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- W.D.La.: Israel’s capture of Palestinian cell phone calls was foreign search in case here
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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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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
CA9: Def’s possession of ammo was independent basis to issue SW
Police were called to defendant’s home in a domestic call that he was holding his wife and her child against their will. They entered and handcuffed him. A patdown of his person produced ammunition. Officers looked in a stack of … Continue reading
OH5: Plain view didn’t apply to a firearm where it wasn’t readily obvious it was stolen
The plain view doctrine did not apply because the firearm was not immediately apparent as incriminating evidence or contraband, and testimony at the suppression hearing established the officers could not readily identify the firearm as stolen. State v. Elschlager, 2017-Ohio-5545, … Continue reading
MA: A civil abuse order of protection cannot be served by a traffic stop under the Fourth Amendment and the Massachusetts Constitution
A civil abuse order of protection cannot be served by a traffic stop under the Fourth Amendment and the Massachusetts Constitution. Commonwealth v. Sanborn, 2017 Mass. LEXIS 496 (June 29, 2017):
FL declines to to apply Davis GFE where cell phone search issue was being actively litigated all over
Where everybody knew that the law wasn’t settled at the time of the search of defendant’s cell phone before Riley because the issue was being litigated everywhere and in this state, the state doesn’t get the benefit of the Davis … Continue reading
MD: A local humane society can seize animals in distress by delegation under state statute but only with exigency
A local humane society can seize animals in distress by delegation under state statute but only with exigency and only to the extent necessary to protect the animal. Rohrer v. Humane Soc’y of Washington Cty., 2017 Md. LEXIS 456 (June … Continue reading
WaPo: Number of fatal shootings by police is nearly identical to last year
WaPo: Number of fatal shootings by police is nearly identical to last year by John Sullivan, Reis Thebault, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins: Police nationwide shot and killed 492 people in the first six months of this year, a number … Continue reading
MO: School search merely for tardiness was unreasonable
School search of a student for merely being tardy was unreasonable under Vernonia and Earls and other cases for lack any factual basis, let alone reasonable suspicion. State v. Williams, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 659 (June 27, 2017):
FL2: Crawl space below house screened off only by lattice work is a constitutionally protected area
One has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space below a Florida residence protected only by a lattice. A pill bottle seen there was argued by the state to be abandoned, but it was in a constitutionally protected … Continue reading
LA: “Defendant thus was in the difficult position of having to both distance himself from the barbeque grill, if he hoped to be found not guilty of possession of the cocaine found inside it, and tie himself more closely to the grill, if he hoped to obtain a favorable ruling on the motion to suppress. Trying to do both, he succeeded at neither.”
Showing a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched but denying possession is a fine line indeed. Show too much of an expectation of privacy just to challenge the search [always a risky proposition] and you might put yourself … Continue reading
PA can’t decide (tie vote) whether GFE permits use of product of a search where the underlying probable cause proves completely false
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirms on an equally divided vote whether suppression is required under the state constitution where the officer relied in good faith on an affidavit that turned out to be completely wrong. The opinion supporting affirmance notes … Continue reading
Grits for Breakfast Blog: Pretext stops subvert public trust, undermine rule of law
Grits for Breakfast Blog: Pretext stops subvert public trust, undermine rule of law A law that everyone routinely violates because of its arbitrariness and impracticality becomes a path for the government to bypass 4th Amendment protections. Police can simply follow … Continue reading
ABAJ: Federal prosecutor admits she listened to recordings of attorney-client conversations, filing says
ABAJ: Federal prosecutor admits she listened to recordings of attorney-client conversations, filing says by Debra Cassens Weiss:
ZDNet: Facebook gives moderators “full access” to user accounts suspected of terror links
ZDNet: Facebook gives moderators “full access” to user accounts suspected of terror links by Zack Whittaker: Facebook has a fleet of low-paid contractors who are tasked with investigating possible connections with terrorism on its site. The key takeaway: Moderators are … Continue reading
KSFY: ACLU files suit over forced catheterization process
KSFY: ACLU files suit over force catheterization process:
OH10: Flight from a Terry stop was PC for search incident
“Because appellant committed an arrestable offense when he fled from the lawful Terry stop, the search of appellant’s person following his apprehension was constitutionally reasonable as a search incident to arrest.” State v. Johnson, 2017-Ohio-5527, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2583 … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Photos of defs didn’t match the description of officers where that was part of RS calculus; search suppressed
The USMJ credited the defendants on the reasonable suspicion for continuing the stop based on the photographs of the defendants after their arrest that didn’t match what the officer was relying on for their dress and jewelry. No reasonable suspicion, … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: Spy Tool’s Renewal Sparks Tense Senate Hearing
Courthouse News Service: Spy Tool’s Renewal Sparks Tense Senate Hearing by Brandi Buchman: WASHINGTON (CN) – Stoking the Senate Judiciary Committee’s frustrations on Tuesday, intelligence experts had few answers to direct questions on reauthorizing a surveillance tool. Set to expire … Continue reading