Archives
-
Recent Posts
- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
- Reason: No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules
-
Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
-
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: Exclusionary rule
CA10: Blanket suppression not appropriate where some cops stole from def during raid
Defendant was victimized because one of the two teams of officers involved in his raid were thieves regularly stealing from the people whose property they searched, including defendant. They were under investigation at the time of the raid in defendant’s … Continue reading
Good faith as a part of inventory searches? In Ohio since at least 1992. Coming to a court near you. Is good faith being subsumed into the “reasonableness” inquiry?
In 2009’s Herring, “good faith” is referred to in the majority opinion seven times as a reason for not applying the exclusionary rule. There it was a search incident to a recalled arrest warrant, a Warrantless search. In Ohio, at … Continue reading
CA4: Officer’s lie about existence of SW required suppression
The officer knowingly lied about the existence of a search warrant to gain access to defendant’s house. The district court (United States v. Rush, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32632 (S.D. W. Va., Mar. 13, 2014)): “In view of the limited … 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
OH11: Conflict of laws: Recording of def in CA which violated CA law but not Fourth Amendment nor OH law was admissible in OH prosecution
Where a recording of defendant was made in California in violation of California law but being used in a prosecution in Ohio, the exclusionary rule would not be applied. The recording violated neither the Fourth Amendment nor Ohio law, and … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Even systematic statutory violation wouldn’t require suppression without constitutional violation
The government at worst violated a statute in gathering information used to get access to defendant’s computer, and the court finds that a statutory violation is not sufficient for suppression. Also, a motion to reconsider denial of a motion to … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Asbestos inspector’s entry under state Dept. Labor rule governed by Krull good faith; subsequent warrant not tainted in any event
Defendant was charged with violations of the Clean Air Act for removing asbestos from a construction site without notice to the government. A NYS Dept. of Labor inspector entered the gated property without consent when temporary workers were there because … Continue reading
CA4: USMJ had correct attachment emailed but wrong one was presented and signed; technical violation, not a constitutional one; no suppression
The government emailed the issuing magistrate the correct attachments, but brought the wrong attachments to the court for signature. The magistrate had the correct ones on her desk, but signed the wrong one when it was handed to her. This … Continue reading
CA10: Violation of territorial limitation of Rule 41 was shown to be prejudicial, and suppression affirmed
The government conceded that the search warrant executed violated Rule 41(b)(1)’s within-district limitation on federal magistrate judges’ warrant-issuing authority. Because the government offered no other basis for reversal, and because the court concluded that defendant established prejudice as a result … Continue reading
CA9 en banc: Violation of Posse Comitatus Act was systemic but unique and suppression will not be ordered
“[T]he scenario presented by this case is both extreme and unusual”: An NCIS officer conducted a statewide investigation of P2P computers with child pornography on them and reported defendant. NCIS investigators are civilian but answer to the Secretary of the … Continue reading
NM: Lack of prior notice of a sobriety checkpoint not fatal; suppression reversed
“The State of New Mexico appeals from an order granting a motion to suppress evidence based on an unconstitutional sobriety checkpoint. The State raises a single issue on appeal: whether the lack of advance publicity makes a sobriety checkpoint unconstitutional, … Continue reading
TX11: Invalid portion of warrant properly severed, but the cocaine was still admissible
Texas JP’s can’t issue evidentiary search warrants by statute. This was partially that and mostly for cocaine. The trial court properly severed the invalid portion and suppressed, and the cocaine was properly admitted. Van Spotwood v. State, 2015 Tex. App. … Continue reading
N.D.N.Y.: Violation of Rule 41 in delay in searching cell phone doesn’t require suppression
The government obtained a search warrant for defendant’s cell phone and seized it promptly. The forensic search of the phone, however, didn’t occur for 85 days, after the 60 day window in the warrant. The defense, however, can show no … Continue reading
Cert. grant: Utah v. Strieff: 4A violated by outstanding warrant found during illegal stop?
Utah v. Strieff — Question Presented: “Should evidence seized incident to a lawful arrest on an outstanding warrant be suppressed because the warrant was discovered during an investigatory stop later found to be unlawful?” Prior post from January: Under the … Continue reading
PA: Knock-and-announce rule in PA exists by court rule, and it serves important interests; the remedy for violation is suppression of evidence; Hudson not followed
The knock-and-announce rule in Pennsylvania exists by court rule, and it serves important interests. The remedy for violation is suppression of evidence. Pennsylvania does not follow Hudson v. Michigan. Commonwealth v. Frederick, 2015 PA Super 206, 2015 Pa. Super. LEXIS … Continue reading
ID: Exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to DL suspension
The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to administrative license suspensions for driving under the influence. Bobeck v. Idaho Transp. Dep’t, 2015 Ida. App. LEXIS 86 (September 24, 2015). Defendant was stopped for speeding, but he couldn’t answer basic question about much … Continue reading
The Nation: Think Police Can’t Use Illegally Obtained Evidence Against You? Think Again.
The Nation: Think Police Can’t Use Illegally Obtained Evidence Against You? Think Again. by Paul Butler: Hudson v. Michigan is one in a series of cases in which the Roberts Court has blessed police officers with extraordinary power. This power … Continue reading
OK: Exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to obstruction during arguably unjustified traffic stop
Defendant turned left without a signal, and the state statute required that it have a potential “affect” on traffic. Because the police car was the only other car around, and Heien was decided after the traffic stop, the court can’t … Continue reading