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- W.D.La.: Israel’s capture of Palestinian cell phone calls was foreign search in case here
- IN: Officer’s interpretation of traffic law wasn’t reasonable so stop was void
- Gizmodo: How You Could End Up in a Government Surveillance Database and Never Know It
- 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
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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: Supreme Court to hear Microsoft case: A question of law and borders
WaPo: Supreme Court to hear Microsoft case: A question of law and borders by Ellen Nakashima:
D.Mass.: Overseizure by retention of unresponsive emails seized under SW doesn’t require suppression of all
Defendant contends that the overseizure and retention of emails obtained by warrant that aren’t relevant to the crime under investigation requires suppression of even that which was validly obtained. No court has gone that far. His creative attempt to extend … Continue reading
OR: Def disavowed consent issue in trial court, so he couldn’t argue it on appeal
Defendant disavowed the argument made on appeal in the trial court, and you just can’t do that. “Defendant failed to preserve his argument because he failed to provide the trial court with an objection, let alone ‘an explanation of his … Continue reading
InCyberDefense: IMSI Catchers Revive a Heated Debate on Privacy versus Security
InCyberDefense: IMSI Catchers Revive a Heated Debate on Privacy versus Security by Wes O’Donnell. States where used:
The Intercept: Confidential ICE Handbook Lays Out Paths for Investigators to Avoid Constitutional Challenges
The Intercept: Confidential ICE Handbook Lays Out Paths for Investigators to Avoid Constitutional Challenges by Eoin Higgins:
DE: Exclusionary rule does not apply in probation revocation proceedings
Deciding an issue of first impression in the state, the court concludes that the exclusionary rule does not apply in probation revocation proceedings. Surveying law from other states, some recognize a bad faith exception for probation searches, but this case … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Ordering man to crawl out of hotel room before entry was reasonable where officer had arrest warrants for occupant
Defendant was ordered out of a hotel room for officer safety by crawling out. Viewed as a Terry stop, it lacked reasonable suspicion [so why decide it?] but the officers were there with arrest warrants, and that was reasonable under … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Activating a key fob to find the car isn’t a search
Activating a key fob to find the car it belongs to is not a search. “Moreover, the Sixth Circuit has held that ‘[t]he mere insertion of a key into a lock, by an officer who lawfully possesses the key and … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Arrest at the threshold wasn’t an entry in violation of 4A
Police received a call about drug trafficking, and, when they arrived, they could smell marijuana. That was enough. “Jones unsuccessfully attempts to distinguish between possession of marijuana for commercial activity—i.e., selling it—and possession for personal use.” Officers knocked at the … Continue reading
SD: Search incident doctrine doesn’t apply to driver’s urine samples
A urine sample can’t be taken from a suspect incident to an arrest. Nothing about the search incident doctrine of officer safety and destruction of evidence applies to urine samples. State v. Lar, 2018 SD 18, 2018 S.D. LEXIS 26 … Continue reading
NM: Assuming stop was unconstitutional, def’s giving a false name purged the taint
Surveying the law nationwide, the court concludes that defendant’s giving a false name purged the taint of his unreasonable stop under both the Fourth Amendment and the state constitution. The court declines the invitation to distinguish between violent and non-violent … Continue reading
VA: ABC employee firing for excessive administrative search affirmed
Appellant was a agent of the Virginia ABC who conducted an unreasonable and excessive warrantless search of a licensee’s premises, and he was fired for abuse of authority. He appealed through the state grievance procedure claiming the search was legal, … Continue reading
LA5: Hearsay on driver’s consent admissible at suppression hearing
The trial court found the stop was reasonable for shooting from a car and driver consented based on the testimony of the stopping officer. Defendant’s claim that the driver’s consent was hearsay and inadmissible was rejected. All other exceptions for … Continue reading
GA: Nexus shown where def left house and drove directly to controlled buy
Deleting the detective’s false statement from the affidavit that he had seen a black male with short dreadlocks in an SUV, the affidavit nonetheless provided probable cause to issue the warrant based on a controlled buy from defendant. The remainder … Continue reading
S.D.W.Va.: Post-conviction allegation of inadequate cross examination at suppression hearing didn’t state a sufficient claim
Defendant’s 2255 claim that defense counsel didn’t sufficiently cross-examine the government’s witnesses in the suppression hearing didn’t allege ineffective assistance of counsel. Also, defendant didn’t appeal the denial of the suppression motion and pled guilty instead. Thorne v. United States, … Continue reading
KS: Waiting to run criminal history check unreasonably extended stop; drug dog used during that time
The stop was unreasonably extended by waiting several minutes to run a criminal history which was not for safety reasons. While the criminal history check was being run, a drug dog was run around the car. The exclusionary rule applies … Continue reading
Volokh Conspiracy: Final Pre-Argument Thoughts on the Microsoft Case
Volokh Conspiracy: Final Pre-Argument Thoughts on the Microsoft Case by Orin Kerr: Three thoughts about the briefing in the case ahead of Tuesday’s oral argument.
15th anniversary of this blog; 257th anniversary of Otis’ argument in Paxton’s Case
Today is the 15th anniversary of this blog. Today is also the 257th anniversary of James Otis’ 1761 argument at the Boston Old State House against the writs of assistance in Paxton’s Case. Transcripts of the argument are here. (It … Continue reading
Criminal defense lawyers as privacy advocates
Being a criminal defense lawyer is a great privilege and an opportunity. It was obvious to me early in law school 48 years ago that the law of American privacy is made by criminal defense lawyers raising and litigating issues. … Continue reading
ACLU: New Data Reveals Milwaukee Police Stops Are About Race and Ethnicity
ACLU: New Data Reveals Milwaukee Police Stops Are About Race and Ethnicity by Nusrat Choudhury: