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- Reason: Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech
- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
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- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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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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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)
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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: Dog sniff
LA2: GFE applies to GPS nearly two years before Jones; here, def fled and abandoned car
A GPS tracker was placed on defendant’s vehicle nearly two years before Jones, and he’d been under investigation for more than a year prior to that. Davis good faith would apply to the tracking, but that’s really not important: On … Continue reading
CA7: Jardines has to apply to dog sniffs in apartment complexes
Use of a drug dog in an apartment building violated Jardines. The court can’t find any other conclusion because people of color and lower economic means are more likely to live in apartments. Kyllo was sufficiently clear on this that … Continue reading
IL: Dog sniff at an apartment’s door at 3:20 am was unreasonable under Jardines
Dog sniff at an apartment’s door at 3:20 am was unreasonable under Jardines. It was a “constitutionally protected area.” People v. Burns, 2016 IL 118973, 2016 Ill. LEXIS 281 (March 24, 2016). Officers did a knock-and-talk based on apartment neighbors’ … Continue reading
CA7: Dog sniff by second officer while first officer wrote ticket didn’t extend stop
The officer with the dog doing the sniff happened while the first officer was writing the ticket, and that made it valid. Even if not, there was reasonable suspicion extending the stop for the dog sniff. United States v. Guidry, … Continue reading
AZ: Def’s past drug conviction wasn’t RS to extend stop for a dog sniff
Officers had no reasonable suspicion from defendants’ stop to conduct a dog sniff. The officer asked for consent and was denied. “I know my rights. I don’t have to let you search. I know what my fiancé is going to … Continue reading
KY: Use of drug dog during stop unjustified and suppressed
Defendant was stopped for weaving. Before the stop, however, other officers and this officer had discussed defendant being involved with drugs. That played a part in following defendant, but he did, in fact, weave. After defendant passed field sobriety tests … Continue reading
S.D.Ga.: Dog sniff during the normal computer checks are valid
Defendant was stopped for failure to use a turn signal and the dog sniff occurred before the standard computer checks were complete. Therefore, the stop was not extended for the dog sniff. United States v. Broadnax, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
GA holds that a dog sniff of a car before dispatch confirms ID is valid because it didn’t extend the traffic stop
The dog sniff of defendant’s car took only five minutes and occurred during the normal incidents of a traffic stop for improper lane change. The officer had watched defendants go into an apartment, retrieve a duffle bag and then followed … Continue reading
W.D.Ark.: Dog alert unreliable because of handler cues and other things and search suppressed
The stop and its continuation was with reasonable suspicion. Ultimately, the dog’s alert was not reliable on the totality. No one factor was enough to find the dog alert unreliable, but collectively they were. The dog was “off his game,” … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: A dual purpose dog and handler had implied license to enter house on a 911 robbery call
Defendant called 911 to complain that an armed person was trying to break into his apartment. Police arrived, and one had a dual purpose dog. The dog was run around the property looking for the scent of a person, but … Continue reading
OH5: Not unreasonable to deny passenger permission to retrieve purse before dog sniff of car
The smell of burning marijuana was probable cause for a car search. The officer’s refusal to let the passenger retrieve her purse from the car before the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment. State v. Eiler, 2016-Ohio-224, 2016 Ohio … Continue reading
OH4: Dog alert here conflated into RS question
Defendant was stopped for following too close and the state trooper found that she had a territorially limited DL, and she was outside the territory. He remembered her from a prior drug investigation and called for a drug dog. The … Continue reading
MD: Dog sniff outside apt door didn’t violate curtilage or a reasonable expectation of privacy
A dog sniff outside an apartment door from a common hallway otherwise closed to those not living there did not violate curtilage or an expectation of privacy. Lindsey v. State, 2015 Md. App. LEXIS 171 (Dec. 16, 2015):
TX: Jardines applies to apartments
“In this case, we are asked to decide whether it constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment for law-enforcement officers to bring a trained drug-detection dog directly up to the front door of an apartment-home for the … Continue reading
GA: If the dog sniff comes before dispatch reports back on the DL check, the dog sniff is valid (4-3)
A dog sniff of a car while waiting for the driver’s and passenger’s DL info to come back did not in any way extend the stop, so it’s valid. (4-3) State v. Allen, 2015 Ga. LEXIS 789 (Nov. 2, 2015), … Continue reading
OH9: If the drug dog gets there before the paperwork is done, the sniff is fine
Defendant’s stop for a lane change violation was valid. A drug dog officer arrived before the paperwork was processed, so the stop was not continued for that. [So, as long as the drug dog arrives promptly, a dog sniff of … Continue reading