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- OH10: Parole search of cell phone can occur even when it’s taken from the property room at jail
- TX14: No REP in location information on bondsman’s GPS monitor
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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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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) -
“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: Prison and jail searches
MotherJones: A Private Prison Company Gave 1,300 Recordings of Confidential Inmate Phone Calls to Prosecutors
MotherJones: A Private Prison Company Gave 1,300 Recordings of Confidential Inmate Phone Calls to Prosecutors by Tonya Riley: Kansas’ US Attorney’s Office has admitted listening to opposing lawyers’ conversations. Securus, the company responsible for recording the calls, has already faced … Continue reading
NYTimes: Calling Your Lawyer’s Cell From Jail? What You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You.
NYTimes: Calling Your Lawyer’s Cell From Jail? What You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You. by Richard A. Oppel Jr.: Most people assume that a conversation with their lawyer will remain confidential. But if the conversation takes place … Continue reading
PA: Def consented to recordings of jail calls, and this is an exception to the state wiretap statute
The trial court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law were completely wrong. Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy concerning his jail calls made over a television monitor and through a computer system. This was a case of consent … Continue reading
NYTimes: Women Describe Invasive Strip Searches on Visits to City Jails
NYTimes: Women Describe Invasive Strip Searches on Visits to City Jails by Jan Ransom:
NY3: Forced prison body cavity search was unreasonable
Defendant’s forced body cavity search in prison was unreasonable under all the circumstances. People v. Holton, 2018 NY Slip Op 02836, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2830 (3d Dist. Apr. 26, 2018):
NH: Warrantless DNA testing of blood obtained from hospital if error was harmless
Defendant was driving in a car crash that critically injured him and his passenger. He came to the ER, and the hospital drew five vials of blood for diagnostic testing for his condition. At the hearing all that it would … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Suit over opening medical records envelope as non-legal mail was frivolous
Suit over opening of non-legal mail, here medical records, was frivolous. Villafana v. Clarke, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54893 (E.D. Va. Mar. 30, 2018). The first officer at the scene conducted a search without probable cause. A supervising officer appeared … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Prison inmate states 4A claim for digital rectal search in front of other inmates
Plaintiff prison inmate states a claim for a digital search in front of other inmates. Fuentes v. Cal. Dep’t of Corr., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52132 (E.D. Cal. Mar. 29, 2018). The prison strip search here had a legitimate penological … Continue reading
TN: Uncorroborated anonymous tip insufficient
The anonymous tip in this case was not corroborated, and it was insufficient even under the Tennessee Supreme Court’s 2017 adoption of Gates and rejection of Aguilar-Spinelli. State v. Dibrell, 2018 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 224 (Mar. 26, 2018). There … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: Prisoner suit for recording attorney-client meetings survives 6A claim but 4A denied on QI
Plaintiff, a prison inmate, had his conversations with his lawyer in trial preparation recorded by prison officials. He sued for interference with his right to counsel and for a Fourth Amendment violation. Defendant’s summary judgment motion is denied on the … Continue reading
CA6: 4A doesn’t apply to removal of stuff from an inmate’s cell after a shakedown search
“Cody failed to state a Fourth Amendment claim for relief. He claimed that the defendants violated his Fourth Amendment rights by removing property from his cell during routine searches. But Cody was in prison, and ‘the Fourth Amendment proscription against … Continue reading
CA6: Ptf inmate’s bodily privacy not unreasonably violated because female guard saw him in shower
Summary judgment was properly granted against plaintiff’s prison Fourth Amendment claim that his privacy rights were violated because a female guard happened to see him in the shower. He has a limited reasonable expectation of privacy in his bodily privacy … Continue reading
LA1: Look in mailbox to confirm def’s address was after they’d confirmed his apartment; not unreasonable
In the course of a homicide investigation, the victim was shown to have last talked to defendant on his cell phone just before his murder. That led to getting his picture to show to a witness who ID’d him as … Continue reading
GA: Nexus shown where def left house and drove directly to controlled buy
Deleting the detective’s false statement from the affidavit that he had seen a black male with short dreadlocks in an SUV, the affidavit nonetheless provided probable cause to issue the warrant based on a controlled buy from defendant. The remainder … Continue reading
GA: No IAC for not challenging nonprejudicial typo in the SW affidavit
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress the search warrant for defendant’s cell phones for a typographical error on the date of the alleged offense in the application for the warrant. The affidavit was clear what … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: A civil detainee has no REP in his cell, despite not being a convict
A civil commitment detainee has more rights than a convict in a jail, but still practically none in his living area from a search for alleged contraband. Warrior v. Santiago, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22742 (E.D. Cal. Feb. 12, 2018). … Continue reading
Cal.5th: SVP’s dorm is virtually like a prison cell subject to random warrantless searches
Defendant is a sexually violent predator (SVP), and he’s institutionalized. His custodial status shares all the attributes of being in prison, including institutional security. The only place an SVP could hide child pornography is in his dormitory room. His room … Continue reading