Archives
-
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
-
-
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. 
Category Archives: Border search
Broadly: Woman Subjected to Illegal Cavity Search at Border Gets $475,000 Settlement
Broadly: Woman Subjected to Illegal Cavity Search at Border Gets $475,000 Settlement by Diana Tourjee:
D.Ariz.: Border exit searches are permissible to assure compliance with the currency reporting laws
Border exit searches are permissible without reasonable suspicion to assure compliance with the currency reporting laws. United States v. Chavira, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88681 (D.Ariz. May 19, 2016), adopted 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88680 (D.Ariz. July 7, 2016):
CA5: Roving Border Patrol stop satisfied Brignoni-Ponce standard
“In determining reasonable suspicion in the context of roving Border Patrol stops, courts examine the totality of the circumstances, including the factors enunciated in Brignoni-Ponce. … These are (1) the area’s proximity to the border; (2) the characteristics of the … Continue reading
D.Guam: Def’s detention at Customs for 13 hours for SW for rectum was based on RS
Defendant’s 13 hour detention at airport customs was reasonable where it was based on a report from a CI that defendant would arrive from Manila with drugs hidden in his rectum. A dog also alerted on him in the luggage … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Riley does not apply to a search of a cell phone at the border
Riley does not apply to a search of a cell phone at the border. Calling it “investigatory” doesn’t add anything to the argument. “[A]n entire body of jurisprudence has been built around border searches, and the specific lexicon used by … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Controlled buys and watching def to go his storage unit for more was PC
Defendant had been coming and going from a storage unit where the police knew he stored methamphetamine. “There had been controlled purchases of methamphetamine directly from Leyva-Martinez. Officer Milone and other OPD officers had sufficient probable cause to stop the … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: The gov’t had individualized suspicion for a forensic border search of def’s cell phone
The post-arrest, off-site forensic search of defendant’s phone was instead a border search, which did not require a warrant supported by probable cause. The first search of defendant’s phone conducted at the airport was a routine border search that did … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Def’s apparently grabbing a package launched over the border fence was RS
Border Patrol officers at Nogales watching over the border saw a launching device to throw bundles over the border fence, and they tried to see where the packages landed to round them up. Defendant was seen matching the description of … Continue reading
VICE: The Future of Border Securing Technology Is Here and It’s Terrifying
VICE: The Future of Border Securing Technology Is Here and It’s Terrifying by Meredith Hoffman: At the Tenth Annual Border Security Expo in San Antonio, Texas, officials from the Department of Homeland Security browsed booths with 3D holographic images, portable … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: A cursory search of a cell phone of a person arrested for importation of drugs was permissible under the border search exception
A cursory search of a cell phone of a person arrested for importation of drugs was permissible under the border search exception. This was no deep forensic evaluation. Defendant also showed standing in the cell phone in his possession. “Specifically, … Continue reading
CA3: Handle of a gun satisfies “immediately apparent” requirement of plain view
Defendant was stopped because the officer already knew that defendant was driving without a license. The search of the car was justified by the handle of a gun being in plain view sticking out from under the seat, and it … Continue reading
Reason.com: SCOTUS Declines Opportunity to Limit Random Border Patrol Stops
Reason.com: SCOTUS Declines Opportunity to Limit Random Border Patrol Stops by Jacob Sullum: The Court’s decision leaves motorists vulnerable to the whims of armed government agents who can stop them at will.
CA2: RCMP was merely giving information to CBP and not on a joint venture
Defendant was prosecuted for alien smuggling in Northern New York. CBP received information from the RCMP about a vehicle stopped in a rural area near the border, and Border Patrol picked up defendant. “Put simply, the interaction between the U.S. … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Border search of computer with special software was reasonable
Defendant arrived at the Detroit airport on a flight from Cancun, and his body language showed he was too nervous. He consented to a search of his camera and computer, and the CBP was looking for child pornography. They called … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Text messages legally searched at the border; cell phone otherwise searched with warrant
Defendant entered the United States at San Ysidro and her car was subjected to a search finding 3 kg of methamphetamine. She denied meeting anyone in Mexico on that trip. Officers looked at her cell phone and found text messages … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Younger abstention bars § 1983 case over drug search filed while state criminal case is pending
Plaintiff from the county jail sued the drug task force that arrested him while the criminal case was pending. His claim is barred by Younger abstention. The case is dismissed except as to a damages claim which is stayed pending … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Warrantless “peek” into iPhone5 produced 921 pages of information; suppressed because exclusionary rule should apply
The government’s border warrantless “peek” into defendant’s iPhone5 produced 921 pages of incriminating information. The “peek” was unreasonable and led to a search warrant that produced a lot more. Inevitable discovery is also not applied because the risk of data … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Package from Hong Kong arriving at Doraville, GA was still shown to be at “functional equivalent of the border”
The government established that packages sent from Hong Kong and observed in Doraville, GA were still at the “functional equivalent of the border” because it was apparent that they had not been opened or tampered with in transit. United States … Continue reading
CA2: CBP could photocopy a notebook on entry into the U.S. based on info from DEA that was RS
Warrantless copying of an international traveler’s notebook by CBP was with reasonable suspicion via the DEA. Essentially, the collective knowledge doctrine can permit a more extensive border search than would otherwise occur. Defendant was under investigation for stock fraud and … Continue reading