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Recent Posts
- 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)
--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
LA: Trial counsel not ineffective for not moving to suppress search that was clearly based on exigency
Trial counsel was not ineffective for not pursuing an exigency-based search issue where police entered after hearing cries for help when the grandfather of missing children entered and found blood on the floor. A suppression motion would have lost. State … Continue reading →
CA1: Consent not tainted by statement officers would search anyway where they had PC for SW
Defendant’s consent was not tainted by the officer’s assertion that his apartment would be searched anyway because there was probable cause for a warrant. Defendant drove himself to the police station for an interview, and he wasn’t in custody for … Continue reading →
OH5: Can’t appeal a suppression issue that wasn’t dispositive of his case because it was merely advisory
Defendant couldn’t appeal a suppression issue that wasn’t dispositive of his case because it was merely advisory. State v. Cooley, 2015-Ohio-3904, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 3773 (5th Dist. September 23, 2015). Defense consent was valid, and it was not based … Continue reading →
GA: Consent to search a motel room for a meth lab includes the trash can
Defendant consented to a search during a knock-and-talk of a motel room for a meth lab. A search of a trash can was within the scope of consent. Fontaine v. State, 2015 Ga. App. LEXIS 562 (September 25, 2015). Defendant … Continue reading →
W.D.Pa.: 71 minutes for consent search of car on PA Turnpike didn’t make it unreasonable per se
Defendant consented in writing to a search of his vehicle but it took 71 minutes before any drugs were found. The length of search alone does not make it unreasonable nor violate the terms of the consent. If he had … Continue reading →
OH3: Where the drug dog arrived at the scene before the traffic ticket was written, the dog sniff did not extend the stop
Where the drug dog arrived at the scene before the traffic ticket was written, the dog sniff did not extend the stop and was valid. State v. Mote, 2015-Ohio-3715, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 3616 (3d Dist. September 14, 2015). A … Continue reading →
WI: No REP in a text message sent to another cell phone
A person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages in his own phone, but not the text messages in another phone that he sent. Once a text message is released, all control over it is lost. State v. … Continue reading →
N.D.Ill.: Prior limited consent showed this search was by consent
Defendant consented to search of his cell phone. Proof of knowledge of rights comes from the fact he earlier gave a limited consent to search other property. United States v. Thurman, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117893 (N.D. Ill. September 3, … Continue reading →
TX1: Mere acquiescence can still be consent[!]
While the Texas standard of consent is clear and convincing evidence, “even a finding of ‘“[m]ere acquiescence” may constitute a finding of consent.’ Meekins, 340 S.W.3d at 463-64.” [apparently even though SCOTUS says no]. Hutchins v. State, 2015 Tex. App. … Continue reading →
WA: PC for intoxication is what must be shown, not particularly drug or alcohol
In a felony DUI case under, probable cause to suspect drug intoxication did not have to be identified separately from probable cause to suspect alcohol intoxication, and the affidavit for the warrant was sufficient. The warrant had sufficient particularity to … Continue reading →
CA5: Ptfs’ failure to show lack of PC doomed § 1983 case
There was no effort on the part of plaintiffs to show that their arrest was without probable cause. They submitted city recall petitions, but some of the names were friends and relatives of the persons being recalled. The recallees hired … Continue reading →
D.N.M.: Gov’t fails to show consent for search of person; body recording doesn’t back it up
Defendant did not consent to a search of her person on a stop on a train. Defendant’s alleged “okay” on the body recording made by the officer and shown on the government’s transcript is an incoherent mumble, and not clear … Continue reading →
CA3: Sexual advances in a gov’tal workplace are not a Fourth Amendment search or seizure
“While Fourth Amendment protections may extend to ‘[s]earches and seizures by government employers or supervisors,’ O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 715, 107 S. Ct. 1492, 94 L. Ed. 2d 714 (1987), we agree with the District Court that the … Continue reading →
CA6: Handcuffing too tight is excessive force, and it’s well settled
It has been settled in the Sixth Circuit since 1991 that handcuffing a suspect too tight is a constitutitonal violation, so there is no qualified immunity for it. Baynes v. Cleland, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 14824 (6th Cir. August 24, … Continue reading →
ID: Implied consent applied to unconscious DUI suspect
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not objecting to a blood draw while defendant was unconscious from a car wreck. “Here, Sims impliedly consented to be tested for alcohol by driving a motor vehicle in Idaho. At no point did … Continue reading →
NE: The fact defendant in a DUI case has a difficult choice between consenting to BAC search or refusing consent with the attendant possible penalties does not make his consent involuntary
The fact defendant in a DUI case has a difficult choice between consenting to BAC search or refusing consent with the attendant possible penalties does not make his consent involuntary. State v. Modlin, 291 Neb. 660, 2015 Neb. LEXIS 152 … Continue reading →
OR: “right result, wrong reason” rule not applied where it denies defense chance to litigate it
After reversal by the state supreme court and on remand, the state argued an alternative basis (“right result, wrong reason”) for affirming, but the court of appeals held that the alternative basis had not been raised before and couldn’t be … Continue reading →
D.Colo.: Threat to have CPS take child made consent involuntary
The officers told defendant that if she didn’t consent she’d be arrested, and CPS was on standby to take custody of her child, aside from the fact there were seven officers there. The consent was coerced. United States v. Thorson, … Continue reading →
FL3: 3-4 police vehicles blocking def and taking ID and car keys led to consent being involuntary
Defendant did not consent because of a show of authority. “Despite the fact that, in this instance, the police were polite and did not draw their weapons, there was nevertheless the appearance of police authority and the circumstances were coercive … Continue reading →
E.D.Mich.: Continuing stop after def proved he wasn’t person police were looking for was unreasonable
Officers stopped defendant thinking he was another. After defendant proved he was not the man they were looking for, they continued to detain him to check for warrants. He refused to consent to a patdown, and the officer then touched … Continue reading →