Archives
-
Recent Posts
- 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
-
Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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)
-
“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
OH6: Smell of raw marijuana from house was PC
The officers’ smell of raw marijuana at a house was probable cause. This is different than the case of burnt marijuana not justifying a search of the trunk of a car. In an IAC claim, defendant didn’t plead any evidence … Continue reading
CA11: Mere trespasser in driveway had no REP there
Defendant was parked in the driveway of what was supposed to be at the time an unoccupied house, and a neighbor called the police. Defendant told them he was an invited visitor, but it was found he lacked a reasonable … Continue reading
CA8: While § 922(g)(3) requires an “unlawful user” of drugs in possession of firearms, the question is only PC for seizure; statute is not vague
The government doesn’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant was an “unlawful user” of controlled substance to seize firearms around drugs with probable cause. And that doesn’t make the § 922(g)(3) vague. United States v. Figueroa-Serrano, 2020 U.S. … Continue reading
NH: Protective sweep of motel room search justified by presence of others
A protective sweep of defendant’s motel room on his arrest was justified by the fact he was suspected of selling crack out of it and there were three woman also there, one of whom turned her back on the officers … Continue reading
OH2: Officer may ask motorist if he’s armed
A police officer may ask a stopped motorist in a traffic stop whether he is armed without violating the Fourth Amendment. State v. Ferguson, 2020-Ohio-4153, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 3051 (2d Dist. Aug. 21, 2020). Defendant’s traffic stop evolved into … Continue reading
The Intercept: Her Former Colleagues Called in a “Wellness Check.” Then Police Shot Her to Death.
The Intercept: Her Former Colleagues Called in a “Wellness Check.” Then Police Shot Her to Death. by Natasha Lennard (“The killing of Sandy Guardiola at the hands of a cop illustrates the limitations of brutal, armed police responding to community … Continue reading
OH2: The fact a SW had a laundry list of 182 things to search for and seize isn’t fatal where def doesn’t show what was overseized
The search warrant here was for illegal fireworks and listed 182 items to be seized, including fireworks. “Johnson also contends the warrant is invalid because it authorized the seizure of a boilerplate list of 182 items, all or most of … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Def satisfied Franks to get a hearing on the statements being intentionally or recklessly false
Defendant satisfied his Franks burden of a substantial preliminary showing of recklessness on the informant’s reliability to get a hearing. The court is persuaded in part because of the weak showing of nexus. Still, however, defendant’s burden at the Franks … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Ordering def to ground at gunpoint and a full search of his pockets was an arrest and not a frisk; it was still, however, justified
Police arrived at defendant’s house to search, and he came out the front door. At gunpoint, he laid on the ground and he was handcuffed and his pockets searched. It was not a patdown for weapons, but an emptying of … Continue reading
DC: Cell phone SW was overbroad and exceeded the PC; no GFE
“We conclude that Mr. Burns has established violations of his rights under both the Fourth and the Sixth Amendments. Police sought search warrants that authorized an unlimited review of the contents of his cell phones for “any evidence” of murder … Continue reading
CA5: “I don’t know, it’s not my vehicle” is a disavowal of standing
“Rather than establishing an expectation of privacy, Beasley expressly disavowed ownership of the vehicle, saying, ‘I don’t know, it’s not my vehicle.’ Because he disclaimed ownership of the vehicle, the district court appropriately determined that Beasley lacked any expectation of … Continue reading
MS: Knowingly searching wrong house by choosing to disregard error in SW made Bureau of Narcotics liable
In a case that smacks of the good faith exception causing a search of the wrong house that should never have happened, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics knowingly raided the wrong house without knocking and announcing. Trial testimony showed that … Continue reading
E.D.Mo.: No REP against photographing tattoo on chest at time of arrest
Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy not to have a tattoo on his chest under his shirt photographed on his arrest. Therefore, defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not raising it. Shumpert v. United States, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149584 … Continue reading
CA5: IP address accessing bank accounts for alleged fraud was PC as to that address
“Based on these facts, it was not unreasonable for law enforcement to believe there was probable cause that evidence of the scheme would be found at Traore’s residence nearly a year after the bank account was last accessed from his … Continue reading
IA: No REP in contents of car visible by flashlight in a hotel parking lot
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inside of a car in a hotel parking lot that could be seen by an officer with a flashlight. State v. Bean, 2020 Iowa App. LEXIS 825 (Aug. 19, 2020). The … Continue reading
W.D.Tex.: Whether defense counsel should file a motion to suppress is strategic decision
“A decision of whether or not to file a motion to suppress is a strategic choice of counsel.” Here, there was no factual basis to file a motion to suppress. Waters v. United States, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147764 (W.D. … Continue reading
CA5: Traffic safety checkpoint was scantly justified, but still reasonable
A Mississippi traffic safety checkpoint was reasonable on the totality because every car was stopped, even though the programmatic purpose of the checkpoint was scant. Reasonable suspicion developed that the occupants of the vehicle were being trafficked. United States v. … Continue reading
CA6: Seizure under a SW is not a 5A taking
The consensus of several other circuits is that seizing property under a search warrant is not subject to the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause. See, e.g., Lech v. Jackson, 791 Fed. Appx. 711, 717 (10th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, No. 19-1123, … Continue reading
Cal.3: In a recreational MJ state, more is required for a car search than just possession of some marijuana
Possession of a legal amount of recreational marijuana isn’t probable cause for search without more. “Therefore, pursuant to Lee, there must be additional evidence, beyond mere possession of a legal amount of marijuana, to support a reasonable belief the defendant … Continue reading
CA10: No distinction between civil and criminal traffic infractions under the 4A
There is no distinction between civil and criminal traffic infractions under the Fourth Amendment under Whren and Arizona v. Johnson. Even a patdown can occur in a civil infraction stop. United States v. Meadows, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 26120 (10th … Continue reading