Archives
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Recent Posts
- CA2: No 4A requirement for SWs being issued with notice to target
- CA6: Denying ptf access to his own bathroom during a search of his house stated 4A claim
- W.D.Mo.: Not exactly following the inventory policy doesn’t make it unreasonable under 4A
- GA: No IAC for not challenging complete cell phone download before search
- DNYUZ: CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues
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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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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)
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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: Consent
E.D.N.C.: Excellent discussion of staleness in a CSLI application
The 2017 orders for real time CSLI didn’t satisfy the timeliness requirement for probable cause, and they would be stale. However, back then, the circuit hadn’t approached the holding in Carpenter at all, and the good faith exception would be … Continue reading →
E.D.Va.: No RS at point in stop where officer asked about weapons and for consent; suppressed
There was no reasonable suspicion to extend the stop for the officer’s questions about weapons and consent to search. There was no probable cause for the automobile exception to apply, and the product of the search can’t justify it. Suppression … Continue reading →
CA7: QI for testing HIV sample for Hep C, too; no cause of action for violating prison policy
Plaintiff is a prisoner who bloodied a guard. He consented to a blood draw to be tested for HIV, but they also tested for Hep C. He sued over the latter. They get qualified immunity. There’s no clearly established law … Continue reading →
IL: Pill bottle wasn’t a weapon, and removing it from pocket in a weapons frisk was unreasonable
The officer stopped after he believed defendant shouted an obscenity at him. When the officer looked at defendant, he spit in the officer’s direction. The patdown thereafter was without reasonable suspicion. The removal of a round cylindrical object from his … Continue reading →
PA: Calling police to report burglary and theft of firearms was invitation to come to house and he let them in
Calling the police to report a burglary and theft of firearms was an invitation for them to come to the house, then he invited them in. This was implied consent to enter. Commonwealth v. Fredrick, 2020 Pa. Super. LEXIS 266 … Continue reading →
M.D.Fla.: Def had officer’s card and could have revoked consent to search cell phone by telephone call or letter
When officers took defendant’s phone by consent and one left his card, he could have revoked consent by calling and leaving word with his office or writing a letter. United States v. Butler, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 51782 (M.D. Fla. … Continue reading →
CT: That PC is less than a preponderance is well established in constitutional law; court declines to adopt preponderance standard here
Officers had probable cause defendant possessed child pornography on his computer from his roommate’s seeing him look at two pictures in succession of nude children. The longstanding principle is that probable cause is less than a preponderance, and the court … Continue reading →
E.D.Wis.: Franks hearing denied; even if what def says is true, PC not undermined
Defendant makes a Franks challenge to events recounted from one day in the time line, which the court finds not material to the ultimate showing of probable cause. Therefore, there was an insufficient preliminary showing for a hearing. United States … Continue reading →
M.D.La.: Sometimes there’s SW for a pretrial detainee’s cell
Defendant was detained pretrial for a murder for hire indictment, and he’d been moved around from one contract holding center to another for assaulting other inmates. A search warrant had been obtained for his cell for evidence of obstruction of … Continue reading →
N.-M.: Exceeding scope of consent required suppression
Defendant gave consent to Army CID at Ft. Lejeune to look in Facebook Messanger to investigate a theft where defendant was the alleged victim. The CID investigator went into the phone and searched 43,000 thumbnail images hoping to find child … Continue reading →
TX8: Defense subpoena to complaining witness for cell phone dump wasn’t authorized by statute
A defense subpoena to the complaining witness seeking a cell phone dump was beyond the powers of the statute authorizing the subpoenas. A conditional writ of mandamus granted. In re State, 2020 Tex. App. LEXIS 2192 (Tex. App. – El … Continue reading →
ID: Dep. of Environmental Quality didn’t violate any REP by entering where it’s open to the public
The state Department of Environmental Quality inspectors did not violate respondent’s reasonable expectation of privacy by entering. His property was open “24/7” to the public. Idaho Dep’t of Envtl. Quality v. Gibson, 2020 Ida. LEXIS 48 (Mar. 11, 2020):
Cal.3: The evidence supports the conclusion that def consented to his blood draw
Substantial evidence supported the finding that defendant consented to his blood draw. After the officer instructed her that the implied consent law required her to undergo a blood draw, defendant did not object or refuse to undergo the test, did … Continue reading →
CA2: Arrest for selling crack justifies search incident
Arrest for selling crack justified a search incident, and the district court erred in holding otherwise. United States v. Williams, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 6768 (2d Cir. Mar. 4, 2020). The evidence supports the trial court’s conclusion the search was … Continue reading →
OH5: Driver’s consent to search car doesn’t extend to passenger’s backpack
Driver’s consent to search car did not extend to passenger’s backpack. The state’s reliance on inventory failed for not proving up the policy. State v. Pennington, 2020-Ohio-757, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 688 (5th Dist. Mar. 2, 2020). “After considering the … Continue reading →
ID: Lack of objection to body cam video showing refusal of consent wasn’t plain error
The police properly seized defendant’s home to preserve evidence of murder on exigent circumstances. There was also a reasonable protective sweep. Defendant didn’t object to the body cam video that had a refusal to consent to the house search, and … Continue reading →
D.Minn.: Consent to seize cell phone was voluntary; def wasn’t even seized
Consent to seizure of defendant’s cell phone was voluntary: “There is no evidence in the record suggesting Thompson’s consent to turn over her phone was involuntary. The request for her phone occurred in a public place and the entirety of … Continue reading →
ND: Search incident in another state on arrest warrant from this state was in good faith
Defendant was arrested in North Dakota on a warrant out of Ohio, and the search incident conducted on his arrest was in good faith. State v. Marcum, 2020 ND 50, 2020 N.D. LEXIS 48 (Feb. 27, 2020).* Considering the factors … Continue reading →
D.C.: PC for SW moots standing dispute
Defendant claimed in post-conviction that his defense counsel was ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress for lack of standing and inability to undermine the showing of probable cause. It’s unclear what defendant told his lawyer about the facts … Continue reading →
CA8: A home security system alarm is an invitation for a protective sweep when police see a broken window
A home security alarm went off signaling a burglary and police responded. Seeing a broken window, they could enter to conduct a protective sweep, and contraband in plain view could be seized. A cell phone was also seized and later … Continue reading →