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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)
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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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"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
CA9: Younger abstention applied except to ptf’s 4A claim because it wouldn’t enjoin state proceedings
Younger abstention was properly granted, in part, because the state nuisance proceeding was a civil enforcement proceeding within the scope of Younger, the state proceedings implicated important state interests, the state proceedings provided an adequate opportunity for the state action … Continue reading
CA4: Entry into house while waiting for SW to be procured doesn’t require suppression
Police entered defendant’s house to secure it after sending one officer to get a search warrant. The entry didn’t require suppression of evidence because there was an independent source for the information in the search warrant application. United States v. … Continue reading
NY2: No REP in a computer open on a P2P network
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a computer open to the world on a P2P network and anybody can come into. People v. Worrell, 2019 NY Slip Op 02127, 2019 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2111 (2d Dept. Mar. … Continue reading
CA7: While the circumstantial evidence might support a SW or wiretap, it didn’t support guilt; reversed and dismissed
“We assume the government’s circumstantial evidence here might have supported a search warrant or perhaps a wiretap on Garcia’s telephone. It simply was not sufficient to support a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for distributing cocaine. We reverse … Continue reading
IA: Product of valid administrative subpoena could be turned over to prosecutors for other action
Defendant was a former nursing home nurse, and she was under investigation by the state for allegedly getting some government benefits she wasn’t entitled to. The state Department of Investigations and Appeals issued subpoenas for bank records. They didn’t find … Continue reading
TX11 applies GFE to SW based on a statute later held unconstitutional
In an opinion on remand from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Davis good faith applies to a search warrant issued under a provision of the Texas Penal Code later declared unconstitutional. Siller v. State, 2019 Tex. App. LEXIS 2227 … Continue reading
EFF: To Search Through Millions of License Plates, Police Should Get a Warrant
EFF: To Search Through Millions of License Plates, Police Should Get a Warrant by Andrew Crocker:
Reason: Border Agents Detained a 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen for 30+ Hours
Reason: Border Agents Detained a 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen for 30+ Hours by Joe Setyon:
TX: Warrantless seizure of blood drawn at hospital for diagnostic purposes unreasonable
The trial court properly granted defendant’s motion to suppress challenging the State’s seizure and search of vials of his blood drawn at a hospital for medical purposes. The government’s testing constituted a warrantless search of his blood sample in violation … Continue reading
Lexology: When monitoring employees’ computer activity, don’t overreach
Lexology: When monitoring employees’ computer activity, don’t overreach by Robin Shea:
CA9: Exclusionary rule applies to tribal officers
The exclusionary rule applies to tribal officers conducting illegal searches or searches off their tribal lands under the Indian Civil Rights Act or the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Cooley, 919 F.3d 1135 (9th Cir. Mar. 21, 2019), reh. en … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: Def should have discovered his 4A claim with exercise of due diligence years earlier; 2255 denied
2255 petitioner sought to extend the statute of limitations for what he alleges is a late discovered search and seizure claim with merit. The court finds that he would have discovered the claim years early with the exercise of due … Continue reading
D.Nev.: The fact the officers claimed to smell marijuana but didn’t find any doesn’t mean they were lying
It was testified that the car smelled like burnt marijuana. The fact none was found doesn’t indicate that officers were lying. United States v. Davila, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 42805 (D. Nev. Jan. 31, 2019),* adopted, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA7: SW not required by Riley and Carpenter for cell phone and computer searches at border
The Seventh Circuit finds that the border search exception was not affected by Riley and Carpenter such that a search warrant is required for search of electronics at the border. United States v. Wanjiku, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 8154 (7th … Continue reading
D.Mont.: After removing tainted information from the SW affidavit, it’s the job of reviewing court to independently evaluate the PC
When removing tainted evidence from the affidavit for the search warrant and retesting it, the issuing judge is not to be a witness. It’s the court’s duty to reevaluate the application for the search warrant on its own. United States … Continue reading
IN: An electronic signature on an e-warrant satisfies the oath or affirmation requirement
The officer’s electronic signature on an electronic search warrant application satisfies the search warrant statute and the oath and affirmation requirement. Abd v. State, 2019 Ind. App. LEXIS 125 (Mar. 19, 2019):
NC: The state bears the burden of proof of reasonableness under Grady and it failed here
NC recognizes that its case law is in vast disarray since Grady v. North Carolina, and it’s tough to sort out. The state bears the burden of proof on reasonableness of satellite based monitoring of a sex offender. Here, the … Continue reading
Reason: Volokh Conspiracy: Fourth Circuit Deepens the Split on Accessing Opened E-Mails
Reason: Volokh Conspiracy: Fourth Circuit Deepens the Split on Accessing Opened E-Mails by Orin Kerr Courts have been struggling with this issue for years, and now the law is even more divided than before.
CA9: Two on failure to prove egregious 4A violation
“Applying de novo review, we find that Torres-Navarro has failed to carry her burden to show an egregious Fourth Amendment violation. See id. at 649, 653. Her declaration does not deny the border patrol agent’s submission, reflected on the Form … Continue reading