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Recent Posts
- MD: Hot pursuit can be days later, here exigent CSLI to find alleged murderer on the run
- 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
NY2: SW for house and yard didn’t include shed behind the house
Where the search warrant was for the residence and yard, a shed on the yard could not be searched. Thus, defense counsel was ineffective for not challenging the search. Reversed. People v. Velez, 2016 NY Slip Op 03027, 2016 N.Y. … Continue reading
eff.org: EFF Sues for Secret Court Orders Requiring Tech Companies to Decrypt Users’ Communications
eff.org: EFF Sues for Secret Court Orders Requiring Tech Companies to Decrypt Users’ Communications: San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit today against the Justice Department to shed light on whether the government has … Continue reading
WaPo: Microsoft sues over law banning tech firms from telling customers about data requests
WaPo: Microsoft sues over law banning tech firms from telling customers about data requests by Ellen Nakashima: Microsoft wants a federal judge in Seattle to strike down a law that allows courts to prohibit a tech company from telling customers … Continue reading
CA6: Separate warrant not required to isolate def in his own house in bathroom to talk to him
Police executed a search warrant and took defendant to the bathroom so they could talk to him about becoming a CI. The detention in the apartment and then the bathroom was justified by the probable cause for this search warrant … Continue reading
CA5: Excessive force ptf has to show how clearly established law was violated; here, they did not
A search for business records was done with force and guns drawn because of officers’ fear of retaliation because the business owner didn’t like the ordinance he was to pay sales taxes under. When police entered, the owner drew his … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: A common sense reading of the SW shows it was not overbroad
“‘Whether evidence is within a search warrant’s scope requires not a ‘hypertechnical’ analysis, but a “common-sense, and realistic” one.’ United States v. Okorie, 425 Fed. Appx. 166, 169 n.1 (3d Cir. Apr. 26, 2011) (quoting United States v. Srivastava, 540 … Continue reading
CA8: Exceeding the 30 day notice requirement for delayed notice under 18 U.S.C. § 3103a(b) not a Fourth Amendment violation
The government identified a child pornography server in Nebraska named Pedobook with sophisticated software designed to obscure the identity of all visiters. Rather than shut it down, they got a warrant to install tracking software on the computer and had … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Forensic search of cell phone after SW’s expiration date not a constitutional violation here
Defendant was a Delta baggage employee accused of conspiring with others to ship firearms by air from Atlanta to NYC and bypassing TSA security. Search warrants were obtained for his cell phone and house. The forensic search of the cell … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: No external signs dwelling was a triplex; search valid under Garrison
This property was under surveillance for seven days, and only defendant and his girlfriend coming and going. Police did an Accurint search about the address and nothing suggested that it was a triplex. Nothing outside said it was, and there … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Def driving away from home when warrant executed; he couldn’t be stopped and searched under this warrant
Officers elected to wait to execute the search warrant on defendant’s house until after he left it. Defendant was driving away from his residence when he was stopped, and he was searched and brought back. The stop and search of … Continue reading
D.Mass.: SW for computers includes cell phones; also, CDT computer search protocol rejected
A search warrant for computers also permitted seizure and search of smartphones without specifying them because they are computers. Defendants’ argument for the CDT search protocol is rejected as it was by the Ninth Circuit. United States v. Mulcahey, 2015 … Continue reading
LA3: Typo in SW could be disregarded where the correct place was searched
The search warrant here used a form off a computer, and the officer forgot to put in the correct address, and the two were 2.69 miles apart. The officers went to the place they intended, not the place specified in … Continue reading
WA: Violation of state rule that SW inventory be in presence of another officer requires suppression
Washington rules require that a search warrant inventory be done in the presence of another officer. In this case, the department had only five officers, and the search occurred during the night shift when only one officer was on duty. … Continue reading
Cato Institute: Police Militarization Leads to Extreme Constitutional Violations
Cato Institute: Police Militarization Leads to Extreme Constitutional Violations by Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer:
W.D.Mo.: Failure to show or leave a copy of the SW or make the inventory in the def’s presence has nothing to do with his statements
“Defendant James Allen Crippen filed a Motion to Suppress Evidence in the matter (Doc. 25) in which he argues that officers executing a search warrant at his home violated Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the … Continue reading
MD: DUI arrest supports SI for source
A DUI arrest provides probable cause that evidence of intoxication will be found in the vehicle, so a search incident to arrest is justified. Taylor v. State, 2015 Md. App. LEXIS 102 (July 30, 2015). Officers executing a search warrant … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Target of a SW has no right to see the warrant before execution
Target of a SW has no right to see the warrant before execution [probably to prevent interference with it]. Even so, that’s not a ground to suppress. The inventory has to be prepared with a witness. It can be the … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Lessons from the drug raid that burned a Georgia toddler
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Lessons from the drug raid that burned a Georgia toddler: Last week, federal prosecutors announced that former Georgia deputy Nikki Autry would be indicted on charges of making false statements to a judge in … Continue reading