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- W.D.N.Y.: No due process right to adversarial hearing before issuance of a DNA warrant
- E.D.Wis.: Lifetime GPS monitoring of some sex offenders traveling out of state doesn’t violate 4A
- CA9: With a SW for a murder weapon, a frisk of the occupants is reasonable
- W.D.Mich.: Drug dealers commonly keep proceeds and drugs at home, and that’s nexus
- OH8: For Rodriguez purposes, checking out-of-state DLs just takes longer
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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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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
C.D.Ill.: Twice flying an airplane across the country and immediately returning was RS
While the defendants’ conduct in flying an airplane across the country and back within hours may have been perfectly lawful, on the totality, there was reasonable suspicion to encounter them. United States v. Eymann, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138482 (C.D.Ill. … Continue reading
MS: Guilty plea waived 4A claim
Defendant’s guilty plea waived his Fourth Amendment claim. Singleton v. State, 2016 Miss. App. LEXIS 637 (Oct. 4, 2016). Defendant’s claim that the police withheld information about an alleged drug dog alert. That claim was either procedurally barred or unsupported … Continue reading
AZ: Search incident of def’s backpack in next room when he was handcuffed was unreasonable
“The state argues Snyder’s backpack was within his immediate control because it was next to the entrance of the room in the security office where Snyder was detained. According to the state, Snyder could have ‘quickly reached the backpack (notwithstanding … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: CP warrant on year old info wasn’t stale
Defendant’s child pornography search warrant wasn’t based on stale information even a year old. United States v. Ornelas, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133809 (C.D.Cal. Sept. 27, 2016).* Defendant’s consent was involuntary, but the automobile exception justified the search of the … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Another Playpen warrant upheld
Another Playpen warrant upheld. United States v. Allain, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134605 (D.Mass. Sept. 29, 2016).* This white collar case warrant was based on probable cause and was sufficiently particular. Good faith also would sustain the warrant. United States … Continue reading
DC: Inevitable discovery applied to cell phone search in 2002 rather than GFE
Inevitable discovery used to justify a search of a cell phone in 2002 because it might have been unreasonable under Riley from 2014 (no mention of good faith exception applied to pre-Riley searches). Logan v. United States, 2016 D.C. App. … Continue reading
MA: Exclusionary rule not applied to MJ discovered during entry after 911 call
Police were called to an apartment because of noise then a water leak into their place. The officer went to look for the cause and found a mason jar with marijuana. The grant of the motion to suppress is reversed … Continue reading
CA11: Use of pepper spray on somebody kicking a police car isn’t excessive force
The use of pepper spray on somebody kicking a police car isn’t excessive force. Nigro v. Carrasquillo, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17921 (11th Cir. Oct. 4, 2016):
WaPo: Radley Balko’s “The Watch” Blog: This week in drug raids: Massachusetts edition
WaPo: Radley Balko’s “The Watch” Blog: This week in drug raids: Massachusetts edition: FBI, local cops stage fruitless raid in Quincy; family of man killed in his own home gets $3.75 million; National Guard troops, helicopters raid grandma over a … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: E.Chi. Housing Auth. administrative searches with police enjoined
The City of East Chicago Housing Authority is enjoined from how it conducts administrative inspections of its apartments and uses drug dogs at the doors of apartments. Gutierrez v. City of East Chicago, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138374 (N.D.Ind. Sept. … Continue reading
TX7: Officer’s “knowledge, training and experience” isn’t a panacea that automatically adds up to turning innocent conduct into RS
The officer’s “knowledge, training and experience” isn’t a panacea that automatically adds up to turning innocent conduct into reasonable suspicion. More is needed from the state. State v. Ramirez-Tamayo, 07-15-00419-CR (Tex. App. – Amarillo Oct. 5, 2016):
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Remotely accessing an IP address inside a target computer is a search
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Remotely accessing an IP address inside a target computer is a search by Orin Kerr: Last week, I wrote a post on the Playpen warrant currently being litigated in federal courts around the country. My post included … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Def’s stop on PC for drugs permitted Gant SI of the car
The officer had probable cause to stop and detain defendant for delivery of drugs based on the CI’s story coming together when defendant arrived. Therefore, the Gant search incident of the car for drugs was reasonable. United States v. Baskin, … Continue reading
CA3: Verizon subscriber showed standing to sue NSA for seizure of all emails
Verizon’s turning over all emails to the NSA, reported in 2013, was sufficient for a Verizon subscriber to state standing to sue under Clapper. Schuchardt v. President of the United States, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 18025 (3d Cir. Oct. 5, … Continue reading
CA8: Detention of def’s semi for SW on PC was reasonable
Defendant was not in custody in this child pornography investigation when he was interrogated, and he even left the scene. “In light of the background investigation and Zavesky’s statements, law enforcement officers had probable cause to detain Zavesky’s semi-truck after … Continue reading
MA: Not being on the rental agreement as a permitted driver not an offense under state law for arrest
Defendant was driving a rental car rented by his mother that limited driving to her alone. Still, that didn’t make defendant guilty of anything under state law, and impounding and inventorying the car was unreasonable. Commonwealth v. Campbell, 2016 Mass. … Continue reading
FL1: Assault of officer on porch attempting to talk to def leading to police entry and more resisting not subject to exclusion
Police came to defendant’s trailer to talk to him about a domestic battery allegation. He refused to come out, and argued at the door with the police. Finally, he reached out and slapped an officer’s hand. That led to them … Continue reading