10: Ptf’s conviction barred his 1983 claim because it established facts against him under Heck
“Mr. Birch’s convictions preclude him from establishing a genuine issue of material fact as to his Fourth Amendment excessive force claims against Officers Sinclair, Page, and Stout, Fourteenth Amendment malicious prosecution claims, and Fourth Amendment false arrest claims. In dismissing … Continue reading
D.Colo.: Failure to call the officers with enough information to show collective knowledge as witnesses made govt fail in its burden of proof
The government failed to prove collective knowledge at the hearing on the motion to suppress. A critical witness to collective knowledge wasn’t called. United States v. De La Rosa-Calderon, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3378 (D. Colo. Jan. 7, 2021):
CA6: 4A 1983 claim brought after state court reversal on search claim was untimely
Plaintiff’s 1983 unreasonable search claim is untimely. He brought the claim after his state appeal reversed his conviction on a bad search. “Dibrell’s claim is untimely under these rules. His detention ended on February 18, 2014, when he was released … Continue reading