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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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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)
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
CA6: Police called to ER for shooting victim can make plain view
When the police are called to the ER for a shooting victim, the bloody clothes can be in plain view. United States v. Clancy, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 35567 (6th Cir. Nov. 12, 2020):
NY2: Failure to call officer involved at suppression hearing was waiver here
Defendant’s claim of his statement being in violation of the Fourth Amendment isn’t preserved for appeal by lack of testimony of the officer involved. People v. Molina, 2020 NY Slip Op 06553. 2020 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6651 (2d Dept. … Continue reading
CA5: No standing or REP in the CSLI of another
Defendant didn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy (standing) in the movements of a cell phone of another. Still, it was with a warrant, and there is no defect in the warrant process. United States v. Beaudion, 2020 U.S. App. … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Failure to mention denial of a TRO in civil litigation over similar issue material enough to get Franks hearing
The fact a TRO had been denied in a civil case involving some of the same facts was potentially material under Franks, and he gets a Franks hearing. Also, defendants have no standing in the search of a co-conspirator’s home. … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Likelihood of suppression isn’t a factor at detention hearing
Defendant’s assertion at a detention hearing that there is some “likelihood” he may win suppression of evidence isn’t a factor in the decision to release. He’s still entitled to the presumption of innocence, but, essentially, exclusion isn’t ever likely enough … Continue reading
Filter: DEA Pursues Vast Expansion of Patient Surveillance
Filter: DEA Pursues Vast Expansion of Patient Surveillance by Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard (“The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is looking to expand its anti-diversion surveillance infrastructure by being able to search and analyze myriad patient behaviors for the vast majority of … Continue reading
D.C.Cir.: IAC claim presented first in court of appeals decided without remand; claim fails on its face
Defendant raised his ineffective assistance claim first in the Court of Appeals. Usually, the court says it would remand for an evidentiary hearing. Here, however, his allegation is facially insufficient and the issue is decided without a remand. The challenge … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Prior flight from an officer adds nothing to RS calculus
Prior flight from an officer adds nothing to the reasonable suspicion calculus, but the remainder here does. United States v. Foushee, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 209986 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 10, 2020):
NJ: Occupants of car leaving area of a robbery not responding to light in the eyes as it passed by is not RS
The officer on his way to a robbery call used the spotlight on his patrol car to illuminate the interior of cars passing by him in the other lane. When the occupants of defendant’s car didn’t respond the same as … Continue reading
OH12: Drug dog’s alert to residual odor of drugs is not a lack of PC
A drug dog’s alert to the residual odor of drugs isn’t a lack of probable cause. “Accordingly, the fact that Mox [the drug dog] could have alerted to a residual odor of drugs does not mean that there was not … Continue reading
IL: There are no degrees of illegality in 4A cases with differing standards
There are no degrees of illegality in Fourth Amendment cases with differing standards. People v. Massamillo, 2020 IL App (3d) 190765, 2020 Ill. App. LEXIS 754 (Nov. 9, 2020):
W.D.Tex.: “Laundry list” argument of a lack of particularity rejected
The officer affiant corroborated the CI’s information and there was substantial evidence of probable cause. The affidavit was not bare bones. Even if the affidavit lacked probable cause, the good faith exception applies. Defendant’s “laundry list” argument of a lack … Continue reading
Reason: SCOTUS Considers Whether James King Has Any Recourse Against the Cops Who Choked and Beat Him for No Good Reason
Reason: SCOTUS Considers Whether James King Has Any Recourse Against the Cops Who Choked and Beat Him for No Good Reason by Jacob Sullum:
KS: Officer’s delay by seeking backup for safety reasons during nighttime stop where he was outnumbered was reasonable
“From the initiation of the traffic stop at 3:23 a.m. until the moment when Officer Trout observed drug paraphernalia in plain view next to Lutz, the stop was not measurably extended beyond its basic objective of processing the observed traffic … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Trash pull alone didn’t add up to PC, but GFE applies
The affidavit didn’t have enough information to corroborate the trash pull, but the evidence is apparent that the officer relied on it in good faith. United States v. Ray, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 207885 (M.D. Pa. Nov. 6, 2020):
IN: Officers had sufficient suspicion of contraband on the person for a booking strip search
Officers had the requisite degree of suspicion for a strip search at the jail for a misdemeanor. He had suspicions there was something amiss with defendant’s unusual small talk, but, coupled with the facts, added up. Reagan v. State, 2020 … Continue reading
Vice: Police Are Tapping Into Ring Cameras to Expand Surveillance Network In Mississippi
Vice: Police Are Tapping Into Ring Cameras to Expand Surveillance Network In Mississippi by Edward Ongweso Jr (“The police department in Jackson, Mississippi is partnering with two companies to stream surveillance footage from Ring cameras in a 45-day pilot program.”)
CA6: State officer assisting a federal search is the subject of assault under 18 U.S.C. § 1114
A state officer assisting federal officers in a search can be the subject of assault while executing a warrant under 18 U.S.C. § 1114. United States v. Scurry, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 35068 (6th Cir. Nov. 5, 2020). Defendant officers … Continue reading
CA4: Baltimore’s aerial surveillance program doesn’t violate 4A
Baltimore PD’s Aerial Investigative Research program (AIR) does not violate the reasonable expectation of privacy of Baltimore residents, and denial of the preliminary injunction is affirmed on appeal. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Dep’t, 2020 U.S. App. … Continue reading