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- CA7: False confession claim is a 4A not 14A claim
- CA5: RS required of weapons or contraband for search of vagina
- CA4: Affidavit for SW provided neither nexus nor timing and even failed GFE
- CA9: Ptfs didn’t meet burden of showing administrative subpoena was 4A violation or in bad faith
- CA2: No 4A requirement for SWs being issued with notice to target
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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)
--Overview of the 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
WA: No requirement of a consent search def be there to see it to be able to withdraw consent
There is no authority that a consent search is invalid if the target isn’t there to watch it or communicate with the searching officer. That is not a prerequisite to consent, even when the target his the authority to withdraw … Continue reading →
W.D.N.C.: Protective sweep permits a plain view, but officers could not open closed containers
The protective sweep of defendant’s hotel room permitted looking at a glass jar and box of ammunition that were out in the open. Looking in a glasses case and a duffle bag, however, cannot be justified by the protective sweep … Continue reading →
W.D.N.Y.: Consensual entry to a tracking-drug dog during a robbery and burglary investigation led to finding drugs in potential victim’s home
Officers were investigating a robbery and a potential burglary near defendant’s house. The officer with the dog was outside for 45 minutes going around the area looking for a scent [of what?] and then they sought to enter defendant’s home … Continue reading →
AZ implied consent law valid under McNeely
“Defendant now challenges the facial constitutionality of [the Arizona implied consent law,] § 28-1321, arguing that it is invalid under the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S. Ct. 1552, 185 L. Ed. 2d 696 (2013), … Continue reading →
CA1: Asking when you can get your car back is not revocation of consent; here it took over 21 days to search defendant’s car
Defendant’s car was seized as evidence of what he claimed was a carjacking where guns were stolen out of his car. His wife was murdered around that time. The government believed that the carjacking was a ruse to coverup loss … Continue reading →
W.D.Ky.: Threat to arrest def’s mother if he didn’t consent made it involuntary
Defendant’s consent was not voluntary where the officer claimed to have search warrant papers and said that he’d arrest defendant’s mother if the search warrant had to be used. United States v. Bachelor, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161299 (W.D.Ky. Dec. … Continue reading →
AR: Consent to a blood draw waives statutory requirement doctor or nurse do it
When a defendant in a DUI negligent homicide case consents to a blood draw, it doesn’t matter that the sample wasn’t drawn by a nurse or a doctor. Here it was a lab technician, and the results were admissible. Roe … Continue reading →
OH2: Def was illegally detained to induce him to give up his DNA, and his statement was suppressed
Defendant was illegally detained in an effort to get him to give up his DNA. The officer got him to go down to the stationhouse, but it wasn’t by consent. His statement was suppressed. State v. Armstead, 2015-Ohio-5010, 2015 Ohio … Continue reading →
OH4: No answer during a knock-and-talk permitted officers to go to the back door to knock
A knock-and-talk that goes unanswered permits the officers to go to the back door without violating Jardines, following Miller v. State, 342 Ark. 213, 27 S.W.3d 427 (2002). There they smelled a chemical odor. State v. Ash, 2015-Ohio-4974, 2015 Ohio … Continue reading →
ND: Consent to look in the trunk for drugs means the luggage can be searched, too
Defendants were coming from Washington which the officer knew had legalized personal use of marijuana [talk about pretext], so he made a traffic stop. The driver consented to a search, and labels of edible marijuana were seen in the trunk. … Continue reading →
TX11: No SW needed to search vomit after consensual drug overdose treatment
During a traffic stop, defendant had a lump in his cheek and he was acting suspicious. The officer asked him what was in his mouth, and he said he had an abscess. He tried to show the officer, but the … Continue reading →
UT: Officer’s testimony about consent was hearsay but not inadmissible or excludable
The officer’s description of consent to search a truck driven by another was not inadmissible hearsay. The effort to show that it was unreliable was insufficient, and it was not so unreliable to be excludable. State v. Clark, 2015 UT … Continue reading →
HI: Under state constitution, telling a motorist that if he doesn’t give a breath sample he’ll go to jail for 30 days is not voluntary consent
Under the Hawai’i Constitution’s protection of individual privacy, telling a motorist that if he doesn’t give a breath sample he’ll go to jail for 30 days is not voluntary consent. State v. Won, 2015 Haw. LEXIS 317 (Nov. 25, 2015) … Continue reading →
GA: Def was detained and frisked for drugs, and view of text messages [pre-Riley] was reasonable based on drug dealing
Defendant first fled from police from a stop for driving with no headlights. The officer broke off the chase then went to the address the car was registered to and found it. Defendant was there with another, and he was … Continue reading →
IL: Where statute on which seizure was based was later held unconstitutional, it is void ab initio; Krull and Davis not followed
In People v. Aguilar, 2013 IL 112116, 377 Ill. Dec. 405, 2 N.E.3d 321 (2013), the Illinois Supreme Court held facially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment the state flat prohibition on possession of firearms outside the home. This defendant’s arrest … Continue reading →
WA: Def not entitled to suppression hearing where only disputed fact wasn’t material to any Fourth Amendment question
There was no right to a suppression hearing where the only disputed fact was irrelevant to any Fourth Amendment question. State v. Houston-Sconiers, 2015 Wash. App. LEXIS 2915 (Nov. 24, 2015). Defendant was stopped because the officer knew from a … Continue reading →
Cal.App.Div.: Not giving the implied consent law’s admonitions doesn’t make the BAC test result inadmissible; totality of circumstances of consent still applies
Not giving the implied consent law’s admonitions doesn’t make the BAC test result inadmissible. The totality of the circumstances for consent can still be considered. Remanded. People v. Agnew, 2015 Cal. App. LEXIS 1032 (App.Div. Santa Clara Oct. 26, 2015):
D.Kan.: Def consented to talk about his status and a fingerprint scan that confirmed he’d previously been deported
ICE officers were looking for a “certain alien” who was not the defendant who had been released from the county jail. They saw the defendant carry trash to the street receptacle and asked him if he’d seen the man in … Continue reading →
W.D.La.: Def transferred his car to get it out of impound while he remained in jail; he had no standing when he arranged an interstate drug run for a co-conspirator
Based on a monitored jail call, officers in Monroe, Louisiana determined that defendant had a co-conspirator drive a car to Dallas to pick up methamphetamine and come right back. They applied for a warrant to install a GPS, and the … Continue reading →
E.D.Ky.: Not IAC to not question search at sentencing
Failure to call witnesses at defendant’s child pornography sentencing relating to the legality of the search and seizure in the beginning of the case was not ineffective assistance. They couldn’t add anything at sentencing. Cottle v. United States, 2015 U.S. … Continue reading →