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- USA Today: Cell phone SW for cause of crash
- Treatise on sale to 11/1
- MD: While protective sweep information made it into SW affidavit, there was PC without it
- N.D.Ga.: A Customs forensic search of a cell phone away from the border was still a border search
- CA6: State officer’s arrest for violation of federal MJ law likely wouldn’t violate 4A
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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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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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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
Chicago Tribune: 5 cops caught in lies on witness stand, judge says
Chicago Tribune: 5 cops caught in lies on witness stand, judge says by Steve Schmadeke: In a ‘Perry Mason’ moment, a video played in court contradicts police officers who testified their drug arrest was proper.
The Atlantic: I Was Racially Profiled in My Own Driveway
The Atlantic: I Was Racially Profiled in My Own Driveway by Doug Glanville: A retired Major League Baseball player explains how he’s trying to turn an upsetting encounter with the police into an opportunity for dialogue.
BBC: Privacy fears over FBI facial recognition database
BBC: Privacy fears over FBI facial recognition database
WaPo: Google acquires maker of drones
WaPo: Google acquires maker of drones by Hayley Tsukayama: Google confirmed Monday that it has bought drone-maker Titan Aerospace, in a bid to supplement its efforts to connect parts of the world that do not have Internet access. And Google … Continue reading
Law.com: D.C. Judge Battles DOJ On Searches
Law.com: D.C. Judge Battles DOJ On Searches: Federal Magistrate Judge John Facciola was introduced during a 2008 conference as the ‘Italian Stallion of e-discovery.’ Long at the forefront on technology and the law, Facciola is back in the national spotlight … Continue reading
HuffPo: DEA Raided This Woman’s House After She Shopped At A Garden Store
HuffPo: DEA Raided This Woman’s House After She Shopped At A Garden Store by Matt Sledge:
New format
Notice the new format, in WordPress, after ten days of converting data. After the crash a few weeks ago, we found we could transport all the old posts to WordPress. Earlier, it wasn’t economically feasible, and now it was. Sunday’s … Continue reading
NYT: Adding Insult to Gun Injuries, Police Often Handcuff [Shooting] Victims
NYT: Adding Insult to Gun Injuries, Police Often Handcuff [Shooting] Victims by Joseph Goldstein:
TN: 911 shooting call was exigency that included EMTs and CSIs
911 call about a shooting at 1:23 am, and “He’s in here” when they arrive justifies an emergency entry. [Certainly sounds like consent, too.] The real issue, however, is whether that also includes EMTs who follow and CSIs, and the … Continue reading
WaPo: N.Y. search warrant case shows why we need the Exclusionary Rule
WaPo: N.Y. search warrant case shows why we need the Exclusionary Rule by Radley Balko:
LA5: Controlled buy from house is PC for SW
A CI called police and said that he could buy crack from a man with tattoos on his face. They set up a controlled buy out of defendant’s house. That was probable cause for a search warrant. State v. Young, … Continue reading
CA10: Sweatshorts with gun in pocket held abandoned
Defendant was found to have abandoned his sweatshorts which had a gun in the pocket. United States v. Mosley, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 6500 (10th Cir. April 9, 2014).* Officers told defendant they wanted to search his cell phone for … Continue reading
CA5: Prison inmate stated claim for harassing strip searches
Plaintiff prison inmate filed a “§ 1983 complaint in which he contended that he was forced to undergo strip and visual body cavity searches without reasonable justification.” He stated a Fourth Amendment claim so reversed and remanded. Scheidel v. Sec’y … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh: The need for computer-specific Fourth Amendment rules in the cell phone search cases
WaPo: Volokh: The need for computer-specific Fourth Amendment rules in the cell phone search cases by Orin Kerr:
Techdirt: SEC Is A Due Process Nightmare: Searches Emails Without A Warrant, Refuses To Share Exculpatory Evidence
Techdirt: SEC Is A Due Process Nightmare: Searches Emails Without A Warrant, Refuses To Share Exculpatory Evidence by Mike Masnick:
NYT Blog: Do the Courts Have a Role to Play in Drone Strikes?
NYT Blog: Do the Courts Have a Role to Play in Drone Strikes? by Dorothy J. Samuels:
Slate: The Fourth Amendment Shell Game
Slate: The Fourth Amendment Shell Game by Julian Sanchez One of Obama’s NSA reforms just makes the problem worse.
WaPo: Volokh: The Fourth Amendment and Airport Security, cont’d
WaPo: Volokh: The Fourth Amendment and Airport Security, cont’d by David Post:
TX8: Natural dissipation of BAC isn’t an exigent circumstance dispensing with a warrant; there was a night warrant judge at the jail
Natural dissipation of BAC isn’t an exigent circumstance dispensing with a warrant. Here, there always was a nighttime magistrate for warrants and a phlebotomist in the jail, too. Sutherland v. State, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 3694 (Tex. App. – Amarillo … Continue reading
MA: One-party consent to recording a conversation is valid, unless it happens in the home; here, a car
One-party consent to recording a conversation is valid in Massachusetts, unless it happens in the home. Here, officers had a warrant authorizing recording in case it happened in the home, but it was in a car instead. Commonwealth v. Hearns, … Continue reading