November 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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Recent Posts
- D.Ariz.: Smell of alcohol in the car on Navajo Nation was PC
- NY3: No REP in parole GPS monitoring as to police
- TX: An entry into a person’s homestead for civil discovery has limits
- S.D.W.Va.: Subpoenas for records on advocacy positions violated 1A
- CA10: Investigative detention that went on for hours did not become an arrest
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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 -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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www.fd.org
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
The automobile exception is 100 today
The automobile exception is 100 today: Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925). The offense date: December 15, 1921. The place: Pike 16, 16 miles east of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which I surmise is now the route of I-96 … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: “4A privileges and immunities” are two claims, not one, and both denied here
Plaintiff’s case claimed Fourth Amendment privileges and immunities, but that’s two claims because privileges and immunities is under Art. IV, § 2, cl. 1 but it doesn’t state a claim under either. Gay v. Sheriff of L.A. Cty., 2025 U.S. … Continue reading
NY1: SW misdescription of place to be searched not adequately resolved below; remanded
Defendant’s motion to suppress based on an apparent misdescription of the place to be searched wasn’t resolved below, so the case is remanded for further development. People v. Trulove, 2025 NY Slip Op 01178, 2025 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1170 … Continue reading
GA: Shouting and arguing inside is not exigency
Yelling and arguing from inside a home is not exigent circumstances. As to a second entry, the defendant’s statements about an injury were tainted as fruit of the initial unlawful entry. Refusal to consent to re-entry did not constitute a … Continue reading
CrimProf Blog: A Hidden Seizure Issue in Barnes v. Felix
CrimProf Blog: A Hidden Seizure Issue in Barnes v. Felix by Michael J.Z. Mannheimer:
Reason: Colorado SWAT Team Raids Wrong Apartment, Locks Innocent Family in Police Car
Reason: Colorado SWAT Team Raids Wrong Apartment, Locks Innocent Family in Police Car by Emma Camp (“A Denver SWAT team burst into the wrong family’s apartment, holding several women and children at gunpoint before locking them in a police car … Continue reading
CA5: Officer’s responding to “open structure call” and entering was reasonable as community caretaking function
“When Dean responded to the ‘open structure call’ he was performing a community caretaking function. Community caretaking functions are ‘totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.’ … Here, even … Continue reading
S.D.Miss.: Because CA5 prohibits broad geofence warrants, cell tower dump warrant unreasonable
USMJ concludes the Fifth Circuit’s geofence warrant case means a cell tower dump warrant is unreasonable. In re Four Applications for Search Warrants Seeking Info. Associated with Particular Cellular Towers, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32995 (S.D. Miss. Feb. 21, 2025):
M.D.Tenn.: State court’s order permitting entry past a privacy fence to serve civil process made entry reasonable
A state court order that gave officers permission to enter past plaintiff’s privacy fence to serve him with a summons was sufficient to grant them at least qualified immunity or was reasonable for the entry alleged to be in violation … Continue reading
Reason: Detroit Police Wrongly Arrested Woman After Facial Recognition Tech Misidentified Her as Shooting Culprit
Reason: Detroit Police Wrongly Arrested Woman After Facial Recognition Tech Misidentified Her as Shooting Culprit by Emma Camp (“Last year, Detroit police wrongly arrested LaDonna Crutchfield after facial recognition software incorrectly identified her as the culprit of a shooting, according … Continue reading
CA6: Nexus can be circumstantial
Nexus can be circumstantial. United States v. Simmons, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 4208 (6th Cir. Feb. 24, 2025) (It suggests it’s limited to drug dealers, but it’s really not. Moreover, it’s articulating what other courts think but don’t usually say.):
SCOTUS denies review of “the presence rule” for misdemeanor arrests
SCOTUS denied review of a case from the Eleventh Circuit on the in the presence rule for misdemeanor arrests from United States v. Gonzalez, 107 F.4th 1304 (11th Cir. 2024) because, noted by the statement of Sotomayor and Gorsuch, the … Continue reading
CA11: The questions that extended the stop were for officer safety and thus reasonable
The questions here alleged to have prolonged the stop were primarily related to officer safety and weapons and not drugs. Therefore, they were reasonable. United States v. Green, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 3856 (11th Cir. Feb. 20, 2025). There was … Continue reading
NY3: Inventory doesn’t have to be everything, just meaningful things
The inventory papers and the body cam video show that the officer inventoried all the meaningful things in the vehicle, so it complied with policy and was reasonable. People v. Craddock, 2025 NY Slip Op 01016, 2025 N.Y. App. Div. … Continue reading
TX14: Def’s furtive movements with cell phone can justify exigency to seize it
Defendant’s furtive movements supported exigency that he could attempt to erase things on his cell phone thus justifying its warrantless seizure. Igboji v. State, 2025 Tex. App. LEXIS 1021 (Tex. App. – Houston (14th Dist.) Feb. 20, 2025) (unpublished), on … Continue reading
CA11: Refusal to cooperate in taking DNA by SW permitted adverse inference at trial
“The record here demonstrates that the district court did not plainly err by allowing the jury to draw an adverse inference of guilt from Gonzalez’s refusal to provide his DNA even though his counsel was not present. When the government … Continue reading
E.D.Okla.: Handling a gun in a parking lot wasn’t RS in an open carry state
The caller’s report to the police that defendant was handling a gun in an apartment building’s parking lot didn’t state a crime in an open carry state. The detention was without consent or reasonable suspicion. United States v. Johnson, 2025 … Continue reading
CA8: Exigent circumstances justified warrantless entry into Airbnb in sex trafficking investigation
Officers had exigent circumstances for an entry into an Airbnb that was being used for sex trafficking a minor when the targets were constantly on the move from place to place. The FBI was on defendant’s tail with the minor, … Continue reading
D.Utah: Example of how the CI’s story was supported in detail
Defendant challenges the CI’s statements as insufficient to show probable cause, but it fails. This is an example of how this court found the CI’s detail sufficient. United States v. Martinez, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30335 (D. Utah Feb. 19, … Continue reading
This blog is 22 years old today
See the post from the 20th Anniversary.