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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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)
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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
CA8: Randolph co-tenant consent doesn’t limit domestic abuse investigations
Defendant’s co-tenant consented to a police entry for a domestic abuse investigation, and then defendant later objected. Randolph does not limit the ability of the police to protect domestic abuse victims. Once inside, a protective sweep was permissible, too. Police … Continue reading →
D.Conn.: Use of a partial ruse to get in the door quickly turned to the subject of the investigation; consent was voluntary on totality
Defendant was under investigation for attempting to buy a firearm as a convicted felon in a gun store. The police came to visit him and used the excuse of defendant’s prior assault claim. It was somewhat misleading when they got … Continue reading →
CA10: 17 hour seizure of def’s home while investigating wife’s OD was unreasonable; consent was product of the illegal seizure; exclusion required
Defendant’s wife had a seizure and stopped breathing at 5 am. He called 911. The police secured the home and denied him access. They obtained alleged consent after a few hours. They didn’t get a search warrant until 10 pm … Continue reading →
FL2: State failed to show search of house was within limited scope of def’s consent
Police received a shots fired call involving a duplex. When defendant opened his door, they could see a shell casing and smelled gunpowder from a fired gun. A protective sweep occurred finding nothing. The exigency was over. Defendant gave a … Continue reading →
S.D.N.Y.: Basic questions about def’s cell phone as a prelude to asking for consent to search it is an exception to Miranda
Basic questions about defendant’s cell phone as a prelude to asking for consent to search it is an exception to Miranda. United States v. Okparaeke, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 188191 (S.D. N.Y. Nov. 3, 2018):
M.D.Fla.: Asking that lawyer look at SW isn’t refusal to consent under Randolph
Asking that a lawyer get to look at a search warrant with an electronic signature for validity is not a refusal to consent under Georgia v. Randolph. United States v. Sanchez, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187115 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 1, … Continue reading →
N.D.Ga.: Even though initial entry may have been unlawful, reentry at def’s request to get cell phone to call lawyer was by consent and permitted protective sweep
Defendant was arrested in what was alleged to be an unlawful entry. After he was out, he requested his cell phone so he could call a lawyer. Going back in with him and the protective sweep with it was by … Continue reading →
AK: Homeowner has right to refuse police entry by consent
Alaska State Troopers came to defendant’s house with arrest warrants for two persons they suspected were inside. They had no search warrant for the third-party’s house. They beat on the door and demanded entry. Defendant at first refused, but he … Continue reading →
OH2: As to motel room registered guest, entry permitted by arrest warrant under Payton
If the person being sought is a registered guest in a motel room, Payton permits entry on an arrest warrant. If a guest, then a search warrant is required under Steagald. His car outside the room gave reason to believe … Continue reading →
FL2: Calling the DA to see about whether a SW was needed is not actively seeking a warrant for inevitable discovery purposes
The trial court erred in applying the inevitable discovery doctrine. The officer had probable cause to conduct the search of defendant’s laptop, but this was insufficient to justify the detective’s failure to obtain a warrant to search it. His call … Continue reading →
CA10: Body camera video showed consent, and it was a far more congenial sounding conversation than the transcript read
The body camera video shows defendant’s mother consented to the search of the premises, and it is noticeably less allegedly coercive sounding than the transcript. United States v. Morris, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 29830 (10th Cir. Oct. 23, 2018). The … Continue reading →
Unrefuted findings of fact on consent are binding on appeal
Defendant was a reported drug overdose, and police and EMTs responded. With a dose of Narcan, she came to, talked, and was taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, there was a plain view, and it was valid. Defendant’s credibility argument that … Continue reading →
PA: Request for consent to search by two officers with no dog present was not consent to a dog sniff
Defendant’s consent to two officers to conduct a search of his car didn’t extend to a dog sniff, too, because there wasn’t a dog there at the time, and that would be the common understanding. Commonwealth v. Valdivia, 2018 Pa. … Continue reading →
GA: Remanded for findings on whether def consented to forensics search of his cell phone
Defendant was on the state sex offender registry, and he was subject to compliance checks. Six officers from two agencies came to his house for his compliance review and they talked to him. They were lawfully on the premises under … Continue reading →
E.D.Mich.: City DPW employee had REP in backpack in a city work vehicle; city couldn’t consent to its search
Defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her backpack in a city work vehicle despite a city policy that city work vehicles can’t be used for illegal purposes. Consent to search the backpack could not be given by defendant’s … Continue reading →
CA10: Deception def was victim of ID theft didn’t make encounter less consensual; officers really wanted to talk about CP
Officer’s deception defendant was the victim of online identify theft did not make his consensual encounter with the officers involuntary. Then they told him it was about child pornography. United States v. Dates, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 27983 (10th Cir. … Continue reading →
NC: Def’s consensual return to scene of search warrant didn’t violate Bailey
Officers investigating a sex offense had plenty of reasonable cause for a search warrant. Officers were watching the house and stopped defendant after he left and they got him to return to the place of the search in his own … Continue reading →
IN: SW for house and garage permits search of car found in garage
Officers had a search warrant for a house and garage. A car found in the garage could be searched under the warrant. State v. Lucas, 2018 Ind. App. LEXIS 347 (Oct. 1, 2018). The search warrant didn’t describe firearms and … Continue reading →
N.D.Ga.: While the question is close, consent was voluntary on the totality; it was asked for, not coerced
Officers were in the house and finally asked for permission to search. While the question is close, the court finds consent was voluntary on the totality. United States v. Avellaneda-Dimas, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161865 (N.D. Ga. July 24, 2018),* … Continue reading →
D.N.M.: Def rejected consent twice but consented on the third non-coercive request
The search of defendant’s purse was by consent. She was stopped at the Albuquerque Greyhound station by the DEA and asked twice for consent to search her purse, and he asked why. Finally, the DEA agent asked if she could … Continue reading →