Archives
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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)
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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
IA: Strip search incident shown justified in drug arrest
Strip search as a search incident to arrest was shown justified on this record. The smell of marijuana came from his person but nothing was on him. State v. Evans, 2016 Iowa App. LEXIS 1004 (Sept. 28, 2016):
MS: A case seizure after a consent search leads to no forfeiture; no evidence of wrongdoing
Claimant was stopped, and he consented to a search producing money. The order of forfeiture is reversed. The facts, when taken as a whole, did not show by more than just suspicion that the money discovered in a driver’s vehicle … Continue reading
MA: SW for a cell phone requires facts for nexus to crime, not just “experience shows”
Nexus between a cell phone’s contents and a crime has to be shown by evidence, not just the officer’s experience in similar cases. Also, the phone was seized without a warrant to protect the contents from tampering, and it was … Continue reading
FL1: Passenger’s detention may be extended because of RS as to driver
A passenger is stopped with the vehicle he or she was in. The length of that stop depends upon what happens with the driver and passenger, and it can be extended lawfully as to the passenger because of reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Even if def counsel filed and won suppression motion, would outcome of case be different?
On a search and seizure IAC claim, too, only the Strickland prejudice prong needs to be considered. Even if the evidence were suppressed, would the jury have still convicted? If yes, then no prejudice. Pittman v. United States, 2016 U.S. … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Body Cameras Are Betraying Their Promise
The Atlantic: Body Cameras Are Betraying Their Promise by Robinson Meyer: They’re not transparent. They’re not independent. They’re not even turned on when they should be.
D.Kan.: USMJ’s email warrant denial for lack of PC affirmed, but gov’t can reapply because it has more info
The USMJ’s decision that the email search warrant didn’t show probable cause is not reversed, but it was sufficiently particular. The government can reapply again because it says it has additional information. Courts must balance privacy and the government’s ability … Continue reading
WaPo: Want to make a million? Become a DEA informant
WaPo: Want to make a million? Become a DEA informant by Joe Davidson: There’s an unfortunate saying on the street: Snitches get stitches. Turns out some get paid, too, sometimes very, very well. Consider this from a new report on … Continue reading
KROU (NPR): Oklahoma Senate Committee Examines Privacy, Property Concerns About Drone Use
KROU (NPR): Oklahoma Senate Committee Examines Privacy, Property Concerns About Drone Use by Brian Hardzinski & Storme Jones:
EFF: Why the Warrant to Hack in the Playpen Case Was an Unconstitutional General Warrant
EFF: Why the Warrant to Hack in the Playpen Case Was an Unconstitutional General Warrant by Andrew Crocker: Should the government be able to get a warrant to search a potentially unlimited number of computers belonging to unknown people located … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Stop of Greyhound bus in Conroe TX just to search it was unreasonable
Five officers boarded a Greyhound bus in Conroe, Texas just to search it and confront passengers. Defendant’s consent to search belongings suppressed. This was a forced interaction by detaining the bus. United States v. Wise, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130681 … Continue reading
AR: Apparent scrivener’s error in the PC went uncorrected and became speculation
Search warrant was issued February 5, 2015 and showed the date of defendant’s alleged drug dealing as November 4-5, 2015. Whether it was a typo that should have been 2014, or should have been February 4-5, 2015 (which was speculative … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: PC was shown, partly based on LEO’s expert opinion
There was probable cause for the search warrant in this case, partly based on a law enforcement officer’s expert opinion about drug trafficking. United States v. Lights, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130915 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 23, 2016). Another two Playpen cases; … Continue reading
CT: Even if search was unreasonable, which isn’t decided, it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt
Defendant was convicted of murdering his girlfriend with a baseball bat. After killing her, he took some of her stuff and sold and gave it away. He spent the third night after the killing at his sister’s house, and he … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Government ‘hacking’ and the Playpen search warrant
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Government ‘hacking’ and the Playpen search warrant by Orin Kerr: In recent months, over a dozen district courts have handed down divided opinions on the legality of a single search warrant that was used to search the … Continue reading
ABAJ: New York considers ‘textalyzer’ bill to allow police to see if drivers were texting behind the wheel
ABAJ: New York considers ‘textalyzer’ bill to allow police to see if drivers were texting behind the wheel by Jason Tashea:
SCOTUSBlog: The Court after Scalia: The despicable and dispensable exclusionary rule
SCOTUSBlog: The Court after Scalia: The despicable and dispensable exclusionary rule by Akhil Amar: Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. His new book, The Constitution Today, contains much more material on several … Continue reading
HuffPo: Blog: Police Body Cameras Are OK, But How To Protect Innocent Prisoners?
HuffPo: Blog: Police Body Cameras Are OK, But How To Protect Innocent Prisoners? by Lorenzo Johnson: It’s time to think about what measures can be put in place to hold all law enforcement accountable.