Archives
-
Recent Posts
- 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
-
Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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)
-
“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
GA: Where no violation of clear statute, no Heien reasonable mistake of law defense for state
Defendant did not violate the traffic statute that the officer stopped him for. Therefore, Heien’s reasonable mistake of law and good faith doesn’t apply. Moreover, there is no good faith exception in Georgia. Harris v. State, 2018 Ga. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA11: Becoming defensive about some questioning during stop didn’t rise to RS
Being in a high crime area and then becoming defensive only when the officer asked defendant where his mother lived when it came up was not reasonable suspicion. Defendant’s frisk was unreasonable on the totality. Suppressing the gun found on … Continue reading
CA9: Federal civil suit seeking to revisit Guam Superior Court PC determination barred by abstention
A federal suit to have the Guam Superior Court revisit its probable cause determination in a criminal case is barred by Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Santos v. Superior Court of Guam, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 3433 (9th Cir. Feb. 14, 2018).
IN: Hot pursuit into Kentucky did not violate state constitution
Defendant was more than reasonably suspected of committing a homicide in Indiana, and police got a line on him heading to Kentucky. A vehicle matching the description of his was seen on the nearest bridge to Kentucky shortly thereafter and … Continue reading
MA: Two detectives joining into a traffic stop didn’t make it unreasonable or extend it
The stop was for a traffic offense, and two detectives stopped to participate. Their questions about smelling marijuana didn’t unreasonably extend the stop. Commonwealth v. Buckley, 2018 Mass. LEXIS 87 (Feb. 14, 2018):
CA7: Controlled buy corroborated CI
“Although the factors [on CI reliability] go both ways, on balance they support the CI’s reliability. Most significantly, the deputies corroborated the CI’s story with their own investigation by conducting surveillance and executing a controlled buy.” United States v. Haynes, … Continue reading
New Republic: Should Cops Be Allowed to Rip Up Your Stuff While Looking for Drugs?
New Republic: Should Cops Be Allowed to Rip Up Your Stuff While Looking for Drugs? by Matt Ford: How the Supreme Court can curtail the destruction of private property during police searches
wccftech: Sony Starts Sharing PlayStation 4 Data with the FBI – Begins with a Terror Investigation
wccftech: Sony Starts Sharing PlayStation 4 Data with the FBI – Begins with a Terror Investigation by Rafia Shaikh:
S.D.N.Y.: A Franks challenge that is nothing more than an argument about inferences doesn’t plead enough to get a hearing
A Franks challenge that is nothing more than an argument about inferences doesn’t plead enough to get a hearing. United States v. Defilippo, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22784 (S.D. N.Y. Jan. 31, 2018):
NY4: Scope of search claim defaulted by not presenting it to trial court
A facial challenge to a search warrant is a question of law, and no hearing is required. On the application, probable cause was shown along with the CI’s reliability. Defendant’s claim the search exceeded the search warrant is defaulted for … Continue reading
LA2: IAC claim was fact intensive and denied w/o prejudice to pursue in post-conviction
“After reviewing this record, we find that the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel is not adequately developed in the record and would be more properly raised in an application for PCR. The defendant’s contention that the recording is inadmissible … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: State court’s finding def didn’t plead enough for Franks hearing was not “unreasonable” for AEDPA
Defendant didn’t plead enough to get a state court hearing on his Franks issue. The state court’s decision falls within Stone v. Powell’s “full and fair opportunity” to litigate, and he took that issue up on his state appeal. Rooks … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Should courts read statutory exclusionary rules broadly?
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Should courts read statutory exclusionary rules broadly? by Richard Re:
Reason: Alabama Prosecutor, Sheriff Threaten to Put More People in Prison in Order to Keep Seizing Massive Amounts of Property
Reason: Alabama Prosecutor, Sheriff Threaten to Put More People in Prison in Order to Keep Seizing Massive Amounts of Property by Scott Shackford: Lawmakers are considering long-overdue civil asset forfeiture reform, and law enforcement leaders aren’t happy.
Above the Law: The Vanilla Ice Rule: “Anything less than the best is a felony.”
Above the Law: The Vanilla Ice Rule by Matthew W. Schmidt: Litigators must remember that “anything less than the best is a felony.”
CA6: LEO’s conviction for criminal civil rights violation for wrongful entry to arrest affirmed
Defendant was a police officer and he’s convicted here of cirminal civil rights violation for wrongful entry into the victim’s house. The event started when the victim came home to his apartment building, found defendant parked in his parking spot, … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Def files a Franks challenge to a state issued SW, and the government says it won’t use the product of the search
The defendant filed a motion to suppress under Franks alleging numerous falsehoods in the search warrant application issued by a state judge in Arizona. “James is surprised by the government’s response. Rather than defend the credibility and integrity of the … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: To claim IAC for not challenging SW, the affidavit and SW have to be in the 2255 submission or say how
“As explained in the plea agreement, the search warrant was a state warrant obtained by the Lexington Police Department. D.E. 95 at 2. The materials related to the warrant are not in the record of this case. Strickland provides no … Continue reading