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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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
Journal Times editorial (Mulwaukee): The Cellebrite and its threat to your constitutional rights
Journal Times editorial (Mulwaukee): The Cellebrite and its threat to your constitutional rights. Racine WI acquires a Cellebrite.
D.Neb.: ATF administrative inspection can occur even though they had PC; SW not required
Just because ATF had reasonable cause doesn’t mean that they needed a search warrant to conduct an administrative inspection of a gun dealer’s records. United States v. Melton, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 221663 (D. Neb. Dec. 28, 2018):
CA11: Occasional visitor at house had no standing
“Here, Rodriguez’s limited relationship to Weeks’s house does not grant him a reasonable expectation of privacy in it. Rodriguez testified at the suppression hearing that he went to Weeks’s house after being invited, not on his own accord. He also … Continue reading
CA6: State SW can be used to bring a federal prosection
A state search warrant, of course, can be used to initiate a federal prosecution. Dismissal of the state case in favor of federal prosecution is not res judicata. Moreover, the federal government isn’t a party in the state case. United … Continue reading
DE: A probation search that didn’t comply with the probation laws couldn’t be used in a criminal proceeding
A probation search that didn’t comply with the probation laws couldn’t be used in a criminal proceeding. Walker v. State, 2019 Del. LEXIS 88 (Feb. 21, 2019). The record doesn’t show that defendant’s plea was conditional, so there is no … Continue reading
CA4: Seizure of Nazi materials in a SW for an ISIL suspect was reasonable because both are defined as terrorist organizations
Defendant was alleged to be connected to ISIL, and, in a terrorism investigation, the government executed a search warrant at his home. Seizure of Nazi materials wasn’t outside the scope of the search warrant: “a reasonable officer would be able … Continue reading
NY: No REP or 4A right against recording of calls from prison
No Fourth Amendment right of defendant was violated by recording his prison calls and then admitting them into evidence. He was well on notice that they were recorded. People v. Diaz, 2019 NY Slip Op 01260, 2019 N.Y. LEXIS 266 … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Despite McDonald under the 2A, apparent possession of a weapon after hearing shots fired can be considered as RS
Defendant asserted that he had a Second Amendment right to possess a handgun, and that the court could not consider that in assessing reasonable suspicion. The court disagrees because here the officers were responding to hearing shots fired and saw … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Exigent cell phone ping not barred by Carpenter
An exigent circumstances cell phone ping was not prohibited by Carpenter. United States v. Andrews, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26283 (D. Minn. Feb. 20, 2019):
DE: No error in order denying production of a DNA warrant in an unrelated case without showing any relevance
There was no abuse of discretion in the trial court refusing to make the state produce a DNA affidavit and search warrant in another case not shown to be relevant here. White v. StateWhite v. StateWhite v. State, 2019 Del. … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Overseizure from iCloud account wasn’t so flagrant it required suppression; govt agreed in advance to exclude the overseized
The government’s overseizure from defendant’s iCloud account wasn’t so flagrant or egregious to warrant suppression. The government agreed up-front to exclude the obvious, and that’s a sufficient remedy. United States v. Pinto-Thomaz, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26262 (S.D. N.Y. Feb. … Continue reading
Darwin Award nominee
Facebook posts eight days after a home invasion robbery show the defendants wearing the victims’ stolen Rolex and other jewelry including a unique gold coin necklace and handling the guns used in the robbery. The videos were not more prejudicial … Continue reading
TX13: Unsatisified state requirement issuing magistrate’s name be clearly stated warranted suppression
Texas added a fifth requirement to search warrants that the issuing magistrate’s name be clearly legible. It can be incorporated from the affidavit. Here it wasn’t, and the motion to suppress was properly granted and no good faith exception applies. … Continue reading
NM: Reserve deputy’s stop of suspected DUI to call for a deputy was a reasonable minor intrusion
A reserve deputy followed defendant who was driving badly and then she ran into a car in her driveway. He stopped behind her and told her to “hang tight,” and he called for a deputy. The stop was reasonable, considering … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: A customer leaving def’s house with a lot of drugs was nexus to def’s house
“Similarly, in this case, Charles Williams was discovered with a large amount of narcotics immediately after leaving the Target Apartment. … This incident alone is enough to establish a nexus to the Apartment to justify a warrant to search the … Continue reading
NY3: Def counsel was ineffective for not objecting to SW affidavit coming into evidence full of inadmissible informant hearsay
Defendant proved ineffective assistance of counsel from defense counsel’s failure to object to the search warrant application coming into evidence full of informant hearsay that wasn’t admissible in the case in chief. People v. Newman, 2019 NY Slip Op 01263, … Continue reading
CA4: More than one person can have authority to issue command authorized search under Mil.R.Evid. 315(d)
Defendant was subjected to a command authorized search under Mil.R.Evid. 315(d). He argues that the definition of who is in control to authorize the search isn’t clear. Well, it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean that multiple people might not fit … Continue reading
Crime Report: Drones and the Fourth Amendment: Do ‘Eyes in the Sky’ See Too Much?
Crime Report: Drones and the Fourth Amendment: Do ‘Eyes in the Sky’ See Too Much? by Lauren Sonnenberg:
ACLU blog: The Government Cannot Force E-mail Companies to Copy and Save Your Account ‘Just in Case’
ACLU blog: The Government Cannot Force E-mail Companies to Copy and Save Your Account ‘Just in Case’ by Melodi Dincer & Kristin M. Mulvey: