Archives
-
Recent Posts
- E.D.Mich.: State environmental inspector who entered property to look at unlicensed seawall gets QI
- S.D.Fla.: SW for def’s house included his tent outside
- 404 Media: Flock: LAPD Regularly Pulled Over Innocent People Because License Plate Readers Flagged Their Cars As Stolen
- CA6: Despite two guns being suppressed from arrest on bare-bones arrest affidavit, third gun was later validly seized by independent source
- D.Md.: Govt’s motion to reconsider granted motion to suppress denied; arguments now are too late
-
-
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
IN: Gant officer safety exception permits SI of vehicle if passengers remain inside
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on IN: Gant officer safety exception permits SI of vehicle if passengers remain inside
CA3: Franks challenge on failure to include full criminal history of consenter didn’t affect consent
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA3: Franks challenge on failure to include full criminal history of consenter didn’t affect consent
CA4: Using knife to remove bag of drugs from penis in public was unreasonable
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA4: Using knife to remove bag of drugs from penis in public was unreasonable
CA1: 911 call about man with gun permitted stop of two men leaving address as officers arrived
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA1: 911 call about man with gun permitted stop of two men leaving address as officers arrived
CA6: Where an illegal search shows other evidence to be suddenly relevant, exclusionary rule would not be applied to the other evidence
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA6: Where an illegal search shows other evidence to be suddenly relevant, exclusionary rule would not be applied to the other evidence
CA8: Burden on plaintiff in § 1983 action for a warrantless arrest or search to disprove exceptions
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA8: Burden on plaintiff in § 1983 action for a warrantless arrest or search to disprove exceptions
CA11: Seeing defendant come out of apartment twice was sufficient to link him to it for Payton purposes
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA11: Seeing defendant come out of apartment twice was sufficient to link him to it for Payton purposes
S.D.Fla.: Search incident of cell phone call log was not unlawful
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on S.D.Fla.: Search incident of cell phone call log was not unlawful
D.N.J.: After consent was given, door was locked and curtains drawn; that was exigency because officers had reason to believe drugs inside
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on D.N.J.: After consent was given, door was locked and curtains drawn; that was exigency because officers had reason to believe drugs inside
N.D.Ind.: No REP in informant recording conversation with defendant on curtilage
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on N.D.Ind.: No REP in informant recording conversation with defendant on curtilage
TX11: Judge issuing SW is presumed to act with legal authority
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on TX11: Judge issuing SW is presumed to act with legal authority
M.D.N.C.: Plain feel justified seizure of a pack of credit cards as contraband
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on M.D.N.C.: Plain feel justified seizure of a pack of credit cards as contraband
Landline: “Court enjoins Minnesota State Patrol from violating truckers’ rights” in “fatigue enforcement program”
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on Landline: “Court enjoins Minnesota State Patrol from violating truckers’ rights” in “fatigue enforcement program”
S.D.W.Va.: Defendant was taken down after flight on seeing the police; this was just a Terry stop
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on S.D.W.Va.: Defendant was taken down after flight on seeing the police; this was just a Terry stop
CA1: No REP in ex-lover’s apartment after being kicked out; his entry made him a trespasser
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA1: No REP in ex-lover’s apartment after being kicked out; his entry made him a trespasser
NH discusses without deciding conflict of laws question
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on NH discusses without deciding conflict of laws question
AR: Defendant waived consent to search claim by testifying to his possession of drugs in trial
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on AR: Defendant waived consent to search claim by testifying to his possession of drugs in trial
E.D.Mich.: Dog sniff at apartment door was PC for SW
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on E.D.Mich.: Dog sniff at apartment door was PC for SW
N.D.Cal.: Fire rendered apt uninhabitable and abandoned by operation of law, and, here, fact
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on N.D.Cal.: Fire rendered apt uninhabitable and abandoned by operation of law, and, here, fact
C.D.Cal.: Warrant was vague as to a search: “further analysis”
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on C.D.Cal.: Warrant was vague as to a search: “further analysis”