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Recent Posts
- 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
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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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"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
NY: Partially inaccurate statement as to admissibility at trial of refusal of BAC test required suppression
“In sum, because the warnings given to defendant were at least partially inaccurate — i.e., as to the admissibility at trial of his refusal to submit to testing — the courts below properly suppressed the results of the breathalyzer test … Continue reading
DE: Search of jail cell seizing legal materials violated 6A; dismissal of indictment required
The search of defendant’s prison cell seizing his legal materials without judicial approval violated his Sixth Amendment rights, not his Fourth Amendment rights. The lead prosecutor in his case reviewed the legal materials. The state should have used a taint … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: Being parked in the middle of the road with the engine running is RS
“In this case, the evidence is clear that Officer Paxton observed a Mercedes Benz parked in the middle of the road with its engine running and lights on. After his initial approach to the car, he discovered that both the … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Showing of nexus was not bare bones; it was a reasonable inference on totality
The showing of nexus was thin, but not bare bones, and it was reasonable to infer that evidence of three robberies would be found where he was staying with his girlfriend. There clearly was probable cause to arrest him in … Continue reading
NYTimes: The Cold Case That Inspired the ‘Golden State Killer’ Detective to Try Genealogy
NYTimes: The Cold Case That Inspired the ‘Golden State Killer’ Detective to Try Genealogy by Tim Arango: Before investigators in California say they solved a decades-old case of rape and murder using a genealogy website, the only other known case … Continue reading
Montgomery Advertiser: Opinion: Policing for profit prevails at Alabama Legislature
Montgomery Advertiser: Opinion: Policing for profit prevails at Alabama Legislature by Leah Nelson and Shay Farley, Alabama Voices:
Wired UK: Facial recognition tech used by UK police is making a ton of mistakes
Wired UK: Facial recognition tech used by UK police is making a ton of mistakes by Matt Burgess: South Wales Police, London’s Met and Leicestershire have all been trialling automated facial recognition in public places. But a lack of legal … Continue reading
VA: LP reader information is “personal information” under state law
Under Virginia law, “[t]he pictures and associated data stored in the Police Department’s A[utomated] L[icense] P[late] R[reader] database meet the statutory definition of ‘personal information.’” The court can’t tell on this record whether it constitutes an “information system.” Neal v. … Continue reading
CA5: Automobile exception applied; although def was handcuffed, wife showed up acting somewhat belligerently
Defendant was in custody, handcuffed and on the ground, but his wife showed up acting somewhat belligerent. Her presence satisfied exigency for the car search. United States v. Beene, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 11400 (5th Cir. May 2, 2018). Defense … Continue reading
IN: Thermal imaging SW was based on PC, then SW for house was, too
The police obtained a thermal imaging warrant, and it was based on probable cause, information from a CI that was corroborated. That led to a search warrant for the premises, and it was also based on collective knowledge of the … Continue reading
MO: Recording def’s conversation with attorney in police station interview room violated 6A and privilege; mandamus granted against unsealing
Defendant’s attorney met him at the police station to confer, and they put them in an interview room which recorded their meeting. The trial court appointed a special master to review it. The recording violated defendant’s attorney-client privilege and right … Continue reading
CA4: Firearms are usually kept at home, and nexus was shown
The only inference that can be drawn from the affidavit is that there was a firearm in defendant’s house, and this satisfied the nexus requirement. Firearms are usually kept in the home. Because the affidavit showed probable cause, the good … Continue reading
NJ: Public defender must be served with forfeiture to enable adequate defense of criminal case
While the state did not act with malice or intentionally, it violates fundamental fairness to not serve defendant’s public defender with a courtesy copy of a forfeiture complaint so the PD can advise to stay the forfeiture so defendant doesn’t … Continue reading
NC: Affidavit’s complete failure to show nexus required suppression
The affidavit for the search warrant completely failed to link defendant to the place to be searched, and the trial court erred in not suppressing the search. State v. Lewis, 2018 N.C. App. LEXIS 442 (May 1, 2018):
VA: Challenge to protective sweep is not a PC challenge, so PC challenged waived for appeal
Defendant’s search challenge was to a protective sweep, but not to the probable cause for the search warrant. That was a waiver of the probable cause issue. Commonwealth v. Smith, 2018 Va. App. LEXIS 115 (May 1, 2018); Commonwealth v. … Continue reading
Big Think: Predictive policing: Data can be used to prevent crime, but is that data racially tinged?
Big Think: Predictive policing: Data can be used to prevent crime, but is that data racially tinged? by Eric Siegel:
Law.com: Judge to Consider This Week Whether to Unseal Vast Surveillance Records
Law.com: Judge to Consider This Week Whether to Unseal Vast Surveillance Records by Ben Hancock: U.S. Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore of the Northern District of California may reveal whether the curtain of secrecy around past electronic surveillance in criminal investigations … Continue reading
CA2: Def’s yard in Staten Island was curtilage; there is curtilage even in an urban area
A yard of house in Staten Island was search by NYPD at 3:30 am. The Second Circuit finds the search violated the curtilage. The yard qualifies under Dunn and Jardines. United States v. Alexander, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 11093 (2d … Continue reading
D.Me.: Three alternative bases to uphold search
“The Court discerns [and finds] three alternative bases for determining that the December 20 interaction was lawful: either (1) the interaction with Defendant constituted a consensual encounter until Defendant admitted to possessing marijuana; (2) the officers executed a lawful Terry … Continue reading