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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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
FL4: Knock-and-talk can’t go to side door of outbuilding
The prior owner’s consent three years earlier couldn’t be attributable to defendant. [Yes, officers really said they believed that it could.] A knock-and-talk that progressed to another building within the fencing violated curtilage and the limits on knock-and-talk. Osorio v. … Continue reading →
AK: Refusal of consent can be used against def if state can show case-specific relevance
Normally, refusal of consent can’t be used against the defendant, but it can if there is case-specific relevance, such as evidence of consciousness of guilt, citing Leavitt v. Arave, 383 F.3d 809, 828 (9th Cir. 2004). Ace v. State, 2018 … Continue reading →
CA9: Being detained and then moved with hands briefly behind back wasn’t an arrest
Defendant’s brief detention and moving him from a public area to a private area was not a seizure, even though his hands were held behind his back as he walked. United States v. Torres, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 11897 (9th … Continue reading →
OH4: Officers were admitted into a private gambling room in a private club by consent
The defendant business was a private club running a gambling operation in a private room in the back. Officers were able to get in without misrepresenting their identity. The entry was by consent. State v. Sky Lake, 2018-Ohio-1707, 2018 Ohio … Continue reading →
E.D.Wis.: Officers’ threat to get SW was real and justified so consent still voluntary
Defendant was arrested at his house, and his wife later consented to entry to seize a gun. The officers’ threat to get a search warrant if she didn’t consent was genuine and there was probable cause to get a search … Continue reading →
NJ: Video of stop showed voluntariness of consent; fact officer mentioned getting a warrant was justified on facts
The video of the stop showed the consent was valid. At first it was denied, then it was granted. The officer’s mention of a search warrant was justified because of the smell of marijuana, and that did not make the … Continue reading →
E.D. Mich.: Officers’ (and government’s) assertion of consent is so false it “tarnishes the entirety of the Government’s case.”
Officers’ (and government’s) assertion of consent is so false it “tarnishes the entirety of the Government’s case.” There was nothing near reasonable suspicion or consent. United States v. Smith, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62041 (E.D. Mich. Apr. 12, 2018):
Daily Report: Sex Tape Verdict Spurs Debate on Surveillance Law
Daily Report: Sex Tape Verdict Spurs Debate on Surveillance Law by Greg Land: Two veteran lawyers, former State Bar of Georgia President Robin Frazer Clark and prosecutor-turned-defense attorney Noah Pines, differed sharply in their views of Georgia’s illegal surveillance statute … Continue reading →
E.D.Va.: Having been kicked out of a hotel room and leaving, defs essentially abandoned that which was left behind
Defendants were kicked out of a hotel room for strange and aggressive behavior toward staff, and they hurriedly left. The hotel opened the room to the police and they found drug paraphernalia and, in the toilet, ammunition. There no longer … Continue reading →
The Hill: Manafort challenges evidence seized by Mueller (with link to motion and warrant affidavit)
The Hill: Manafort challenges evidence seized by Mueller by Jacqueline Thomsen (link to motion, affidavit, and warrant):
OR: State’s inventory argument wasn’t presented during the suppression hearing, so it’s waived
The state’s inventory argument was not presented during the suppression hearing, and it can’t rely on that argument on appeal. State v. Steele, 290 Ore. App. 675, 2018 Ore. App. LEXIS 41 (Mar. 7, 2018). By letting the CI into … Continue reading →
CA5: Holding DL doesn’t make request for consent coercive; record unclear on how long dispatch took to get back
Retention of identification documents when asking for consent does not ipso facto make the request coercive. The record is unclear on how long it took for computer checks to be complete, too. United States v. Perales, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading →
S.D.Miss.: Courts condone broader warrants when CP is being sought
Where the computer child pornography warrant required the electronic media be searched in 14 days and it was searched in two days there was no prejudice. The warrant was not general. The tendency in the cases is to permit broader … Continue reading →
D.Conn.: Def didn’t consent; in police photographs “Her jaw is slack and her eyes are wide open in a classic ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ pose. In the Court’s view, she appears frightened and overwhelmed.”
The government didn’t get consent to enter. The officers pounded on the door and entry was by acquiescence. The defendant was photographed. “In both photographs, she is wearing a sheer nightgown. Her jaw is slack and her eyes are wide … Continue reading →
FL4: Implied consent doesn’t violate 4A because there are no criminal penalties for denying consent
The Florida implied consent statute does not violate the Fourth Amendment because it does not impose criminal penalties for non-compliance, and only administrative or evidentiary penalties. Defendant was unconscious at the time of the draw. McGraw v. State, 2018 Fla. … Continue reading →
NJ: If driver can’t find registration after reasonable time, police can search for it
Defendant was given a reasonable amount of time to produce the registration of his vehicle. When he’s unwilling or unable to locate it, that justifies a limited “pinpoint” search of the vehicle for the registration in the glove box or … Continue reading →
WA: While driver has a REP, the owner’s consent controls
The driver of a vehicle has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the vehicle, but he assumes the risk that the owner of the vehicle may consent to a search. Here, the officers noticed that the ignition had been punched … Continue reading →
LA5: A micro data storage card in defendant’s watch pocket could be seized incident to arrest
A micro data storage card in defendant’s watch pocket could be seized incident to arrest. It was then searched with a warrant. The informant was a victim, and thus didn’t need to be corroborated. “Knocking on a door does not … Continue reading →
Army: Specific issue of using computer to aid iPhone search waived by not presenting to trial court
On appeal defendant conceded the lawfulness of the seizure of his iPhone. Army investigators allegedly illegally seized a computer as well. All the trial court litigation never raised the question of the use of the computer, too, so that’s waived. … Continue reading →
E.D.Ky.: Subjective belief in implied consent to enter was unreasonable; motion to suppress granted
The officer’s subjective belief in implied consent was unreasonable. There was no implied consent, and the motion to suppress is granted, despite the R&R. “Here, it is undisputed that neither Officer Tackett nor Officer Stevens asked for permission to enter … Continue reading →