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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)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (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
S.D.Tex.: Border Patrol agents failed to show consent to a backscatter x-ray was given at secondary inspection
Defendant consented to a drug dog sniff at the secondary inspection area, but Border Patrol agents failed to show consent to a backscatter x-ray was given. United States v. Hernandez, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15687 (S.D.Tex. February 10, 2015): Defendants … Continue reading →
CO statute on advice of right to refuse consent applied under totality standard
Under Colorado’s statute requiring consent searches be preceded by a warning of a right to refuse consent, this consent was valid on the totality of circumstances. He was warned of the right to refuse orally and in writing in English … Continue reading →
W.D.N.Y.: Declining to go as far as the S.D.N.Y., court orders hearing on whether def knew of AOL’s TOS that it reports child porn
AOL’s TOS is a waiver of a reasonable expectation of privacy in images transmitted through AOL. They have the right to look at them and report suspected child pornography to NCMEC. United States v. Heleniak, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15354 … Continue reading →
DC: 2009 consent was attenuated from 2007 search
2009 consent was attenuated from 2007 search. Dawkins v. United States, 12-CO-1648, 2015 D.C. App. LEXIS __ (February 5, 2015), prior appeal 41 A.3d 1265, 1272-73 (D.C. 2012). Considering in detail all the evidence in the case, the court finds … Continue reading →
D.Nev.: FBI internet ruse against USAO advice leads to suppression of entry by deception
The Hill: Court tosses warrant after FBI’s Internet ‘ruse’ by Cory Bennett: A federal magistrate judge is dismissing an FBI search warrant that led to the arrest of as many as eight people accused of running an illegal online sports … Continue reading →
CA11: Consent to search a flash drive on a computer not exceeded by officer opening most recent document
Defendant consented to the search of a flash drive on his computer to show that he was doing his homework. It was reasonable for the officer to open the most recent document, and that was not an unreasonable search or … Continue reading →
NV: Holding a pedestrian’s ID too long became an illegal detention; checking warrants became unreasonable
Holding a pedestrian’s ID too long constitutes an unreasonable seizure. Here, the officer promptly dispelled any reason for the stop, but holding on to the ID extended the stop. Then he sought warrants on the defendant, finding one, and the … Continue reading →
UT: Remote use of Wyoming Toolkit on computer on Gnutella P2P network not unreasonable search
Defendant consented to the police taking possession of his computer after they contacted him about finding child pornography on it via accessing it by Gnutella P2P networking and examining it remotely with the Wyoming Toolkit. This was a reasonable search … Continue reading →
OH9: One day delay in getting cell phone SW after exigent based seizure not unreasonable
Police seized defendant’s phone because of suspected child pornography on it. The warrant to search the phone was not issued until the following day. Defendant cites no authority that a one day delay was unreasonable. State v. Welch, 2015-Ohio-284, 2015 … Continue reading →
S.D.N.Y.: Screen chat service that passed information to NCMEC was still a private actor
Screen chat service that passed information to NCMEC was still a private actor. United States v. Ditomasso, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9645 (S.D.N.Y. January 26, 2015): On October 28, 2014, I ruled that DiTomasso had a reasonable expectation of privacy … Continue reading →
CA7: Ptfs adequately pled that officers searched house without consent from 14 year old
At the pleading stage, plaintiffs adequately pled that officers told a 14 girl that they had to search the house, she ran upstairs with her brother, and the officers did so without a warrant. There is no consent on the … Continue reading →
CA5: Unsolicited consent to search cell phone dissipated taint of unlawful detention
Even assuming, without deciding, a constitutional violation in the length of defendant’s detention, his unsolicited offer to have the police search his cell phone dissipated any taint and attenuated the cell phone search from the detention. United States v. Montgomery, … Continue reading →
N.D.Iowa: Fourth Amendment doesn’t require that driver be given option to call somebody to get car
This inventory was shown to be valid despite the argument that defendant’s wife could have been called to get the car. No Fourth Amendment case says that’s a requirement. United States v. Crane, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8448 (N.D. Iowa … Continue reading →
N.D.Cal.: Def’s admission he lived in place he was found justified parole search of place
All things considered, defendant consented to a search of the house. The fact the consent form was signed after the entry is of minimal value and couldn’t cure an illegal entry anyway. The search is also justified as a parole … Continue reading →
E.D.Tenn.: Using def’s cell phone to call 911 to obtain its number did not violate Riley
The use of defendant’s cell phone to call 911 to obtain its number did not violate Riley, and, even so, was within the good faith exception. United States v. Caldwell, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4279 (E.D. Tenn. January 14, 2015), … Continue reading →
Capital (NYS): Torres says ‘Right to Know’ proposal misunderstood
Capital (NYS): Torres says ‘Right to Know’ proposal misunderstood by Gloria Pazmino: Councilman Ritchie Torres said Friday there is a “campaign” to misrepresent the purpose of his policing bill, called the Right to Know Act, which would require officers to … Continue reading →
CA6: Def deferred consent to his mother, and her’s was voluntary
Defendant deferred the question to consent to search his place to his mother with whom he lived. She validly and promptly consented to the officers’ request, and it was all voluntary. United States v. Gossett, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 417, … Continue reading →
MA: Impoundment was appropriate for a vehicle that would have to be left in a high-crime area
The impoundment of this vehicle and inventory of the contents was proper under the circumstances. It was found with the engine running in a high crime area, and it was subject to vandalism or theft if left, all aside from … Continue reading →
E.D.Cal.: Non-residents can’t complain of a dog sniff in the yard of a grow operation at a house
Codefendants who did not live at the premises had no standing to contest the presence of a drug dog in the front yard to sniff. Codefendants’ brief presence at a grow operation, with other things, was still probable cause for … Continue reading →
D.Nev.: Defendant did not abandon his car by running from it when he saw the police; the search of the car lacked any legal basis
Defendant parked his car in a residential area, saw the police, and ran. When they caught him, he laid prone on the ground and was patted down, finding no weapons. The following search of his pockets was without probable cause … Continue reading →