Archives
-
Recent Posts
- OH7: Magistrate signing SW for something outside of territorial jurisdiction not a 4A violation
- OH2: Stop outside the officer’s jurisdiction doesn’t violate 4A
- RawStory Opinion: Trump just declared these parts of America are outside the Constitution (within 100 miles of any border)
- CA1: SW for iPhone 6S didn’t permit search of iPhone 13 despite same phone number
- CA7: It wasn’t a 4A violation to place a pole camera to look over def’s fence he built knowing he was under surveillance
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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)
-
“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: fourth
D.D.C.: Drug deal supported inference defendant kept it at home to support SW for home
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on D.D.C.: Drug deal supported inference defendant kept it at home to support SW for home
S.D.N.Y.: Pants could be searched incident to arrest when defendant arrested in his underwear
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on S.D.N.Y.: Pants could be searched incident to arrest when defendant arrested in his underwear
CO: When defendant doesn’t file a motion to suppress, the trial court’s sustaining the search can’t be appealed
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CO: When defendant doesn’t file a motion to suppress, the trial court’s sustaining the search can’t be appealed
IN: Dog sniff of car within five minutes of stop is reasonable
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on IN: Dog sniff of car within five minutes of stop is reasonable
IN: Dog sniff at front door not Fourth Amendment violation
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on IN: Dog sniff at front door not Fourth Amendment violation
IN: Drawing gun during stop until backup arrived was still not an arrest
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on IN: Drawing gun during stop until backup arrived was still not an arrest
AR: Police officer could be tested for drugs randomly and here with individual suspicion
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on AR: Police officer could be tested for drugs randomly and here with individual suspicion
W.D.Okla.: Defendant consented to stay and talk to the officer after the paperwork was returned after a traffic stop
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on W.D.Okla.: Defendant consented to stay and talk to the officer after the paperwork was returned after a traffic stop
OR’s HB3200 on inspection of assault rifles violates the Fourth Amendment
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on OR’s HB3200 on inspection of assault rifles violates the Fourth Amendment
10th Anniversary Note: § 2.1. Understanding Fourth Amendment realities
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on 10th Anniversary Note: § 2.1. Understanding Fourth Amendment realities
N.D.Ind.: Defendant’s alleged attempt at withdrawal from conspiracy before arrest didn’t nullify probable cause
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on N.D.Ind.: Defendant’s alleged attempt at withdrawal from conspiracy before arrest didn’t nullify probable cause
ABAJ: Chemerinsky: Does the Fourth Amendment still fit the 21st Century?
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on ABAJ: Chemerinsky: Does the Fourth Amendment still fit the 21st Century?
252d anniversary of Otis’s Writs of Assistance argument in Paxton’s Case
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on 252d anniversary of Otis’s Writs of Assistance argument in Paxton’s Case
E.D.Mo.: Officer’s pressing face against tinted living room window to see in didn’t violate curtilage
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on E.D.Mo.: Officer’s pressing face against tinted living room window to see in didn’t violate curtilage
ACLU: Know Your Rights: Constitution Free Zone – Map
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on ACLU: Know Your Rights: Constitution Free Zone – Map
WaPo: Md. DNA law at center of SCOTUS case aided 43 convictions; many possible even without new law
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on WaPo: Md. DNA law at center of SCOTUS case aided 43 convictions; many possible even without new law
SCOTUS: Bailey v. United States: Detentions permitted under Summers have to be in immediate vicinity
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on SCOTUS: Bailey v. United States: Detentions permitted under Summers have to be in immediate vicinity
Cato: “Clever Hans vs. the Fourth Amendment”; a comment on Harris
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on Cato: “Clever Hans vs. the Fourth Amendment”; a comment on Harris
Reason.com: SCOTUS Approves Search Warrants Issued by Dogs
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on Reason.com: SCOTUS Approves Search Warrants Issued by Dogs
SCOTUS: Florida v. Harris: State proved dog was reliable; alert was PC
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on SCOTUS: Florida v. Harris: State proved dog was reliable; alert was PC