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- Yahoo Tech: Can you be prosecuted for wiping your phone at the border?
- LATimes: Immigration agents used racial slurs referring to Latinos in text messages, video obtained by ACLU
- Cal.4: No error not unsealing CI’s identity in SW application
- D.P.R.: A shed on the curtilage was within scope of SW
- NY4: Payton does not apply to an arrest in a common area of an apartment building
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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)
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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: Immigration arrests
NJLJ: Law Enforcement Should Read Ruling on Detention of Undocumented Immigrants
NJLJ: Law Enforcement Should Read Ruling on Detention of Undocumented Immigrants (“The Third Circuit’s decision provides a ‘teachable moment’ with regard to the role of, and limits on, local law enforcement in detentions of undocumented aliens.”).
MA: Calls from juvenile detention have no REP
Phone calls in juvenile detention were properly recorded. Defendant was on notice of recording. Commonwealth v. Odgren, 483 Mass. 41 (Sept. 4, 2019). In an immigration case where the petitioner bears the burden of showing an egregious violation of the … Continue reading
Dallas Morning News: No shower for 23 days: U.S. citizen says conditions were so bad that he almost self-deported
Dallas Morning News: No shower for 23 days: U.S. citizen says conditions were so bad that he almost self-deported by Obed Manuel: Francisco Erwin Galicia, a Dallas-born U.S. citizen, spent 23 days in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border … Continue reading
NYT: An American Citizen Is Released From Immigration Custody After Nearly a Month
NYT: An American Citizen Is Released From Immigration Custody After Nearly a Month by Manny Fernandez
Immigration Blog: When May ICE Agents Enter Residences or Private Premises to Make Arrests?
Immigration Blog: When May ICE Agents Enter Residences or Private Premises to Make Arrests? by Dan Cadman:
WSJ: Immigration-Enforcement Raids Begin in New York
WSJ: Immigration-Enforcement Raids Begin in New York by Jim Carlton and Corinne Ramey: ICE agents attempt raids in at least two city neighborhoods; President Trump says roundups will focus on criminals And some were stymied by lack of warrants.
CT: Def didn’t abandon his apt when he was in jail and rent came due
Defendant did not abandon his crime victim’s cell phone hidden in a wall when he’d been incarcerated and was evicted from his house for nonpayment of rent. The police waited until the lease had expired for nonpayment and came to … Continue reading
The Intercept: As Trump Announces Mass Immigration Raid, Documents Show How ICE Uses Arrest Quotas
The Intercept: As Trump Announces Mass Immigration Raid, Documents Show How ICE Uses Arrest Quotas by Maryam Saleh:
Reuters: Motel 6 hotel chain to settle lawsuit over sharing guest lists with ICE
Reuters: Motel 6 hotel chain to settle lawsuit over sharing guest lists with ICE by Dan Whitcomb: Motel 6 has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over claims the budget chain routinely provided guest lists from … Continue reading
D.Mass.: ICE civil immigration arrests at Boston state courthouse enjoined
In a case brought by the Suffolk County DA in Boston, ICE is ordered to not civilly arrest witnesses and defendants at the courthouse. At common law, witnesses were immune from civil arrest at court. The court finds nothing in … Continue reading
CA9: Immigration detention without RS or PC subject to suppression
Defendant was entitled to suppress the evidence of his alienage because the government detained him without reasonable suspicion. The government gets no safe harbor in Summers because the purpose of the detention was rounding up foreign nationals to remove them. … Continue reading
Willamette Week: An ICE Agent Shoved A Lawyer While Making An Arrest At The Multnomah County Courthouse
Willamette Week: An ICE Agent Shoved A Lawyer While Making An Arrest At The Multnomah County Courthouse by Katie Shepherd:
WaPo: ICE agents cannot be sued for damages, Fourth Circuit Court panel says
WaPo: ICE agents cannot be sued for damages, Fourth Circuit Court panel says by Rachel Weiner:
NYT: The tacit alliance of militia members and Border Patrol agents is getting out of control
NYT: The tacit alliance of militia members and Border Patrol agents is getting out of control by Kristy Parker & Cameron Bills:
Gothamist: NY State Court System Rules No ICE Arrests In Courthouses Without A Judicial Warrant
Gothamist: NY State Court System Rules No ICE Arrests In Courthouses Without A Judicial Warrant by Jake Offenhartz:
NPR: Motel 6 To Pay $12 Million After Improperly Giving Guest Lists To ICE
NPR: Motel 6 To Pay $12 Million After Improperly Giving Guest Lists To ICE by Francesca Paris:
Courthouse News Service: Deportation Case Stirs Division in Ninth Circuit
Courthouse News Service: Deportation Case Stirs Division in Ninth Circuit by Maria Dinzeo:
Reason: Border Agents Detained a 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen for 30+ Hours
Reason: Border Agents Detained a 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen for 30+ Hours by Joe Setyon:
CA9: Two on failure to prove egregious 4A violation
“Applying de novo review, we find that Torres-Navarro has failed to carry her burden to show an egregious Fourth Amendment violation. See id. at 649, 653. Her declaration does not deny the border patrol agent’s submission, reflected on the Form … Continue reading
CNN: ICE supervisors sometimes skip required review of detention warrants, emails show
CNN: ICE supervisors sometimes skip required review of detention warrants, emails show by Bob Ortega: (CNN)Brent Oxley, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer in Little Rock, Arkansas, was happy in his work, which he says “gave me the feeling … Continue reading