Archives
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Recent Posts
- SCOTUS: Geofence warrants governed by Carpenter and are a search; remanded for resolution of issues (interesting take on third party doctrine, too)
- The Guardian: ‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears
- W.D.N.Y.: Possibility of co-conspirators in mass murder justified emergency disclosure request to Apple, Verizon, and Facebook
- E.D.N.Y.: Flight out a window is exigency for police to enter
- W.D.Tenn.: A driveway isn’t always curtilage
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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)
ACLU on privacy
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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
OH1: Where inventory ordinance required police consider alternatives to impoundment, failure to do so leads to suppression
Cincinnati Municipal Code requires alternatives to impoundment be considered, and a failure to do so can void the inventory, as here. “Ultimately, nothing presented at the suppression hearing indicates that before ordering the inventory search, Officer Clarkson even considered the … Continue reading →
TX4: Juvenile consented to search of room but parent objects; it’s the parent’s call
A juvenile was detained on suspicion of burglary, and the officers went back to his house. The juvenile consented, but the parent objected, and that was binding on the officers because of the control a parent has over a child. … Continue reading →
NY1: A request to produce ID isn’t always a seizure
The request to defendant to produce his ID when the police were investigating a potential trespass doesn’t constitute a seizure per se. Here, the defendant volunteered to take the officer to where he was going. That was all consent. People … Continue reading →
S.D.Tex.: Immigration stop was extended with RS
Extending an immigration stop: “The Court finds that Agent Gonzalez’s questions related to Garcia’s citizenship, documents proving citizenship, and his travel plans and thus were within the scope of an immigration stop. Further, the Court finds that the questioning was … Continue reading →
S.D.Iowa: Stepping aside and gesturing for officer to enter house was consent to enter
Defendant consented to police entry by stepping aside and gesturing for police to enter. United States v. Faler, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 188840 (S.D. Iowa April 28, 2015).* During a traffic stop, defendant was the passenger, and he was fidgety. … Continue reading →
CA11: Consent to search in writing and giving password was consent to search cell phone
Turning over the cell phone, consenting to a search in writing, and giving the password all showed that the consent was voluntary. United States v. Grant, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 8814 (11th Cir. May 19, 2017).* There was reasonable suspicion … Continue reading →
CA7: “I guess so. You’re just doing your job” to a request to search is consent
Defendant was in a small roomette on an Amtrak train. When it stopped in Galesburg IL, two police officers went through the train to look at papers, IDs, and ask about hauling cash or drugs. She denied having anything, but … Continue reading →
WV: Defendant’s recorded consent shows it was valid
Defendant’s recorded consent shows it was valid. “he does not contest the voluntariness of the search and appears to take issue only with the extent of his voluntary consent. Petitioner’s consent to the search was recorded by law enforcement, and … Continue reading →
TX4: Conversation over fence with officer led to consent
The conversation with the officers led to a consent search. There were no weapons shown or coercion, and officers had a fence between them and the defendant. Anthony v. State, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS 4478 (Tex. App. – San Antonio … Continue reading →
S.D.N.Y.: Overseizure during SW wasn’t so bad this was a general search
In a forfeiture case of a building worth about $1B, the good faith exception applies to a prior search where there was an overseizure. This overseizure wasn’t enough to make the search a general search. In re 650 Fifth Ave. … Continue reading →
WaPo: Is voluntariness of consent to search or seize a question of fact, law or both?
WaPo: Is voluntariness of consent to search or seize a question of fact, law or both? by Orin Kerr:
Three on consent
Defendant was 41 years old and Mirandized before he voluntarily consented. United States v. Elcock, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70549 (D. V.I. May 9, 2017). Defendant consented to the search of his cell phone, and it was copied before he … Continue reading →
M.D.Ala.: A “level III inspection” of a tractor trailer by the Motor Carrier Safety Unit of the Alabama State Police was valid and led to RS then PC
A “level III inspection” of a tractor trailer by the Motor Carrier Safety Unit of the Alabama State Police led to looking at the load and seeing that something was wrong, and that led to finding marijuana. The stop and … Continue reading →
N.D.Ala.: Telling officer he could “check it” after request for consent is consent
The stop was on a city street, and defendant said the officer could “check it” when asked for consent. He was free to go [if he was willing to walk off from his car] when he consented. United States v. … Continue reading →
LA: When the police ask if a person is inside and the person answering the door steps aside, that’s consent to enter
When officers come to the door and ask whether a person is there, and the person answering the door steps aside, that’s consent to enter. State v. Howard, 2017 La. LEXIS 937 (May 3, 2017). Defendant’s consent to search issue … Continue reading →
LA4: Having PC for an hour before arrest doesn’t require officers get a warrant
The police had defendant’s vehicle under surveillance for an hour waiting for him so they could arrest. Just because they had time to get a warrant doesn’t mean that they constitutionally were required to get one. State v. Brown, 2017 … Continue reading →
TN: Being locked in an interview room here wasn’t by consent, but statement obtained was harmless on totality
Defendant was locked in an interview room, and the trial court’s findings he was there and remained there by consent was clearly erroneous. Any error, however, was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt. State v. Hawkins, 2017 … Continue reading →
E.D.Mo.: Agreeing that officers could look in his phone and that “nothing would be found” is broad consent
Defendant consented to a search of his cell phone. “Defendant expressly directed Officer Rudolph to look in Defendant’s cellular telephone when Officer Rudolph informed Defendant that the telephone would be seized as evidence. The statement that ‘[t]here’s not going to … Continue reading →
D.N.M.: No voluntary consent to blood draw given by hallucinating man at AFB entrance
Defendant drove up to an entrance to Kirtland AFB one morning. When asked for his ID, he said he was being followed, he was filled with demons, his thoughts were being intercepted by others’ phone calls, and that he’d recently … Continue reading →
C.D.Cal.: Arrest for loitering justified a search incident
An arrest for loitering justified a search incident. Defendant’s actions were concerning to the officer about his criminal intent. United States v. Pick, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59287 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 28, 2017). Defendant’s saying “go ahead in look in … Continue reading →