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- N.D.Tex.: Room searches in center for sexually violent predators same as a prison cell search
- D.Ariz.: PC for forfeiture is similar to PC for a warrant
- Cal.2: Officers didn’t need to periodically reassess exigency
- DE: Second warrant after first general warrant was independent source for search
- CT: Exclusionary rule does not apply in animal welfare cases which are civil
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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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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)
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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) -
“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: Automatic license plate readers
What happens when Flock ALPRs misread an LPN?
Arkansas police drew guns on a family, then blamed a license plate frame.
CNS: California drivers accuse Flock Safety of sharing data with federal and out-of-state agencies
CNS: California drivers accuse Flock Safety of sharing data with federal and out-of-state agencies by Edvard Pettersson (“Even after Flock removed California law enforcement agencies from its National Lookup service last year, unauthorized access to the agencies’ databases has continued, … Continue reading
NPR: Some cities are ditching license plate readers over immigration surveillance concerns
NPR: Some cities are ditching license plate readers over immigration surveillance concerns by Jude Joffe-Block (“The use of automatic license plate readers has exploded across the country in recent years. The cameras on roads and freeways that take images of … Continue reading
CA8: Stop unreasonably extended for drug dog; denial of suppression reversed
Window tint violation should have taken 5-6 minutes, but it dragged out for 20 minutes while the drug dog was coming. The stop was overlong under Rodriguez and the motion to suppress should have been granted. United States v. Johnson, … Continue reading
CA6: Flock violated no duty to ptf when he was stopped based on police mistake, if there was one
Plaintiff sued Flock because he was stopped but then released because his LPN was put on a “hot list” by police, apparently mistakenly. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his LPN, and his stop was by the police, … Continue reading
WA: No REP in ALPR so no prejudice from destruction of data
Defendant moved to suppress based on ALPR tracking. The data was gone. He moved to dismiss for destroying it, which was granted. Since it’s not a violation of his reasonable expectation of privacy, he can’t be prejudiced by it. Reversed. … Continue reading
TX13: No REP in ALPR information
ALPR readings cannot be compared to CSLI, and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those movements on the streets. Ford v. State, 2026 Tex. App. LEXIS 729 (Tex. App. – Corpus Christi – Edinburg Jan. 29, 2026). The … Continue reading
CA11: ALPR showing short round trip to Atlanta supported stop with RS
On plain error review, it can’t be said there was no reasonable suspicion whatsoever essentially based on a license plate reader that the car’s round trip to Atlanta was suspiciously short. Thus, “we cannot say that the district court committed … Continue reading
Malwarebytes: What the Flock is happening with license plate readers?
Malwarebytes: What the Flock is happening with license plate readers? by Matt Burgess:
M.D.Fla.: No REP against ALPR tracking LPN information
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy against ALPR tracking of a car. It’s not at all like Carpenter’s CSLI. United States v. Floyd, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 229044 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 21, 2025):
LAT: L.A. County moves to limit license plate tracking
LAT: L.A. County moves to limit license plate tracking by Phoebe Huss & Khari Johnson (”Drivers in Los Angeles County have a powerful new privacy advocate after the L.A. County Board of Supervisors pushed to restrict how their license plates … Continue reading
VA: Accessing ALPR information doesn’t require a SW
Accessing the ALPR system to look at license plate location is not a search requiring a warrant. Commonwealth v. Church, 2025 Va. App. LEXIS 627 (Oct. 14, 2025) (unpublished):
404 Media: A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion
404 Media: A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion by Joseph Cox & Jason Cobbler:
S.D.N.Y.: No § 1983 claim for officer’s wrongfully obtaining ALPR information for personal reasons
Plaintiff’s § 1983 claim that a police officer used ALPR technology to track her for personal reasons didn’t state a Fourth Amendment claim because of the lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in LPN information. “Here, even if Carpenter … Continue reading
N.D.Okla.: ALPR challenge requires standing; even so, it doesn’t violate Carpenter
Defendant’s Fourth Amendment claim about ALPR requires he show standing in the vehicle he was driving, and here he did not. Even if he had standing, Carpenter provides him no relief. “As an initial matter, the court notes that no reasonable … Continue reading
Reason: Automated License Plate Readers Are Watching You
Reason: Automated License Plate Readers Are Watching You by Jacob Sullum (“The technology enables routine surveillance that would have troubled the Fourth Amendment’s framers.”)
Reason: Warrantless Use of License Plate Reader Cameras Is Unconstitutional
Reason: Warrantless Use of License Plate Reader Cameras Is Unconstitutional by Joe Lancaster (“A new campaign pushes back against the widespread use of automatic license plate readers without warrants.”) {Not likely.}
M.D.Ala.: No REP from ALPR on public roads
No reasonable expectation of privacy from Automatic License Plate Readers on public roads under Carpenter. United States v. Slaybaugh, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 146107 (M.D. Ala. July 10, 2025). A mere passenger has no standing in the car he’s riding … Continue reading
Reason: Florida Used a Nationwide Surveillance Camera Network 250 Times To Aid in Immigration Arrests
Reason: Florida Used a Nationwide Surveillance Camera Network 250 Times To Aid in Immigration Arrests by Autumn Billings (“Flock Safety’s 40,000 cameras present in over 5,000 communities across the U.S. are being used to detain undocumented immigrants, many of whom … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: ALPR does not equate with CSLI
The use of Automatic License Plate Readers to track movements of defendant’s car can’t (yet) equate with Carpenter’s CSLI. Maybe someday, but not here. There are many differences on this record. United States v. Sturdivant, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109054 … Continue reading