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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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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
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:
KY: Police use of license plate reader violates no REP
Police use of a license plate reader that led to finding a warrant on the owner violated no reasonable expectation of privacy. Traft v. Commonwealth, 2018 Ky. LEXIS 68 (Feb. 15, 2018). In a state wiretapping case over the legal … Continue reading
LA5: Scope of auto exception search is the PC that authorizes it
Defendant’s car was subject to the automobile exception because it was mobile, despite being parked and not running. “The scope of the warrantless search of an automobile is not defined by the nature of the container in which the contraband … Continue reading
GA: While state database showed def’s car uninsured, his proof of insurance on phone app was enough to show lack of PC for impoundment
The officer here was running LPNs to see if cars passing through an intersection were insured. Defendant’s car came back uninsured based on the state database. Once stopped, however, defendant showed an app on his phone that showed he obtained … Continue reading
CA3: Playpen SW violated Rule 41 and 4A, but GFE saves the search
Playpen search warrant violated Fourth Amendment, but the good faith exception saves it. “For the reasons discussed below, we hold that the NIT warrant violated Rule 41(b). As a result, the magistrate judge not only exceeded her authority under the … Continue reading
GA: No IAC for not challenging nonprejudicial typo in the SW affidavit
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress the search warrant for defendant’s cell phones for a typographical error on the date of the alleged offense in the application for the warrant. The affidavit was clear what … Continue reading
Reason: City Orders Businesses to Join Its Police Surveillance System
Reason: City Orders Businesses to Join Its Police Surveillance System by Scott Shackford: Saginaw demands that establishments install video cameras and turn over footage.
Gizmodo: Man Sues Feds After Finding Spy Camera on His Property and Refusing to Give It Back
Gizmodo: Man Sues Feds After Finding Spy Camera on His Property and Refusing to Give It Back by Sidney Fussell:
MA: Officer could follow def into open garage during active drug trafficking investigation
“A Superior Court judge properly denied a criminal defendant’s pretrial motion to suppress evidence discovered following a police officer’s warrantless entry into an open garage through which the officer followed the defendant after observing him standing inside it during a … Continue reading
PA: Powering on a cell phone was the first of three warrantless searches in violation of Riley
Powering on a cell phone to see the screen was the first of three warrantless searches of defendant’s cell phone, all of which violated the Fourth Amendment. They were not harmless, so reversed. Commonwealth v. Fulton, 2018 Pa. LEXIS 982 … Continue reading
NPR: ACLU Sues Milwaukee Over Alleged Racial Profiling
NPR: ACLU Sues Milwaukee Over Alleged Racial Profiling by Latoya Dennis: The ACLU says Milwaukee police have made tens of thousands of traffic and pedestrian stops without cause because of racial profiling.
The Daily Report/Law.com: ACLU Release Research on Arrest Warrants for Private Debt
The Daily Report/Law.com: ACLU Release Research on Arrest Warrants for Private Debt
TN: Officer’s recollection refreshed was credited by trial court and followed on appeal
The trooper who stopped defendant had no independent recollection of defendant’s stop, but looking at the video and reading the reports was past recollection refreshed, and the officer’s testimony was then credited by the trial court. The stop was found … Continue reading
CA9: Officer could enter door of screened in porch to knock on house door with package and anticipatory warrant
An officer with a package and an anticipatory search warrant did not violate the curtilage by entering through defendant’s screen door to approach the front door when he could see that there were other packages on a table by the … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: SW for premises for “other evidence of distribution” of drugs permitted search of def’s pockets
The search warrant was for “drugs, drug paraphernalia, owe sheets, cell phones, firearms, stolen merchandise, or other evidence of distribution of a controlled substance.” That permits a search of defendant’s pockets, and the cash found there was subject to potential … Continue reading
W.D.La.: Giving officers the benefit of their training and experience there was RS for continuing the stop
“‘Courts must allow law enforcement “officers to draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained person.”’ Estrada, 459 F.3d at 632 … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Motorcycle gang’s jacket and other vague things wasn’t RS; a Terry frisk requires separate justification from a Terry stop
A Terry stop doesn’t automatically include the ability to conduct a frisk because they have separate justifications. Here, defendant was wearing a motorcycle gang jacket, but nothing else came close to providing reasonable suspicion, and the motion to suppress is … Continue reading
WI: Def’s confession alone wasn’t enough to turn voluntary questioning into detention
Defendant argued that his confession to murder transformed his status from a voluntary appearer at the police station to a person in custody. No; it’s but a factor in custody. “We therefore conclude that although an admission of guilt to … Continue reading
Vice: Neil Gorsuch is shaping up to be an unlikely defender of your privacy
Vice: Neil Gorsuch is shaping up to be an unlikely defender of your privacy by Carter Sherman & Isabella McKinley Corbo. We’ll see.
Newsweek: Police Who Help ICE Detain Undocumented Immigrants Could Be ‘Violating Fourth Amendment,’ Experts Say
Newsweek: Police Who Help ICE Detain Undocumented Immigrants Could Be ‘Violating Fourth Amendment,’ Experts Say by Chantal Da Silva: When Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno called 911 after hearing an intruder outside his family home, the last thing he expected was that … Continue reading