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- MD: While protective sweep information made it into SW affidavit, there was PC without it
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- CA6: State officer’s arrest for violation of federal MJ law likely wouldn’t violate 4A
- D.N.M.: Shared driveway outside of fence and gate was not curtilage
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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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"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
TN: Def’s fighting with officers wasn’t exigency to dispense with SW for blood
Defendant was stopped in Johnson City TN for suspected DUI, and, with the arrest, there was a chase, mace, and a fight. Once defendant was handcuffed, everything was back under control, and that doesn’t constitute sufficient exigent circumstances to dispense … Continue reading
NYTimes: Boston Is Eager to Begin Marathon Bombing Trial, and to End It
The case with the house-to-house searches that drove some bat guano (see Treatise § 25.20, text accompanying nn. 23-29): NYTimes: Boston Is Eager to Begin Marathon Bombing Trial, and to End It by Katharine Q. Seelye: BOSTON — The blood … Continue reading
BLT: Chief Justice Roberts Promises Greater Access to Court Filings
BLT: Chief Justice Roberts Promises Greater Access to Court Filings by Tony Mauro: The U.S. Supreme Court is developing an electronic filing system that will make all case filings available to the public online, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. announced … Continue reading
FL1: No Fourth Amendment or state law violation for P2P CP trolling to cross jurisdictional lines
A municipal police officer trolling P2P connections found child pornography on defendant’s computer. When she got the IP address, it was apparent the computer was located in another municipality nearby. The Fourth Amendment wasn’t violated by her extraterritorial examination of … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: “Horrifying civil liberties predictions for 2015”
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Horrifying civil liberties predictions for 2015: How bad could it get? Maybe it’s best not to ask. . . . If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably already figured out the joke. None … Continue reading
Motherboard: Researchers Release Full Data from 2012 Police Body Cam Study
Motherboard: Researchers Release Full Data from 2012 Police Body Cam Study by Adrienne Jeffries: The topline results-that cameras reduced the use of force by 60 percent and civilian complaints against police by 88 percent-were released by the Rialto police and … Continue reading
The Bustle: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2014 Was Better Than Your 2014
The Bustle: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2014 Was Better Than Your 2014 by Abby Johnston: This year, the Notorious RBG had heart surgery, celebrated her 81st birthday, and served her 21st year on the Supreme Court of the United States. But … Continue reading
Treatise on sale 31% off through midnight PT 12/31
The Treatise is 31% off at the Lexis bookstore through midnight Wednesday. The usual year-end sale. USE CODE JCM167831 EXPIRES December 31 @ 11:59 P.M. PT
NYTimes: New Mexico: City to Revise Police Camera Policy
NYTimes: New Mexico: City to Revise Police Camera Policy by AP: Albuquerque police officials say their policy for the use of body cameras is nearly impossible to follow, and they told The Albuquerque Journal that a new policy for the … Continue reading
CA10: If the affidavit for the search warrant satisfies Aguilar-Spinelli, it ipso facto satisfies Gates
The affidavit for the search warrant of this apartment included information from a CI that cocaine was recently packaged for sale there by a “black male.” Defendant’s attack on that as a bad ID of the seller doesn’t matter, because … Continue reading
Note to readers: Getting ads or misdirects? If so, install malware protection software [updated]
I’ve been using a backup computer on occasion, and it didn’t have malware protection software. It’s downloading while I type this. First: At any rate, I’ve been getting ads popping up on this computer only. I have MalwareBytes on my … Continue reading
The Week: How Sonia Sotomayor became the Supreme Court’s preeminent defender of civil liberties
The Week: How Sonia Sotomayor became the Supreme Court’s preeminent defender of civil liberties by Scott Lemieux: The trailblazing justice has carved out an important niche on the high court in just a few short years
Santa Busted in Little Rock
Always vigilant. Must have been based on a stop because of LPN from a source state. Might have been the brownish skin.
The Hill: Police and the complexity of the law
The Hill: Police and the complexity of the law by Tobias T. Gibson: Who knows the law – and who is expected (or not expected) to know it?
E.D.Wis.: Illegal patdown led to arrest and detention and confession which led to false ATF form; all suppressed because no intervening circumstance
“Defendant witnessed a crime. Rather than leaving the scene, he remained to talk to the police. The police then violated his Fourth Amendment rights by subjecting him to a suspicionless pat-down, and the ATF took advantage of his arrest on … Continue reading
NM: DA criticized for failing to consolidate codefendants for appeal of suppression order
The writ of cert in this case is quashed. There were two cases that should have been noted as companion cases by the DA when the appeals were filed and weren’t. That was important information that bore on avoiding inconsistent … Continue reading
The Atlantic: How To Deal With the Police
The Atlantic: How To Deal With the Police by Terrance Ross: A workshop is teaching students how to handle confrontations with law enforcement, but some fear the class only reinforces negative stereotypes of cops.
NYTimes: Supreme Court Justices Admit Inconsistency, and Embrace It
NYTimes: Supreme Court Justices Admit Inconsistency, and Embrace It by Adam Liptak: WASHINGTON — There is an art to admitting mistakes on the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia demonstrated the proper technique in a dissent last week. There are three … Continue reading
TN: Entry into backyard under pretext of using back door to knock-and-talk violated curtilage
The backyard and back porch of defendant’s house was clearly curtilage, and it violated the Fourth Amendment to do a knock-and-talk at the backdoor. It was 200′ from the road and nothing back there could be seen from the front. … Continue reading
USA Today: Police stop pursuing nearly 79,000 fugitives
USA Today: Police stop pursuing nearly 79,000 fugitives by Brad Heath: Accused rapists, murderers are allowed to escape, and the victims aren’t told.