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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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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)
ACLU on privacy
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Section 1983 Blog -
"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
MO: Officers serving arrest warrant found a house full of gas from a working meth lab and could enter
Officers came to defendant’s house to arrest him on a warrant. When the door was open, there was a cloud of smoke that smelled like a working meth lab. One officer left to get a warrant. Another opened doors to … Continue reading
NM: Two stops of def in quick succession; second valid because of new facts
Two stops of defendant towing a van a couple of minutes apart were separately justified. The second stop was based on the owner of the van saying that defendant took it from him, but that was only to a second … Continue reading
CA8: Def’s admission to friend, relayed to police, that he was assaulting women in house justified warrantless entry
Defendant’s third hand reported admission he was serially assaulting two women in his house justified a warrantless entry. Defendant called his sister who called another who called the police that defendant had just assaulted a woman in his home and … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Use of an electronic “sniffer” to find a target computer in a college building was particular
Police used an electronic “sniffer” to attempt to find a MAC address of an operating computer in an Emory University building. “The affidavit described the plan to use a sniffer to ‘identify the wireless device associated with the suspect MAC … Continue reading
Disruptive Competition Project: Is Drone Policy Ready to Take Flight?
Disruptive Competition Project: Is Drone Policy Ready to Take Flight? by Kacee Taylor:
ND: Motel guest’s arrest for crime on premises against employee resulted in eviction and lawful room search
Defendant was arrested at a motel for some unspecified crime against an employee and taken away. Management then evicted him and had the police come and remove his stuff. While inventorying, they found drug paraphernalia. Then they did a dog … Continue reading
Democracy: The War on Drugs Has Made Policing More Violent
Democracy: The War on Drugs Has Made Policing More Violent by Jonathan Blanks What can be done to curb the excessive and, sometimes, predatory policing that has emerged from the Drug War?
Broadly: Woman Subjected to Illegal Cavity Search at Border Gets $475,000 Settlement
Broadly: Woman Subjected to Illegal Cavity Search at Border Gets $475,000 Settlement by Diana Tourjee:
Motherboard: Taser Plans to Livestream Police Body Camera Footage to the Cloud by 2017
Motherboard: Taser Plans to Livestream Police Body Camera Footage to the Cloud by 2017 by Matt Stroud: Could police officers someday identify criminals just by looking at them? That’s the vision being touted by Taser International, which holds a monopoly … Continue reading
TN: Administrative subpoena statute requires judicial enforcement, and that provides due process
The state unemployment office subpoenaed records from the plaintiff and it sued in state court under § 1983. The subpoena power is not unlimited and it is construed to comply with due process. Plaintiff refuses to comply, and the agency … Continue reading
Baltimore Brew: Courts share blame for our police accountability problem
Baltimore Brew: Courts share blame for our police accountability problem by Todd Oppenheim: Chipping away at Fourth Amendment rights has unintended consequences If we are ever going to fix the mess that we’re in here in Baltimore and around the … Continue reading
DE: Subpoena for blood test results from hospital records reasonable
Defendant was involved in an auto accident and treated at a hospital where his blood was drawn. The state’s attorney sought the test results by subpoena not search warrant, and the court finds this reasonable. This is not a case … Continue reading
ME: CSLI info properly seized by warrant on PC, rest of cell information suppressed because warrant was severable
The state obtained a search warrant for defendant’s CSLI and practically everything else it could get from the cell provider in an effort to link him and another to a structure arson. The trial court suppressed it all. On appeal, … Continue reading
NH: Officers who parked in def’s driveway could lawfully smell marijuana coming from his garage
Officers got out of their cars in defendant’s driveway and could smell marijuana coming from defendant’s garage. They didn’t unreasonably invade the curtilage. State v. Socci, 2015 N.H. LEXIS 259 (Dec. 4, 2015),* prior appeal State v. Socci, 166 N.H. … Continue reading
OH8: No citation after stop on RS isn’t fatal to state’s case
The officers had reasonable suspicion to stop defendant on a bicycle for no reflectors and riding on the sideway. The fact they didn’t issue a citation isn’t fatal to the state’s case. In re D.E., 2016-Ohio-4959, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS … Continue reading
Houston Chronicle: 298 wrongful drug convictions identified in ongoing audit
Houston Chronicle: 298 wrongful drug convictions identified in ongoing audit by Lise Olsen and Anita Hassan: In all 298 cases, prosecutors accepted both felony and misdemeanor plea deals before lab tests were performed. The $2 roadside tests, which officers use … Continue reading
CA1: Fictitious name of trade assn in mail fraud scam left def with no REP in mail
Defendant created a fictitious trade association and sent out bills, getting many checks back from thousands he mailed out. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the envelopes that he had not yet received because of the fictitious names. … Continue reading