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Recent Posts
- CA11: Service of SW without attachments isn’t 4A violation
- KS: Running warrants on a passed out person is reasonable
- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
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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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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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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: Border search
CA5: No RS for def’s stop on totality <50 miles from border
There was no reasonable suspicion on the totality for defendant’s stop less than 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. Officer’s experience was too limited to provide much of anything. United States v. Freeman, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 2622 … Continue reading
CA3: Cabin search of cruise ship at border non-routine, but QI granted here
This is a suit over a 2008 search at USVI port of the plaintiff’s cabin on the Adventure of the Seas cruise ship. Plaintiff was in the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), a CBP database for intel, from prior travels … Continue reading
techdirt: CBP Will Search You And Your Property If You’re Paying Too Much Attention To An Agent. Or Too Little.
techdirt: CBP Will Search You And Your Property If You’re Paying Too Much Attention To An Agent. Or Too Little. by Tim Cushing:
D.V.I.: Court doubts legal authority for border searches from mainland to VI, but GFE applies
The court doubts the legal basis for customs searches of people traveling nonstop from the U.S. mainland to the Virgin Islands because there is no international travel. Reliance on the V.I. Code doesn’t provide any real help to the government. … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Border search of love letter in car led to more inquiries and then finding CP
A secondary search at the border can still be “routine” depending on its intensity. In this district, “routine” deals with searches of the person. Here, it was a search of a letter in the car that was a basically love … Continue reading
engadget: New lawsuit shows your phone is unsafe at American borders
engadget: New lawsuit shows your phone is unsafe at American borders by Violet Blue: CBP = Customs and Border Profiling
Gizmodo: Woman Sues Border Agents to Make Them Return Data They Seized From Her Phone
Gizmodo: Woman Sues Border Agents to Make Them Return Data They Seized From Her Phone by Melanie Ehrenkranz:
WaPo: In horrifying detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches
WaPo: In horrifying detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches by Susan Ferriss, Center for Public Integrity:
S.D.Cal.: Cell phone was validly searched under border search exception; obtaining passcode was likely unlawful, but government isn’t going to use it
Defendant was arrested at Calexico for importing meth. While in the holding cell, she gave up the password for the cell phone. The government isn’t going to use her revealing the password as evidence, but it wants to use the … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Warrantless search of cell phone six years after border crossing violated 4A
Defendant crossed the border in July 2012, and his phone was seized and somewhat analyzed. On the eve of trial in July 2018, the government did a full search without a warrant. Defendant moves to suppress, and it’s granted. The … Continue reading
TX8: Hospital can’t be sued under § 1983 for medical negligence and battery in conducting intensive body, pelvic, and rectal searches for CBP that produced nothing at all
Plaintiff, an El Paso resident, was stopped at the border coming into El Paso from visiting a friend and subjected to several searches for drugs, including taking her to the appellant hospital for x-rays and a pelvic exam. Nothing was … Continue reading
NACDL: Riling Up the Border Search Doctrine: Litigating Searches of Digital Content at Our Ports of Entry
NACDL, The Champion: Riling Up the Border Search Doctrine: Litigating Searches of Digital Content at Our Ports of Entry by Aisha J. Dennis, The Champion 40-46 (Mar. 2018)
Lawfare: Summary: Circuit Split on Device Searches at the Border in US v. Touset
Lawfare: Summary: Circuit Split on Device Searches at the Border in US v. Touset by Grayson Clary:
S.D.Fla.: Consent to giving up passwords at border irrelevant since CBP can search anyway
In a border search case, defendant’s consent to produce his passwords doesn’t matter because the government has the authority to conduct a search of incoming electronic equipment. United States v. Vallerius, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85620 (S.D. Fla. May 1, … Continue reading
CA4: Forensic border search of cell phone “non-routine” but GFE applies
An intensive forensic search of an outbound noncitizen’s cell phone required at least reasonable suspicion and maybe a warrant under Riley. Case law, however, uniformly says not at the time this happened, so the search is valid under the good … Continue reading
WaPo: She saved thousands to open a medical clinic in Nigeria. U.S. Customs took all of it at the airport.
WaPo: She saved thousands to open a medical clinic in Nigeria. U.S. Customs took all of it at the airport. by Meagan Flynn: The questioning threw her off guard. She explained she had legally earned the money and she was … Continue reading
CA5: Def’s cell phone apps scan at border was supported by PC
“After discovering kilos of meth in the suitcase Maria Isabel Molina-Isidoro was carrying across the border, customs agents looked at a couple of apps on her cell phone. Molina argues that the evidence found during this warrantless search of her … Continue reading
Gizmodo: Man Sues Feds After Finding Spy Camera on His Property and Refusing to Give It Back
Gizmodo: Man Sues Feds After Finding Spy Camera on His Property and Refusing to Give It Back by Sidney Fussell:
Vox: Why Border Patrol agents can board a bus or train and ask if you’re a citizen
Vox: Why Border Patrol agents can board a bus or train and ask if you’re a citizen by Alexia Fernández Campbell
Just Security: “Dehumanized” at the Border, Travelers Push Back
Just Security: “Dehumanized” at the Border, Travelers Push Back by Carrie DeCell: