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- OH10: Parole search of cell phone can occur even when it’s taken from the property room at jail
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- W.D.N.Y.: No IAC for not challenging search without standing
- CAAF: Victim’s 4A rights were at issue, too
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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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--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) -
“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: E-mail
Bloomberg: Microsoft Asserts Clients’ Rights in FBI E-Mail Searches Fight
Bloomberg: Microsoft Asserts Clients’ Rights in FBI E-Mail Searches Fight by Kartikay Mehrotra: –First hurdle is convincing judge it can sue on their behalf –Tech industry says future of mobile, cloud computing at stake
E.D.Pa.: Seizure of years of emails by SW for later discriminating search was still reasonable
This email search warrant sought specific information over a several year period, and the Google production was somewhat limited yet still substantial. Yet, included were emails between attorney and client and there were no search protocols. The court declines to … Continue reading
Reuters: Yahoo email scan shows U.S. spy push to recast constitutional privacy
Reuters: Yahoo email scan shows U.S. spy push to recast constitutional privacy by Joseph Menn: Yahoo Inc’s secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen … Continue reading
ACLU.org: In Federal Appeals Court for Wikimedia v. NSA: Here’s How It Went
ACLU.org: In Federal Appeals Court for Wikimedia v. NSA: Here’s How It Went by Jim Buatti & Aeryn Palmer: Originally posted on Wikimedia’s blog.
TN: Def’s children were missing after he was arrested for shooting his wife, so entry into house was based on exigency
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not challenging the warrantless entry into defendant’s home. He was apprehended for shootings including shooting his wife, and their children were unaccounted for. The entry was valid based on exigency. Therefore, no IAC. Jordan v. … Continue reading
OH5: Raw marijuana shake around in the front area of the car was PC for a search
Raw marijuana shake around in the front area of the car was probable cause for a search. State v. James, 2016-Ohio-7660, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 4531 (5th Dist. Oct. 31, 2016). “In conclusion, Pankey is incorrect to present this case … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Facebook SW had thin but sufficient showing of PC, and GFE applied
The police had information that armed robbers were communicating on Facebook about their plans. The affidavit of probable cause as to this defendant’s Facebook account was thin, but it was similar to that of the other defendants and it still … Continue reading
Fortune: The FBI’s New Clinton Email Search Is Likely Illegal Under the Fourth Amendment
Fortune: The FBI’s New Clinton Email Search Is Likely Illegal Under the Fourth Amendment: The decision by FBI Director James Comey to announce a new probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the election is under enormous political fire. … Continue reading
Lawfare: Did the Fourth Amendment Require the FBI to Selectively Seize Weiner’s Emails?
Lawfare: Did the Fourth Amendment Require the FBI to Selectively Seize Weiner’s Emails? by Michael Price: Recent news reports indicate that the FBI has obtained a warrant to search a cache of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. … Continue reading
WaPo: Was it legal for the FBI to expand the Weiner email search to target Hillary Clinton’s emails?
WaPo: Was it legal for the FBI to expand the Weiner email search to target Hillary Clinton’s emails? by Orin Kerr:
HuffPo: Exclusive: FBI still does not have warrant to review new Abedin emails linked to Clinton probe
HuffPo: Exclusive: FBI still does not have warrant to review new Abedin emails linked to Clinton probe by Michael Isikoff:
Independent Journal Review: DOJ Wants To Overturn Microsoft v. United States – That Would Be A Disaster For Privacy Rights
Independent Journal Review: DOJ Wants To Overturn Microsoft v. United States – That Would Be A Disaster For Privacy Rights by David Williams:
ABAJ: Oregon civil rights lawyer files First [and Fourth] Amendment suit over surveillance of his Twitter account
ABAJ: Oregon civil rights lawyer files First Amendment suit over surveillance of his Twitter account by Debra Cassens Weiss:
WaPo: The Volokh Conspiracy: The Fourth Amendment and email preservation letters
WaPo: The Volokh Conspiracy: The Fourth Amendment and email preservation letters by Orin Kerr:
Guardian: Yahoo secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government – report
Guardian: Yahoo secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government – report Company complied with a classified directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of NSA or FBI, say former employees
D.Kan.: USMJ’s email warrant denial for lack of PC affirmed, but gov’t can reapply because it has more info
The USMJ’s decision that the email search warrant didn’t show probable cause is not reversed, but it was sufficiently particular. The government can reapply again because it says it has additional information. Courts must balance privacy and the government’s ability … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Def provided a cell phone to a minor he was trafficking for sex, and he had no REP in it even though he paid for it
Defendant was accused of sex trafficking a minor and provided her a cell phone. She had apparent authority to consent to search of the phone, and it was voluntarily given. United States v. Gardner, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128480 (E.D.Mich. … Continue reading
CA2: Court order under SCA can’t require production of emails stored off-shore
In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Corporation v. United States, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 12926 (2d Cir. July 14, 2016):