Archives
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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
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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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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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
WaPo: Mexican national arrested in Florida on accusation of spying for Russia
WaPo: Mexican national arrested in Florida on accusation of spying for Russia by Brittany Shammas. The story describes a border exit search:
Appeal.org: Commentary: The Enduring Trauma of Stop-and-Frisk
Appeal.org: Commentary: The Enduring Trauma of Stop-and-Frisk by Jamal Trulove (“As a Black child in San Francisco, I learned early that mine and others’ bodies meant nothing to those supposedly tasked with our protection.”)
N.D.Cal.: No 4A REP in VA medical records
There is no Fourth Amendment reasonable expectation of privacy in VA medical records, vis-a-vis another government agency. United States v. Grant, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27270 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 18, 2020):
WA: Cell phone search must be strictly limited to the PC that authorized it
“Modern cell phones are unique devices, capable of storing vast amounts of personal data. To guard against governmental invasion of this information, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution generally requires explicit authorization to search a cell phone through … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: There were false statements in the boilerplate, but they weren’t material
The USMJ determined that defendant made his burden of showing material falsity in the boilerplate information in the affidavit for search warrant and granted a Franks hearing. In a really long opinion, the USDJ agrees with the falsity but finds … Continue reading
The Mercury News: Caltrans settles claims of unconstitutional homeless ‘sweeps’ for $5.5 million
The Mercury News: Caltrans settles claims of unconstitutional homeless ‘sweeps’ for $5.5 million by Marisa Kendall (“In a deal with statewide implications, Caltrans has agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle claims that the agency illegally destroyed the property of … Continue reading
Reason: Houston D.A. Doubles the Scope of Her Case Review Following a Deadly Drug Raid Based on a Phony Affidavit
Reason: Houston D.A. Doubles the Scope of Her Case Review Following a Deadly Drug Raid Based on a Phony Affidavit by Jacob Sullum (“After declaring another man arrested by Gerald Goines ‘actually innocent,’ the Harris County district attorney says prosecutors … Continue reading
Vice: This Senate Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Facial Recognition
Vice: This Senate Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Facial Recognition by Edward Ongweso Jr. (“Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker have introduced a Senate bill to place a moratorium until regulations are passed by Congress.”)
WaPo: Axon rolls out the next level of police technology: Live-streaming body cameras
WaPo: Axon rolls out the next level of police technology: Live-streaming body cameras by Tom Jackman (“Cincinnati is the first city to equip its force with cameras that turn on automatically when guns or Tasers are drawn, letting commanders see … Continue reading
NC: 30 years of satellite based monitoring of this convicted sex offender was unreasonable
30 years of satellite based monitoring of this convicted sex offender was unreasonable under Grady v. North Carolina and subsequent state cases. State v. Griffin, 2020 N.C. App. LEXIS 139 (Feb. 18, 2020). The trial court credited the officer’s testimony … Continue reading
N.D.Okla.: “Actually innocent” plaintiff framed by ATF who served four years gets judgment for $5m
Plaintiff was framed by an ATF agent acting on behalf of the government because she and her family were believed to have escaped lawful prosecution for years. “Ms. Barnes was actually innocent.” The district court initially dismissed the case, and … Continue reading
CA9: Conducting a frisk in such a way it inflicts pain can state a claim
“In this case, Borawick and Appellees have raised genuine disputes of material fact over whether there was an objective basis to believe that Borawick was a danger to the officers or to the public; whether a reasonable officer, having been … Continue reading
CA9: Sexual groping during a prison search states 4A excessive force claim
It was clearly established that groping a (transgender) woman during prison searches was unreasonable as excessive force. Goff v. Ramirez, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 4876 (9th Cir. Feb. 13, 2020). (The plaintiff being transgender had nothing to do with the … Continue reading
CA6: FRCP 60(b) can’t be used to backdoor a successor habeas
Habeas petitioner’s attempt to use Rule 60(b) to attack the rejection of a Fourth Amendment claim was a backdoor successor habeas that doesn’t satisfy grounds for one. In re Henderson, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 4856 (6th Cir. Feb. 14, 2020)*:
NPR.org: Warrant-Proof Encrypted Messages Targeted By Trump Administration
NPR.org: Warrant-Proof Encrypted Messages Targeted By Trump Administration (“‘End-to-end encryption’ has gone mainstream, which means tech companies can’t decrypt messages even when law enforcement has a warrant. The Trump administration says that’s taking privacy too far.”)
WaPo: Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs
WaPo: Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs by Drew Harwell (“For all the worries about hacking, owners of Internet-connected cameras say they love watching people silently from afar — often their … Continue reading
IN: Having def manipulate his clothing and remove his shoes was a search, not a safety frisk for weapons
The search of defendant was not for officer safety where the officer told defendant to move his clothing around because, if he was armed, he would be putting his hands on the weapon. The order to remove his shoes also … Continue reading
OH2: Hearsay is admissible in a suppression hearing, and the trial court erred in sustaining the state’s objection to hearsay, but it was harmless on the totality
The state objected to hearsay to a defense question at the suppression hearing, but hearsay is admissible in suppression hearings under Rule 104(a). Here, however, it was harmless error. The lack of prejudice thus results in there being no ineffective … Continue reading