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- OH8: For Rodriguez, checking out-of-state DLs takes longer
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- 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
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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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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)
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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
TX: Search incident still justified by discovery of a different offense after arrest
The court of appeals erred in holding that a search incident to arrest could not be justified by discovery of a different offense after arrest. As long as there was probable cause to arrest for the newly-discovered offense, and the … Continue reading
CA9: Rodriguez taint from one stop affected a later one where the first officer had to let the vehicle go when the dog was delayed
The district court did not err during a civil forfeiture action when it granted a claimant’s motion to suppress $167,070 a sheriff’s deputy found in a mobile home the claimant was driving, ordered the Government to return the money, and … Continue reading
The Hill: Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act
The Hill: Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act by Adam Schwartz and Sophia Cope:
WaPo: D.C. police oversight agency says complaints are rising over searches
WaPo: D.C. police oversight agency says complaints are rising over searches by Peter Hermann: A D.C. police oversight board says it has received an increased number of complaints about officers conducting searches of people, vehicles and houses without obtaining proper consent, … Continue reading
NYTimes: Dismayed by Trump, Head of Drug Enforcement Administration to Leave
NYTimes: Dismayed by Trump, Head of Drug Enforcement Administration to Leave by Michael S. Schmidt: The acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration will resign at the end of the week, according to law enforcement officials, who said he had become … Continue reading
Baltimore Sun: Baltimore prosecutors drop dozens more cases involving indicted officers, others shown in body camera footage
Baltimore Sun: Baltimore prosecutors drop dozens more cases involving indicted officers, others shown in body camera footage by Kevin Rector: Prosecutors in Baltimore have decided to drop dozens of additional criminal cases that relied on the testimony of eight city … Continue reading
The Guardian: Opinion: Why the decriminalisation of marijuana is a civil rights cause
The Guardian: Opinion: Why the decriminalisation of marijuana is a civil rights cause by Al Sharpton: Generations of Americans – mostly people of colour – have been crushed by aggressive laws on marijuana. It’s time for that to change.
Cert. granted: Collins v. Virginia (does automobile exception apply to search a vehicle parked near to a house on curtilage)
Cert. granted: Collins v. Virginia, 16-1027 (ScotusBlog) Issue: Whether the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter private property, approach a house and search a vehicle parked a few feet from the … Continue reading
LawNewz: DOJ Seeking Info on 6000 People Who ‘Liked’ Anti-Trump Facebook Page
LawNewz: DOJ Seeking Info on 6000 People Who ‘Liked’ Anti-Trump Facebook Page by Alberto Luperon Fortune: The Trump Administration Is Targeting Anti-Trump Facebook Users by David Meyer Engadget: ACLU challenges DOJ request for info on 6,000 anti-Trump Facebook users by … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Parties, probable cause and the Fourth Amendment (DC v. Wesby)
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Parties, probable cause and the Fourth Amendment (DC v. Wesby) by Amy Howe: When District of Columbia police officers Andre Parker and Anthony Campanale responded to reports of unauthorized goings-on at a supposedly vacant home nearly a … Continue reading
TN: SW issuing magistrates have only district-wide jurisdiction and couldn’t issue SW here
By statute, magistrates issuing search warrants have only district-wide jurisdiction, and here the magistrate lacked authority to issue the search warrant at issue. The state did not show any exceptions. State v. Frazier, 2017 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 861 (Sept. … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Under SCA, govt has to show disclosure of inquiry to target “will” hamper investigation, not just “may”
The gag order provisions of the SCA requires the government show that disclosure “will” hamper the investigation, but the government only showed “may,” and that’s not enough. Denied without prejudice to show “will.” In re Grand Jury Subpoena, 2016 U.S. … Continue reading
CA11: In search of computer for evidence of hacking, lack of time frame or search protocol doesn’t violate 4A
The search warrant for defendant’s computer was for evidence of “hacking” but produced child pornography. The lack of a time frame and search protocol for the search doesn’t make it violate the Fourth Amendment. “Considering the specific circumstances and complexities … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Arrest warrant for another in def’s home didn’t authorize entry without exigency
An arrest warrant for Tyler in defendant’s home didn’t justify entry here because officers didn’t show any exception to the warrant requirement. “The government has provided no authority for the proposition that the arrest warrant for Tyler, Tyler’s status as … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Bench warrant surfacing for def made pat down legal by inevitable discovery even if frisk invalid
Officers responded to a wellness check and found two people passed out in a car. One couldn’t be roused, but defendant could and he was removed from the car and patted down for officer safety. The patdown was reasonable. Even … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Def’s pulling arms from sweatshirt sleeves was RS for frisk since hands weren’t visible
The officer had reasonable suspicion for a frisk of defendant with a 4:30 am stop and having to turn his back on defendant to investigate what was going on. Importantly, defendant kept pulling his arms out of his sleeves of … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: IAC search claim, even if successful, wouldn’t undermine conspiracy conviction
Defense counsel’s failure to move to suppress was not ineffective assistance of counsel because (1) it wasn’t shown to be meritorious and (2) wouldn’t affect the outcome of the conspiracy conviction. United States v. Aybar, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155112 … Continue reading
CNN International: NSA reveals 100000 foreign nationals under surveillance
CNN International: NSA reveals 100000 foreign nationals under surveillance by Jim Sciutto and Zachary Cohen
Independent Journal Review: Lawmakers and Intelligence Community Differ on Surveillance Powers Before Reauthorization Showdown
Independent Journal Review: Lawmakers and Intelligence Community Differ on Surveillance Powers Before Reauthorization Showdown by Haley Byrd:
Chron.com: Appeals court: Portions of Texas ‘sanctuary city’ law can take effect
Chron.com: Appeals court: Portions of Texas ‘sanctuary city’ law can take effect by Mike Ward: