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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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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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
WaPo: FBI ponders sharing tool to help unlock iPhone with local law agencies
WaPo: FBI ponders sharing tool to help unlock iPhone with local law agencies by Ellen Nakashima and Adam Goldman: The FBI and Justice Department are debating whether the hacking tool that helped the bureau unlock the iPhone of one of … Continue reading
NYTimes: Police Body Cameras: What Do You See?
NYTimes: Police Body Cameras: What Do You See? by Timothy Williams, James Thomas, Samuel Jacoby, and Damien Cave: Public frustration with policing has led to calls nationwide for more cameras worn by officers. But what do those cameras actually reveal?
OH5: Entry permitted by 911 call of unresponsive person; protective sweep factually unjustified
A 911 call about an unresponsive man was justification for a warrantless entry into defendant’s apartment, but no facts justified a protective sweep once inside. Heroin in bedroom suppressed. State v. Levengood, 2016-Ohio-1340, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 1227 (5th Dist. … Continue reading
DC Velocity: Electronic logging devices do not improve safety; mandate is unconstitutional, trucking group says
DC Velocity: Electronic logging devices do not improve safety; mandate is unconstitutional, trucking group says: OOIDA files brief asking court to overturn ELD mandate, saying it violates Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
D.Neb.: Can’t prove judge issuing SW was a “rubberstamp” for the police when there was, in fact, probable cause
When arguing that the good faith exception does not apply, the “wholly abandoned his judicial role” exception needs an offer of proof. If, however, there is, in fact, probable cause, how do you prove that? You can’t. United States v. … Continue reading
MO: Where items included in SW without PC, severance of the warrant is required, not blanket suppression
Officers checked off boxes on a search warrant form about what to search for (not a good way to present a warrant). Items 1-9 (property) that were found were supported by probable cause, and item 10 (corpse) wasn’t, but that … Continue reading
TN: Failure to leave the SW not a “clerical error” subject to cure or GFE
In 2011, Tennessee adopted the Exclusionary Rule Reform Act with a statutory good faith exception that included “clerical errors.” Failing to leave a copy of the warrant at the place searched or with the householder is not a “clerical error.” … Continue reading
IL: Once officers leave the premises after executing a SW, they need another to come back
Police searched defendant’s house with a warrant, unhandcuffed defendant, and left. Then they returned to search again. A second warrant was required. Just because they could have obtained a second warrant doesn’t mean that was inevitable discovery. [And what’s the … Continue reading
PA: Warrant said “residence,” so it was not limited to garage, even though the PC was directed at it
The drug search warrant specified “the residence,” but the primary focus was the garage because that’s what the police knew. That did not mean, however, that only the garage could be searched. In the course of the drug investigation, police … Continue reading
MD: Stringray/Hailstorm cell phone tracking device a search; nondisclosure agreement unconstitutional
The use of a Stingray/Hailstorm device to track a cell phone is a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Nondisclosure Agreement is essentially unconstitutional because of the state’s argument they don’t have to disclose what they were doing. The court … Continue reading
WaPo: What life is like after police ransack your house and take ‘every belonging’ — then the charges are dropped
WaPo: What life is like after police ransack your house and take ‘every belonging’ — then the charges are dropped By Christopher Ingraham: A self-described Michigan “soccer mom” who had “every belonging” taken from her family in a 2014 drug … Continue reading
OH11: Officers had reason to believe def at home; entry and plain view valid
Officers had an arrest warrant for defendant and knocked at her apartment door saying only “Sheriff’s Office.” A falsetto voice said “Ashley’s not here.” Officers responded “How do you know we’re looking for Ashley?” They were let in, and they … Continue reading
CA11: Putting a backpack in trunk and distancing self from it and then giving false name was abandonment
The search of defendant’s backpack was supported by two rationales: Lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy and automobile exception. As to the former, “Even if Rivera did have a reasonable expectation of privacy, the district court found that Rivera … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Assistance and foreign wiretap were done by locals; no U.S. involvement, so no 4A protection
Defendant was indicted for ATM skimming and other identity theft offenses. The FBI started the investigation and contacted Bulgarian police about phone numbers from there. Bulgarian police tied the numbers to defendant, and they procured wiretaps at U.S. request and … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Making money but no job was RS for a probation search
Reasonable suspicion for a probation search came from a “trusted” person call that defendant was making money but had no job and he was a past meth dealer. That was enough. Then defendant consented, too. United States v. Danner, 2016 … Continue reading
MA: Collective knowledge of nothing is still nothing, despite stopping officer’s good faith
Collective knowledge here was not reasonable suspicion. Defendant’s vehicle was reportedly involved in a shooting and stopped based on a radio report from Boston PD to another department. Defendant, however, had left the scene of the shooting ten minutes before … Continue reading
U.S.News & World Report: Merrick Garland’s Trunk-Search Ruling Gives Some Defense Advocates Chills [Typical Internet headline hyperbole]
U.S.News & World Report: Merrick Garland’s Trunk-Search Ruling Gives Some Defense Advocates Chills Scholars say, however, the decision is within the judicial mainstream. [The headline alone is enough to make me not even want to read it because the writer … Continue reading
USA Today: 1,000 locked devices in limbo after FBI quits iPhone case
USA Today: 1,000 locked devices in limbo after FBI quits iPhone case by Kevin Johnson and Elizabeth Weise: The government’s surprise decision to withdraw its case against Apple over the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone adds uncertainty to criminal cases where … Continue reading
D.Kan.: USMJ scholarly opinion on history of email SWs; “Needless to say, a person’s email account may reveal their ‘privacies of life.’”
The government’s email account search warrant request is overbroad as to what is being seized. The court analogizes Riley and notes that email accounts can provide a detailed picture of a person’s life the same as a cell phone search. … Continue reading