Archives
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Recent Posts
- MD: Hot pursuit can be days later, here exigent CSLI to find him
- D.D.C.: Alleged illegal arrest doesn’t void DNA SW
- S.D.Fla.: Inventory that omitted “miscellaneous personal items” was not unreasonable
- CA4: The fact that ptf charged with witness intimidation didn’t do it again wasn’t material for Franks
- CO: Not 4A or state constitutional violation for govt to access def’s computer via peer-to-peer sharing with BitTorrent software
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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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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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"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: Warrant execution
EFF: Secret Court Orders Aren’t Blank Checks for General Electronic Searches
EFF: Secret Court Orders Aren’t Blank Checks for General Electronic Searches by Mark Rumhold:
D.Colo.: GPS tracking a car after it had been sold by target was unreasonable
Defendant bought a car that had a GPS device placed by the police with a 60 day tracking warrant. He paid for it for his girlfriend, with whom he had a child, and he drove it at the time of … Continue reading
CA10: GFE saves general warrant where affidavit specific and affiant served the warrant
Where officers obtained a warrant and searched two cell phones seized at the time of defendant’s arrest, the search warrant was invalid because it did not satisfy the particularity requirement since it did not identify either of the phones that … Continue reading
OH7: The SW included def’s car, and her driving off before police could search it didn’t prevent stopping and searching it away from the house
The search warrant for defendant’s house included her car. When he arrived there, the police attempted to stop her to search the car, but she got away and was stopped about a mile away. Because the warrant provided for the … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Seizure of years of emails by SW for later discriminating search was still reasonable
This email search warrant sought specific information over a several year period, and the Google production was somewhat limited yet still substantial. Yet, included were emails between attorney and client and there were no search protocols. The court declines to … Continue reading
IN: Tossing flash bang into room with only a 9 month old baby in a playpen during drug raid was excessive under the circumstances; suppressed
Using a flash bang device during a SWAT drug raid that went off in a room with only a nine-month old baby in a playpen violated the state constitution for its overall unreasonableness. Watkins v. State, 2017 Ind. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Failure to follow a document search protocol in otherwise reasonably conducted computer and device searches wasn’t unreasonable under 4A
The court conducts a second hearing over whether blanket suppression is required for over searching numerous electronic devices seized from the defendant, some of which were later turned over by defense counsel. Defendant sought to bring his case within “United … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Def can have limited discovery about the search but not a prior draft of the affidavit
Defendant’s discovery request relating to the execution of search warrants on his property is granted in part and denied in part. Essentially, he gets that which is really relevant like a video of execution of the warrant, chain of custody … Continue reading
D.N.M.: CA10 recognizes blanket suppression for a “general search,” but this doesn’t measure up; “excessive photographing” not violation of 4A
Defendant doesn’t adequately explain why complete suppression is required for the search being allegedly excessive. It is a remedy under United States v. Medlin, 842 F.2d 1194 (10th Cir. 1988), when the officers’ search is overly excessive, but this just … Continue reading
WaPo: The Watch: For nine years, DEA withholds names of masked agents who violently raided two innocent women. Federal court shrugs
WaPo: The Watch: For nine years, DEA withholds names of masked agents who violently raided two innocent women. Federal court shrugs. by Radley Balko: The Burley sisters say they were raided, roughed up and verbally abused, but because they can’t … Continue reading
CADC: Executing daytime warrant at night was unreasonable and a violation of the 4A
Executing a daytime warrant at night violated clearly established law and was unreasonable and a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Jones v. Kirchner, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 15759 (D.C.Cir. Aug. 26, 2016). This warrant provided: YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: If SW includes marital privileged material, that’s for filter team, not motion to quash
The search warrant target moved to quash based on marital privilege. Under federal law, the privilege is based on common law and presumed. The affidavit for the search warrant, however, shows probable cause for witness tampering. Resolution of the marital … Continue reading
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: After police raided an apartment building to arrest a suspect, others were left with the collateral damage
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: After police raided an apartment building to arrest a suspect, others were left with the collateral damage by Koran Addo: The aftermath of the standoff highlights a murky legal area where in some places law enforcement covers … Continue reading
TN: Omitting one item from inventory on the SW return wasn’t a constitutional violation
One bullet was missing from the return on the warrant which wasn’t discovered until the defense brought it up at the suppression hearing, so the state amended the return. This isn’t a prejudicial error to void the search or keep … Continue reading
NV: Sealing affidavit without explanation or timely providing inventory not ground to suppress
The state showed reason to seal the affidavit for the search warrant in this murder case at the time of issuance, and the threshold isn’t high. [The court chides the defense for not citing law in support, then fails to … Continue reading
IN: Walking into a house during a drug raid justifies a frisk
Defendant drove up to a house in the process of a drug raid. Eight people were in custody. Defendant was stopped when he got to the door, and he was frisked and a gun was found. The search was valid … Continue reading
AL SWs must be executed only by the officers to whom they are directed
Search warrants in Alabama have to be executed only by the officers to whom they are directed. Here, the warrant was to the Sheriff of Mobile County, but an officer of the Mobile PD executed it. This was invalid execution. … Continue reading
CA10: Wrong address in SW didn’t invalidate it where the right place was well described and correctly found
The wrong address did not invalidate the warrant where the right place was well described and correctly found. Goss v. Bd. of County Comm’rs, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 7735 (10th Cir. April 26, 2016):