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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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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)
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"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
Cal.5: An unlawful arrest is not per se with excessive force under the 4A
An unlawful arrest is not per se with excessive force under the Fourth Amendment or state statute. People v. Perry, 2019 Cal. App. LEXIS 555 (5th Dist. June 18, 2019). The trial court’s finding that the police didn’t search defendant’s … Continue reading
MT: 911 call about drunk driver was corroborated when car found
A 911 call reported a potential drunk driver. When the car was found, the officer’s observations were at least reasonable suspicion justifying a stop. Indreland v. Mont. DOJ, 2019 MT 141, 2019 Mont. LEXIS 226 (June 18, 2019). Defendant was … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: No REP in an open office where others were free to come and go and document was taken at police insistence
Here the court considers a post-verdict motion to suppress. The court noted that there were kernels of cause for a motion to suppress, albeit a private search of an office, but the complete picture didn’t develop until trial. Giving he … Continue reading
CA8: Lack of knock-and-announce for parole search gets QI despite fact no case says it’s lawful; no “robust consensus of cases of persuasive authority”
Plaintiff absconded parolee was subjected to an unannounced entry into his hotel room about 6 am for a parole search. He was in bed with his girlfriend and a gun. The Arkansas Supreme Court held the entry violated the Fourth … Continue reading
MA: SW in ongoing criminal enterprise was based on “powerful evidence”
“A Superior Court judge erred in granting a criminal defendant’s pretrial motion to suppress evidence seized by police from the defendant’s home and place of business, where the affidavit in support of the search warrants contained sufficient information to justify … Continue reading
FL1: Recognizing conflict in many courts on compelled password production, court takes a middle ground: state must show what it wants with “reasonable particularity”
“To what extent does the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination protect a suspect in a criminal case from the compelled disclosure of a password to an electronic communications device in the state’s possession? Courts differ in their legal analysis of … Continue reading
PA: ID made as a result of warrantless search suppressed, but that which was seen before may be testified to
An officer’s identification made wholly as a result of a warrantless search renders that identification tainted and inadmissible. If, however, eyewitness identification of a defendant occurred prior to illegal conduct by law enforcement may be admissible, if based on observations … Continue reading
D.Minn.: A generic motion to suppress should be denied for telling the court nothing
“[F]ailure to affirmatively provide the Court with support for the motion as it relates to the warrant is a sufficient basis for denial of the motion.” Even so, the court goes to the merits and finds probable cause. United States … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: FTCA doesn’t provide a damages remedy for how SW executed
FTCA doesn’t provide a damages remedy for how a search warrant is executed. Lopez v. United States, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102516 (D. Ariz. June 19, 2019) The officer’s body camera video showed one of the passengers wasn’t wearing a … Continue reading
D.Minn.: A vague allegation of no PC for SW is insufficient to get even a hearing; specifics needed
“Defendants’ earlier-filed motions fail to raise any specific deficiencies in the warrants, but rather generally allege that the warrants lack probable cause. Defendants have similarly failed to point to any specific shortcomings in the affidavits in support of each warrant. … Continue reading
Atlantic: Mass Surveillance Is Coming to a City Near You
Atlantic: Mass Surveillance Is Coming to a City Near You by Conor Friedersdorf: A tech entrepreneur wants to track the residents of a high-crime American community.
WSJ: The Next Big Privacy Concern Is Up in the Air
WSJ: The Next Big Privacy Concern Is Up in the Air Katy McLaughlin: As more drones take flight, wealthy homeowners grapple with how to shield themselves from prying eyes in the sky
Law360: Digital Data Privacy One Year After Carpenter
Law360: Digital Data Privacy One Year After Carpenter. (FYI: I don’t subscribe to Law360 so I can’t give more; it costs enough to post all this stuff because I pay for hosting and accept no advertising. I hate advertising.)
PA: Computer repair tech’s finding CP on computer was private search; police didn’t exceed it
Defendant took his computer in for repair. The computer tech determined the hard drive was failing, and he consented to replacement and moving the files. The tech found child porn and told the police. They came and their view of … Continue reading
NYTimes: Opinion: Facebook Under Oath: You Have No Expectation of Privacy
NYTimes: Opinion: Facebook Under Oath: You Have No Expectation of Privacy by Charlie Warzel: The social media giant thinks privacy is a you problem.
Law360: Border Phone Search Questions Continue In Fed. Court
Law360: Border Phone Search Questions Continue In Fed. Court: Can the federal government confiscate, search and retain your cellphone at the border for no reason at all?
Two reversed for lack of findings on suppression issues
The findings of the district court don’t support the conclusion, so the case is remanded for more findings. The police followed the alleged drunk driving defendant into his house. They had probable cause independent of the illegal entry. People v. … Continue reading
Bloomberg Law: Criminal Law Legend, Mueller Team Member Dreeben Leaving DOJ
Bloomberg Law: Criminal Law Legend, Mueller Team Member Dreeben Leaving DOJ by Jordan S. Rubin
NC: Going to back door after no answer in a knock-and-talk violates Jardines
Police went to do a knock-and-talk and nobody answered at the front door. Going to the back door, ostensibly as an extension of the knock-and-talk, violated curtilage under Jardines. What was seen went into a search warrant application, and it … Continue reading