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- CA6: State officer’s arrest for violation of federal MJ law likely wouldn’t violate 4A
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- VI: Smell of MJ no longer PC in VI since legalization
- Reason: 3 Charlotte Cops Resign After Group Chat Reveals Competition To Arrest the Most Black People
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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)
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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. 
Category Archives: Uncategorized
WaPo: Outlook: No, America isn’t 100 percent safe from terrorism. And that’s a good thing.
WaPo: Outlook: No, America isn’t 100 percent safe from terrorism. And that’s a good thing by Juliette Kayyem: As members of a free society, we’ve implicitly accepted that some level of risk is tolerable.
Harper’s: John Ehrlichman admitting the racist origin of Nixon’s “war on drugs” in 1993
Harper’s: John Ehrlichman admitting the racist origin of Nixon’s “war on drugs” in 1993 Legalize It All | How to win the war on drugs by Dan Baum:
Why we’ve been down: too much traffic for space we rented
We’ve been down a few times in the last ten days, usually for a few hours at a time. Then, nearly all day Saturday. Frustrating to be down at all. Apparent reason: heavier traffic than we allowed for and paid … Continue reading
US Law Week Blog: Premeditated: Now You Can Invoke Your 4th Amendment Rights at a Bargain
US Law Week Blog: Premeditated: Now You Can Invoke Your 4th Amendment Rights at a Bargain: Those looking for an easy way to protect their homes from unreasonable searches and seizures can now find it at the reasonable price of … Continue reading
WaPo: D.C. police sometimes raid wrong homes on scant evidence, terrifying innocents
WaPo: D.C. police sometimes raid wrong homes on scant evidence, terrifying innocents by John Sullivan, Derek Hawkins, and Pietro Lombardi: Authorities cited their ‘training and experience’ to justify searching a residence without any sign of criminal activity.
Today is the 255th anniversary of the “Writs of Assistance Case” and the 13th anniversary of this blog
See one of the prior posts on Paxton’s case, the original Writs of Assistance case, argued today in 1761. John Adams credited James Otis’s argument, which he witnessed and attempted to transcribe, as helping foment the Revolution and led directly … Continue reading
CO criminal defense lawyer disbarred for seeking warning for client of a search and telling a witness to lie; the witness was wired
A criminal defense lawyer attempted to get a tipoff to the client of an impending search and then he advised a client to lie to the police. The client disposed of marijuana plants which were not found during a search … Continue reading
Book on sale 25% off through Tuesday midnight
Search and Seizure, Fifth Edition Print Book Format: $473.00 Your Price: $354.75
Don’t expect much this week
I had five major deadlines in a row. No. 4 was a brief finished at 9:45 last night after two weeks of work in one of the FBI withdrawn hair analysis cases from a 1979 conviction. With our state abstracting … Continue reading
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting: How An Illegal Court Ruling Helped Break This Kentucky Man
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting: How An Illegal Court Ruling Helped Break This Kentucky Man by R.G. Dunlop: Denver Stewart has no trouble reciting those injustices. They date all the way back to October 1997, when court officials in Pike … Continue reading
MD: Constitutional arguments about breath tests for DL purposes have to be raised before the ALJ
Constitutional arguments about breath tests have to be raised before the ALJ in administrative proceedings to be preserved. Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Gonce, 2016 Md. LEXIS 4 (Jan. 22, 2016). Even if defense counsel were ineffective for not challenging the … Continue reading
On The Media: Do Chicago Police Have a Surveillance Slush Fund?
On The Media: Do Chicago Police Have a Surveillance Slush Fund? Using a barrage of FOIA requests, a group of techies and activists in Chicago is trying to uncover what surveillance equipment local police have, how it was obtained, and … Continue reading
USA Today: FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images
USA Today: FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images by Brad Heath: WASHINGTON — For nearly two weeks last year, the FBI operated what it described as one of the Internet’s largest child pornography websites, allowing users to … Continue reading
New book: The Fourth Amendment in Flux: The Roberts Court, Crime Control, and Digital Privacy
New book: The Fourth Amendment in Flux: The Roberts Court, Crime Control, and Digital Privacy by Michael C. Gizzi & R. Craig Curtis (available May 24, 2016)
Just Security: Content Is Content, No Matter How Small
Just Security: Content Is Content, No Matter How Small by Jeffrey Vagle: Recently, Orin Kerr and I had a brief conversation on Twitter regarding the Fourth Amendment and the content/non-content distinction. Specifically, Orin asked those of us who subscribe to … Continue reading
New law review: “How the Fourth Amendment and the Separation of Powers Rise (and Fall) Together”
Aziz Z. Huq, How the Fourth Amendment and the Separation of Powers Rise (and Fall) Together, 83 U.Chi.L.Rev. 101 (2016):
D.Ariz.: Defs’ motion for summary judgment denied in DOJ case v. Maricopa County for discrimination against Hispanics
In a wide-ranging opinion (just released on Lexis) on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s actions as Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, issue preclusion from a prior suit against the County would be applied (Ortega-Melendres v. Arpaio, 836 F. Supp. 2d 959, 969 … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Pretrial detainee can’t sue over false arrest yet
Defendant was pretrial detainee suing over his arrest. At this stage, the § 1983 suit should be dismissed without prejudice because it might implicate whether he was wrongfully charged in the first place and thus violate Heck. Ferguson v. Alabama, … Continue reading
WaPo: In fatal traffic stops, black motorists are killed more often
WaPo: In fatal traffic stops, black motorists are killed more often by Wesley Lowery: According to a Post database of police shootings, one in three people killed by police after a traffic stop was black — even though whites and … Continue reading