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- Reason: Miami Sheriff Hired a Private Law Firm To Pursue—and Profit From—Asset Forfeiture Cases
- D.Conn.: Pole camera on def’s house and curtilage didn’t show inside house, so it’s reasonable
- OH12: Officer’s violation of knock-and-announce statute justifies suppression
- Reason: Documents Reveal the Postal Service’s Broad Surveillance of Political Activists
- CA4: Not having child in a booster seat justified stop
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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)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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
Privacy Foundation
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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: Never-Googlers: Web users take the ultimate step to guard their data
WaPo: Never-Googlers: Web users take the ultimate step to guard their data by Greg Bensinger: As reports surface regarding how the online advertising giant tracks consumers, some try to reclaim their online footsteps.
NYT: An American Citizen Is Released From Immigration Custody After Nearly a Month
NYT: An American Citizen Is Released From Immigration Custody After Nearly a Month by Manny Fernandez
NYT: Barr Revives Encryption Debate, Calling on Tech Firms to Allow for Law Enforcement
NYT: Barr Revives Encryption Debate, Calling on Tech Firms to Allow for Law Enforcement by Katie Benner: The attorney general, reopening the conversation on security vs. privacy, said that encryption and other measures effectively turned devices into “law-free zones.”
D.Ariz.: Affidavit of another didn’t show offer of proof for standing
The declaration used to attempt to show defendant’s guest standing doesn’t tie defendant’s relationship to the property to the time of the search. Moreover, on the day in question, his truck was parked along a fence far enough from the … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Ptf’s guilty plea was collateral estoppel to his § 1983 search claim
Plaintiff’s civil search claim was barred by collateral estoppel by his guilty plea that there was sufficient evidence to convict. The officer gets qualified immunity for relying on a search warrant. Dabish v. McMahon, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121399 (E.D. … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: When the automobile exception applies and def is in custody, a SW still isn’t required
There was probable cause by a plain view so the automobile exception applies. The fact defendant as in custody doesn’t require a search warrant. United States v. Lightsey, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121669 (M.D. Fla. July 3, 2019). There was … Continue reading
OR: “related to controlled substances offenses” in a cell phone SW was not particular
The cell phone search warrant was not sufficiently particular under the state constitution because there were no practical limits in the phrase “related to controlled substances offenses.” State v. Savath, 298 Ore. App. 495 (July 17, 2019):
The Atlantic: The Stuff of Dystopian Nightmare
The Atlantic: The Stuff of Dystopian Nightmare by Garrett Epps: ACLU lawyers have stopped border agents from demanding ID after domestic flights.
OH5: PC is determined on the totality, not each isolated fact
Defendant’s challenge to probable cause for the search warrant isolates each fact. Applying the totality of circumstances, there is probable cause. State v. Beightler, 2019-Ohio-2946, 2019 Ohio App. LEXIS 3037 (5th Dist. July 18, 2019).* Defendant doesn’t meet the Franks … Continue reading
VT: Inquest subpoena for video of police involved shooting is a public record
A television station sought access to a video of a police involved shooting produced before an inquest. The record is presumptively an open record. “The pivotal question in this case is whether a trial-court order granting a motion to quash … Continue reading
CA9: A state SW executed by a federal officer doesn’t violate 4A
A state issued search warrant is not executed in violation of the Fourth Amendment because a federal law enforcement officer executed it. United States v. Cruz-Ramirez, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 21528 (9th Cir. July 19, 2019). Defendant wasn’t “in custody” … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Def failed to show standing at the place where he intermittently spent nights but no showing of when
Defendant failed to show standing in the home of another. He and his girlfriend had a key to the premises where he intermittently spent the night over a fair stretch of time, but there was no showing of when he … Continue reading
S.D.Ga.: Oral military search authorizations do not violate 4A or Rule 41
Oral search warrant requests and authorizations under M.R.E. 315 do not violate the Fourth Amendment or Rule 41. Many cases so hold. The violation of the SOP manual for military magistrates wasn’t serious enough to justify suppression nor prevent the … Continue reading
BuzzFeed News: Opinion: Don’t Regulate Facial Recognition. Ban It.
BuzzFeed News: Opinion: Don’t Regulate Facial Recognition. Ban It. by Evan Greer: We are on the verge of a nightmare era of mass surveillance by the state and private companies. It’s not too late to stop it.
The Atlantic: FaceApp Makes Today’s Privacy Laws Look Antiquated
The Atlantic: FaceApp Makes Today’s Privacy Laws Look Antiquated by Tiffany C. Li: Cameras are everywhere, and data brokers are vacuuming up information on individuals. But regulations have not kept pace.
E.D.Mich.: Second SW issued three weeks after first had no additional information to overcome staleness; no GFE
Defendant was the target of a search warrant. Three weeks later, police obtained another search warrant using the prior information attempted to be supplemented by defendant’s Facebook page. There was also a failed controlled buy there. There was insufficient new … Continue reading
NY3: No suppression hearing for lack of pleading a factual basis for suppression
Defendant was properly denied a suppression hearing for not alleging a factual basis for a suppression motion. People v. Seecoomar, 2019 NY Slip Op 05727, 2019 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5742 (3d Dept. July 18, 2019).* The stop was justified. … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: While def was in jail, he caused robbery evidence to be moved to his sister’s house; he’d been in jail a month by then and lacks standing
Defendant is accused of robbing an ATM technician. The search warrant for his place in Chicago was based on probable cause, and evidence linking him to the robbery was found there. After jail calls suggested evidence was moved to his … Continue reading
No IAC for not moving to suppress where there’s no standing
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not pursuing a motion to suppress that the co-defendant already lost on the merits and for which defendant had no standing. State v. Adkins, 2019 Del. Super. LEXIS 335 (July 16, 2019).* Defense counsel wasn’t … Continue reading
Cal.1: Application of community caretaking function doesn’t require police to know who is inside; just that somebody reasonably might be
The community caretaking function was satisfied here: “Although in the present case the officers were not aware of a specific, known individual who might be in danger or might pose an imminent threat to others, as in some of these … Continue reading