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- TX: If electronic search was illegal, it was harmless
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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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)
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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: Reasonable expectation of privacy
NYTimes: State of the Art: Police Cameras Can Shed Light, but Raise Privacy Concerns
NYTimes: State of the Art: Police Cameras Can Shed Light, but Raise Privacy Concerns by Farhad Manjoo: But the technology raises privacy concerns both for the police and the public, and there are no national guidelines for how they should … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Passenger had standing: girlfriend’s car, and they were on vacation together
Defendant’s girlfriend owned the car, and they were traveling together on vacation. Given all the facts, this passenger had standing and a reasonable expectation of privacy that society would recognize and could exclude others from the car. United States v. … Continue reading
WaPo: Police officers have no constitutional ‘right of privacy’ in records of their official misconduct
WaPo: Police officers have no constitutional ‘right of privacy’ in records of their official misconduct by Eugene Volokh.
NYTimes: The Ethicist: Campus Police: Precrime Division
NYTimes: The Ethicist: Campus Police: Precrime Division by Chuck Klosterman: I study computer science at a midsize university, and my school has cameras that cover almost every part of campus. The development of video-processing algorithms that can discern race, height … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine in the Era of Total Surveillance
New Law Review Article: Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine in the Era of Total Surveillance by Olivier Sylvain, 49 Wake Forest L. Rev. 485 (2014). Abstract: Today’s reasonable expectation test and the third-party doctrine have little to nothing to offer … Continue reading
FL2: SW for medical records were sealed; they need to be opened for investigation but protect rights of patients
Search warrants were used to obtain patient medical records of alleged illegal pain management clinics that implicated the privacy rights of the patients, and they were sealed, amounting to an order of suppression. The circuit court is ordered to fashion … Continue reading
WI: There is a reasonable expectation of privacy in CSLI, but it is subject to exigent circumstances in a proper case
There is a reasonable expectation of privacy in CSLI, but it is subject to exigent circumstances in a proper case. State v. Subdiaz-Osorio, 2014 WI 87, 2014 Wisc. LEXIS 502 (July 24, 2014): [*P5] This case presents two issues for … Continue reading
NACDL White Paper: What’s Old is New Again: Retaining Fourth Amendment Protections in Warranted Digital Searches
NACDL White Paper: What’s Old is New Again: Retaining Fourth Amendment Protections in Warranted Digital Searches (news release)
WA: Extracting blood is a search; testing blood is a second search
“The extraction of blood from a drunk driving suspect is a search. Testing the blood sample is a second search. It is distinct from the initial extraction because its purpose is to examine the personal information blood contains. We hold … Continue reading
NYT: Prosecutors Are Reading Emails From Inmates to Lawyers
NYT: Prosecutors Are Reading Emails From Inmates to Lawyers by Stephanie Clifford: The extortion case against Thomas DiFiore, a reputed boss in the Bonanno crime family, encompassed thousands of pages of evidence, including surveillance photographs, cellphone and property records, and … Continue reading
GA: Deliberately delaying the computer check during a traffic stop unreasonably extended it
The officer wrote a traffic ticket and then decided to run a computer check, and that unnecessarily prolonged the stop, making it unreasonable. State v. Allen, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 538 (July 16, 2014). Monitoring a controlled buy with the … Continue reading
OH10: No REP in IP subscriber information under OH Constitution
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in IP subscriber information under the Ohio Constitution. Other Ohio courts and other state courts have so held. [In fact, no other court disagrees yet.] State v. Fielding, 2014-Ohio-3105, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Watching Me: The War on Crime, Privacy, and the State
Watching Me: The War on Crime, Privacy, and the State, Kimberly D. Bailey, 47 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1539 (2014). Abstract:
E.D.Tenn.: No reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of a telephone call with an informant who’s recording it
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of a telephone call with an informant who’s recording it. United States v. Deleon, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90856 (E.D. Tenn. May 23, 2014):
NM adopts Greenwood dissents and finds a reasonable expectation of privacy in trash out for collection
New Mexico adopts the Greenwood dissent and holds that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in trash left out for collection in an opaque bag, even in a communal dumpster. City ordinances on trash collection help create the expectation … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: TOS agreement didn’t create an objective reasonable expectation of privacy
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s IP address from discovery by the government. Here, it was by the use of a packet sniffer. Also, the software’s terms of service might create a subjective expectation of privacy, but … Continue reading
DE: Out of possession landlord had no expectation of privacy in his rental property
“As an out of possession landlord and–subsequently–a former landlord, Mr. Walker would not have any expectation of privacy in any rental property he owned. That expectation of privacy would belong to the tenants at 637 Clymer Street. Further, Mr. Walker … Continue reading
RI: No reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages sent to and on another’s telephone
Defendant has no standing to challenge the [consent] search of a cell phone of another person even though that cell phone was in his place where he would otherwise have a reasonable expectation of privacy. This case started with a … Continue reading
TX4: No reasonable expectation of privacy in public official’s emails
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public office holder’s official email accounts under the state public records act. Quon is distinguished, and the email policies show no expectation of privacy. Adkisson v. Abbott, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS … Continue reading