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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)
--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
SCOTUSBlog: The Court after Scalia: Scalia’s absence may help preserve the exclusionary rule
SCOTUSBlog: The Court after Scalia: Scalia’s absence may help preserve the exclusionary rule by Orin Kerr:
Alt-Right blames Obama for SCOTUS amendment to Rule 41
I never bother to read World Net Daily because it is essentially wrong on everything. Last night’s emails includes this headline: WND: DEC. 1: WHEN 4TH AMENDMENT WILL BE DESTROYED by Craige McMillan Exclusive: Craige McMillan warns of reg that’ll … Continue reading
Constitution Day
I’m in Idaho for a CLE after an oral argument yesterday in Arkansas.* After 9½ hours in airports and on planes I crash at the hotel at 10 PT. I wake up to emails about Constitution Day, one from a … Continue reading
WaPo: The Watch: Lunch links: Police agencies across America are assembling massive databases about you
WaPo: The Watch: Lunch links: Police agencies across America are assembling massive databases about you by Radley Balko.
Wired: Opinion: The Feds Will Soon Be Able to Legally Hack Almost Anyone
Wired: Opinion: The Feds Will Soon Be Able to Legally Hack Almost Anyone by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Matt Blaze, and Susan Landau: Under a new set of rules, the FBI would have the authority to secretly use malware to … Continue reading
WaPo: Eleven SWAT officers treated for exposure to fentanyl and heroin in drug raid
WaPo: Eleven SWAT officers treated for exposure to fentanyl and heroin in drug raid by Lindsey Bever and J. Freedom du Lac: Eleven police officers in Hartford, Conn., were taken to a hospital for possible exposure to heroin and fentanyl … Continue reading
Ars Technica: Police union resists body cams, judge orders Boston cops to wear them
Ars Technica: Police union resists body cams, judge orders Boston cops to wear them by David Kravets: Union objected to the devices, saying they were unsafe and not in their contract.
The Intercept: Long-Secret Stingray Manuals Detail How Police Can Spy on Phones
The Intercept: Long-Secret Stingray Manuals Detail How Police Can Spy on Phones by Sam Biddle: HARRIS CORP.’S STINGRAY surveillance device has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in law enforcement for more than 15 years. The company and … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Statement at arrest car was girlfriend’s didn’t show standing; more required
Defendant’s post-arrest statement to the police that the car was his girlfriend’s wasn’t enough to show standing. He could have testified to standing without being cross-examined about the merits of the car, yet he didn’t. Defendant’s statement before arrest that … Continue reading
SC: Destruction of innocent’s building to end hostage situation not inverse condemnation so no recovery
The City of Spartanburg ended a hostage situation in a convenience store by using a bulldozer to breach a wall. After it was over, the owner couldn’t afford to fix it, so the city condemned it and tore it down. … Continue reading
ProPublica: DNA Dragnet: In Some Cities, Police Go From Stop-and-Frisk to Stop-and-Spit
ProPublica: DNA Dragnet: In Some Cities, Police Go From Stop-and-Frisk to Stop-and-Spit by Lauren Kirchner: Police in Florida and other states are building up private DNA databases, in part by collecting voluntary samples from people not charged with — or … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Realtime cell tracking information can be obtained with Title III wiretap
A Title III warrant also included a request for realtime geolocation information, and it complied with Rule 41. United States v. Piggie, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119718 (W.D.Mo. Aug. 16, 2016):
W.D.N.C.: Evasive behavior is a factor in RS
“Courts may consider a suspect’s evasive behavior in analyzing the existence of reasonable suspicion to believe that an individual is armed and dangerous.” United States v. Truesdale, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119967 (W.D.N.C. Sept. 2, 2016). The officer had reasonable … Continue reading
W.D.Tenn.: Nexus shown to def’s home by his committing the crime on a computer in his house and shipping packages there
FedEx determined that packages were being diverted, and they narrowed it to a former employee in Memphis and his computer was creating fictitious labels on a hijacked FedEx account. A Franks challenge fails because the probable cause isn’t undermined. Nexus … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Def’s motion to suppress because of overseizure is denied for moment; parties to confer on what might be suppressible
Defendant argued that the search warrant for documents exceeded the scope of the warrant. Counsel’s declaration was insufficient, but the court recognizes the argument and orders the parties to confer and determine that which they can agree. United States v. … Continue reading
DE: When state shows PC in forfeiture proceeding, burden shifts to def
This case involves a return of property petition and the state sought forfeiture. The probable cause standard for forfeiture is essentially the same at that applied in Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases. Thus, the State is required to prove … Continue reading
PA: GSR could be collected under search incident doctrine
Removal of gunshot residue from defendant’s hands was valid under search incident doctrine. McNeely didn’t apply. Commonwealth v. Simonson, 2016 PA Super 207, 2016 Pa. Super. LEXIS 527 (Sept. 12, 2016). “Nonetheless, other facts support a finding of reasonable suspicion. … Continue reading
CA3: Officers did not ignore plainly exculpatory evidence in seeking a warrant for defendant’s arrest; QI applies
Plaintiff sued for false imprisonment based on his arrest held without probable cause by the state court. The district court denied qualified immunity, and the officers appealed. The officers did not ignore plainly exculpatory evidence, and, on the whole, there … Continue reading
NE: Third party doctrine unchanged: CSLI has no REP
Defendant’s CSLI information was obtained by court order under the Stored Communications Act, and defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in this third party information. State v. Jenkins, 294 Neb. 684, 2016 Neb. LEXIS 133 (Sept. 9, 2016):
CA6: Jail takedown of DUI arrestee on video appears to be excessive force; QI denied
The video of plaintiff’s takedown in the jail on video certainly appears to be excessive force in violation of clearly established law. Denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity properly denied. Jennings v. Fuller, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 16633 (6th … Continue reading