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 -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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State courts (and some USDC opinions)
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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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)
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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
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)
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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.W.Va.: Traffic stop was valid and led to plain view of drugs on passenger seat
The headings tell us the case: “A. Lieutenant Kennedy had the requisite reasonable, articulable suspicion of unlawful conduct to initiate a traffic stop on Defendant’s vehicle based upon traffic violations and erratic driving consistent with that of an impaired driver.” … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Def lacked standing in apts he owned and rented to relatives
Defendant lacked standing to contest the search of an apartment building he owned but rented the units out to relatives. The CI, however, puts the defendant in one of the apartments with cocaine and a firearm ten days before the … Continue reading
ME: Statute requiring blood draw in fatal accident without PC violates 4A; but GFE applied here
Maine’s statute that requires a blood draw of the driver in a fatal or near fatal accident without probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment. Thus, the 2007 case upholding the statute is overruled. It cannot be categorized under the special … Continue reading
EFF: U.K. Police Will Soon be able to Search Through U.S. Data Without Asking a Judge
EFF: U.K. Police Will Soon be able to Search Through U.S. Data Without Asking a Judge by Joe Mullin:
CA9: Tasering a man in his own bed not cooperating in being arrested could be found excessive
A jury could reasonably conclude that using a Taser on plaintiff lying on his own bed, on his cell phone trying to call his lawyer, who didn’t violently resist but just pulled his arm away, was an unreasonable use of … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: Three SWs not part of case were not subject to judicial notice
In a civil case, the court refuses to take judicial notice of the facts alleged in three search warrants that are not part of the case. Aubrey v. D Magazine Partners, L.P., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12304 (N.D. Tex. Jan. … Continue reading
WaPo: Perspective: Facebook will now show you exactly how it stalks you — even when you’re not using Facebook
WaPo: Perspective: Facebook will now show you exactly how it stalks you — even when you’re not using Facebook by Geoffrey A. Fowler (“The new ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ tool reminds us we’re living in a reality TV program where the cameras … Continue reading
The Intercept: The Rise of Smart Camera Networks, and Why We Should Ban Them
The Intercept: The Rise of Smart Camera Networks, and Why We Should Ban Them by Michael Kwet (“The rise of all-seeing smart camera networks is an alarming development that threatens civil rights and liberties throughout the world. Law enforcement agencies … Continue reading
techdirt: Supreme Court Asked To Tell Cops That Consenting To A Search Is Not Consenting To Having Your Home Destroyed
techdirt: Supreme Court Asked To Tell Cops That Consenting To A Search Is Not Consenting To Having Your Home Destroyed by Tim Cushing:
Bloomberg Law: INSIGHT: State Investigations—50 Takes on Subpoena, Privilege, Document Rules
Bloomberg Law: INSIGHT: State Investigations—50 Takes on Subpoena, Privilege, Document Rules by Brendan Parets:
OR: Car owner had no REP from GPS installed by his company before he got the car from them
Plaintiff worked for Toyota Motor Credit and Toyota Financial Services. When he severed his employment with them, he was allowed to keep the vehicle he used for them. Unbeknownst to him, Toyota Financial Services had a GPS device on the … Continue reading
FL5: Appellate counsel in direct appeal was ineffective for not arguing automobile exception wasn’t applicable; if it had been argued, court would have reversed
In defendant’s original appeal, appellate counsel argued only that the search incident doctrine applied and he failed on that issue. On post-conviction, however, new counsel argued that the automobile exception should have been argued and that it did not apply … Continue reading
CA1: Franks offer of proof didn’t show materiality or undermine PC
Defendant’s appeal is based on his claim that the district court erred in not holding a Franks hearing. Defendant didn’t show enough in his allegations to show that the omissions were material to the showing of probable cause. United States … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Def was arrested for DUI; so, already detained, a dog sniff wasn’t unreasonable
Defendant was arrested for DUI, and the court finds, based on United States v. Hunnicutt, 135 F.3d 1345, 1350 (10th Cir. 1998), that “detention of the driver at the scene to accomplish a canine sniff is generally reasonable where the … Continue reading
WHYY: The Pa. State Police was warned about possible racial bias in car searches. The agency’s answer? End the research.
WHYY: The Pa. State Police was warned about possible racial bias in car searches. The agency’s answer? End the research. By Daniel Simmons-Ritchie and Angela Couloumbis, Spotlight PA (“Last fall, under scrutiny for its decision years earlier to stop tracking … Continue reading
PA: Realtime CSLI also subject to Carpenter; orders here under state wiretap act complied with 4A
The state obtained realtime CSLI with court orders under the state wiretapping statute, and these orders were sufficiently like search warrants under Dalia v. United States. (Carpenter was decided while his case was on appeal.) The court finds that the … Continue reading
OH6: Checking DMV records involves no 4A intrustion
“[T]he law is clear that a police officer’s check of a person’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles records does not implicate Fourth Amendment rights, as it does not constitute an invasion as it involves no intrusion.” State v. Price, 2020-Ohio-220, 2020 … Continue reading
D.R.I.: Carpenter procedural and not substantive and not a “new rule” under Teague
Carpenter is not entitled to retroactive application to post-conviction cases under Teague. It is procedural, not substantive. United States v. Sandoval, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11281 (D.R.I. Jan. 23, 2020):