Archives
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Recent Posts
- 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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (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
D.Md.: Fact the SW sought drugs necessarily permits a detailed search of small places; doesn’t make it a general warrant
The fact the search warrant sought drugs necessarily permits a detailed search of small places, but that doesn’t make it a general warrant. The good faith exception applies, too. United States v. Minnick, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80897 (D.Md. June … Continue reading
CA5: Handcuffing for refusal to show ID on school parking lot, without RS, didn’t violate “clearly established law”
Plaintiff drove to his wife’s school, with his daughter in the back seat, to pick his wife up from work. Some busybody citizen decided that the vehicle on school grounds was suspicious and called the police. The officer asked plaintiff … Continue reading
TX: No 4A claim for malicious prosecution
There is no Fourth Amendment claim, let alone a clearly established one, for malicious prosecution. If it exists in the constitution, it would be through due process. McIntyre v. El Paso Indep. Sch. Dist., 2016 Tex. LEXIS 568 (June 24, … Continue reading
NYLJ: Panel Upholds NYC Measure That Prohibits Biased Policing
NYLJ: Panel Upholds NYC Measure That Prohibits Biased Policing by Andrew Denney: State law does not pre-empt a New York City law prohibiting discriminatory policing that was enacted in 2013 amid concerns about the NYPD’s increased reliance on stop-and-frisk tactics, … Continue reading
Treatise 25% off through midnight
Go here. For what it’s worth, my local USAO bought three copies when they were allowed to buy books again.
CNS News: Liberal AG’s Climate Change Probes Abuse Fourth Amendment to Upend First Amendment
CNS News: Liberal AG’s Climate Change Probes Abuse Fourth Amendment to Upend First Amendment by Mark Fitzgibbons. A subpoena for 40 years of records from Exxon about the environment is somehow equated with the Second Amendment (¶ 3, 1st sent.). … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Another Playpen search of a home computer linked to the seized server approved
In another Playpen case, the Eastern District of Virginia approves hacking into a computer linked to a child pornography server. United States v. Matish, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82279 (E.D.Va. June 23, 2016):
E.D.Mich.: During traffic stop, CA6 says passengers may be asked for ID
“Additionally, the Sixth Circuit has held that it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment for a police officer to ask a passenger for identification, even if there is no probable cause for a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing by … Continue reading
TN: 2½ minute questioning past the traffic ticket being issued wasn’t unreasonable
2½ minute questioning past the traffic ticket being issued wasn’t unreasonable. State v. Mansfield, 2016 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 450 (June 22, 2016).* Defendant’s probation search was valid. “Thus, Agent Giselson’s knowledge of Dimes’ admitted unemployment, together with the large … Continue reading
NYTimes: Editorial: Policing the Police on Stop-and-Frisk
NYTimes: Editorial: Policing the Police on Stop-and-Frisk: Three years have passed since a Federal District Court ruled that New York City’s stop-and-frisk program violated constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure and discriminated against minority citizens, who were disproportionately and … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Birchfield v. N.D.: refusing a blood test cannot result in charges
A breath test may be performed incident to an arrest without a warrant. A blood test requires a warrant or exigency. “Motorists may not be criminally punished for refusing to submit to a blood test based on legally implied consent … Continue reading
S.D.Miss.: Post-Jardines dog sniff of house and car leads to suppression of sniff of car, even though it’s not on curtilage
Officers did a dog sniff at defendant’s door after Jardines and then the car in the driveway. The car in the driveway is not on the curtilage, but the court suppresses because the sniff of the car was essentially an … Continue reading
FL1: Knock-and-talk on motel room door didn’t need justification, but here it was because robbery getaway car was outside
Officers could conduct a knock-and-talk at a motel room door without reasonable suspicion based on the fact the getaway car from an armed robbery was in the parking lot. When the person opening the door was recognized as the robber … Continue reading
OH2: Patdown unreasonable because it was for drugs not safety
Pat down was unreasonable because officer didn’t have any safety concerns and was looking for drugs. State v. Kinnison, 2016-Ohio-3481, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 2337 (2d Dist. June 17, 2016). Defendant was indicted, had a motion to suppress hearing, had … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Parking violation justified a seizure
“The police seized defendant Devon Bean for an alleged parking violation, locating drugs and a firearm while searching his person and car. Charged with possession of a firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and possession of marijuana with … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: The facts and dashcam video don’t support RS
The stop was continued without reasonable suspicion. The owner of the car was present and never asked for consent. The occupants were told that a drug dog had been called, and there was no consent. The claim of nervousness isn’t … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: If SW includes marital privileged material, that’s for filter team, not motion to quash
The search warrant target moved to quash based on marital privilege. Under federal law, the privilege is based on common law and presumed. The affidavit for the search warrant, however, shows probable cause for witness tampering. Resolution of the marital … Continue reading
MA: Officer’s failure to testify to the facts for his belief that defendant was traveling at an “unreasonable speed” made the stop unreasonable
The officer’s failure to testify to the facts for his belief that defendant was traveling at an “unreasonable speed” made the stop unreasonable. Thus, the passenger’s flight from the car after the stop and the seizure of a gun from … Continue reading
DE: Cell phone is a tool of the drug trade for SW purposes
Probable cause was shown on the four corners of the affidavit for the search warrant. Citing a 2001 U.S. district court case, “[t]he Wiseman court [158 F.Supp.2d 1242, 1249 (D.Kan.2001)] stated that ‘it had become common knowledge in the courts … Continue reading
WaPo: The Volokh Conspiracy; Applying the Fourth Amendment to placing calls from a locked phone to identify its owner
WaPo: The Volokh Conspiracy: Applying the Fourth Amendment to placing calls from a locked phone to identify its owner by Orin Kerr: