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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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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)
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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
MI: Unreasonable mistake of law voids search
Defendant’s arrest was without probable cause for violating a no trespassing ordinance. It was a public place, open for business, defendant briefly entered and did nothing wrong. The search incident to the arrest thus fails too. Mistake of law as … Continue reading
EFF: Montana Protects Communications Privacy, But Allows Gag Orders
EFF: Montana Protects Communications Privacy, But Allows Gag Orders by Andrew Crocker and Adam Schwartz (which EFF says violate the First Amendment).
ABC News: JetBlue testing facial-recognition boarding system in Boston
ABC News: JetBlue testing facial-recognition boarding system in Boston by Jeffrey Cook: JetBlue Airways will soon begin testing technology at Boston’s Logan International Airport that will use facial-recognition in lieu of a boarding pass to clear passengers to board their … Continue reading
WaPo: Opinion: Body cameras are key for police accountability. We can’t let them erode privacy rights
WaPo: Opinion: Body cameras are key for police accountability. We can’t let them erode privacy rights by Chris Dunn and Donna Lieberman: An essential tool poses a core dilemma.
N.D.Ill.: Viewing def’s Facebook page isn’t a 4A violation
Viewing defendant’s public Facebook is [hardly] a Fourth Amendment or Stored Communications Act claim. United States v. Khan, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82493 (N.D. Ill. May 31, 2017):
CA2: Computer SW was sufficiently particular; broad doesn’t mean necessarily unreasonable
In the Silk Road “drug kingpin” conviction, whether the third party doctrine succumbs to technology is going to have to come from SCOTUS since the doctrine came from it. The search warrant for defendant’s computer was sufficiently particular. Broad for … Continue reading
EFF: Why We’re Suing the FBI for Records About Best Buy Geek Squad Informants
EFF: Why We’re Suing the FBI for Records About Best Buy Geek Squad Informants by Stephanie Lacambra and Aaron Mackey:
AZ: Being directed to get out of the car alone doesn’t extend the stop
“Urrea has not explained how his being directed to exit his vehicle while the deputy conducted a records check illegally prolonged the stop.” Even so, his coming back to the patrol car to talk about it was by consent. [Really?] … Continue reading
IN: Anonymous report of man with gun wouldn’t alone support frisk, but def fled
Police received an anonymous tip that a man matching defendant’s description had a gun in a bar. The officer arrived right after the call and saw defendant. Under state case law, that alone wasn’t enough for a frisk without more. … Continue reading
Time: Alexa Takes the Stand: Listening Devices Raise Privacy Issues
Time: Alexa Takes the Stand: Listening Devices Raise Privacy Issues by Haley Sweetland Edwards:
IN: Failure to knock-and-announce is really just a reasonableness argument
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not raising a challenge to the officer’s failure to knock-and-announce before entering defendant’s home on a search warrant for drugs. She had priors, there were controlled buys, and guns often go with drugs. The knock-and-announce … Continue reading
IL: “Immediately apparent” for plain view really means “probable cause”
Product bar codes found in plain view in defendant’s car were seized with probable cause. Officers experienced in investigating retail theft from a Best Buy were investigating thefts that involved altered bar codes. “Immediately apparent” for plain view really means … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Unauthorized driver of rented car with suspended DL had no REP in car even if driving with permission of renter
Defendant had a subjective reasonable expectation of privacy in a rental vehicle he was driving with permission of the renter and potentially the implicit permission of the rental company because he was seen in it by them. [Whether they knew … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Driveway not curtilage for dog sniff of car
Relying on United States v. Beene, 818 F.3d 157 (5th Cir. 2016) (posted here), defendant’s car parked on the driveway in front of his home was subject to a dog sniff as if it was on the street. Because of … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Co. of LA v. Mendez: No constitutional basis for the Ninth Circuit’s “provocation” rule that an officer’s conduct that provokes a violent response is a separate Fourth Amendment claim
There is no constitutional basis for the Ninth Circuit’s “provocation” rule that an officer’s conduct that provokes a violent response is a separate Fourth Amendment claim. County of Los Angeles v. Mendez, 2017 U.S. LEXIS 3396 (U.S. May 30, 2017). … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: It’s not for LEO to second guess a probation search condition’s validity or application
If the probation search condition applies on its face, and even if the search is for general law enforcement purposes, it’s not for the searching officer to inquire into the details of whether there might be some argument behind the … Continue reading
TN: Blood draw without consent was valid at the time it happened; therefore valid
Obtaining defendant’s blood draw without consent was a practice authorized by binding appellate precedent at the time it occurred. Therefore, the denial of defendant’s motion to suppress was appropriate because the officer was acting under a good faith belief that … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Officers arrived at an injured person call, and the assailant wasn’t around; protective sweep permissible
“Here, the officers arrived to a chaotic scene. The Defendant was severely injured after being hit by a bottle. There were at least two other individuals present. The Police were told the assailant, who had demonstrated his violent nature, was … Continue reading