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- VA: Search incident between def’s shorts and underwear was reasonable
- Reason: Border Cops Seize Nurse’s Phone Filled With Psychiatric Patient Information
- MI: Handcuffing uncooperative def at scene of accident wasn’t unreasonable
- S.D.Ga.: Def’s car in driveway next to sidewalk was not on curtilage
- S.D.Ind.: Post search database search of occupants of a place didn’t show SW affidavit was false at time it issued
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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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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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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: Emergency / exigency
CA8: When a gun is seized in a business, govt must show justification; here it failed to show officer safety was an issue. A gun on a shelf in a business is not exigency per se.
An undercover officer entered a tattoo parlor looking for a “person of interest” in an unrelated case. A gun was seen on a shelf in the “work area.” Officers came back. Customers were allowed in the “work area” by invitation … Continue reading
D.R.I.: Warrantless ping of def’s cell phone was based on exigency of threatened suicide
Defendant sent texts suggesting he’d commit suicide rather than go to prison for child pornography, something he’d been involved with before. The officers had exigent circumstances to have his cell phone pinged to find him. There was a factual dispute … Continue reading
NJ: Waiting for a SW isn’t exigency to enter a home, but that wasn’t clearly established in 2008 for § 1983 purposes
In 2008, officers entered and seized plaintiff’s home while waiting for a search warrant. In a § 1983 and N.J. Civil Rights Act case, it was not clearly established at the time that that was unreasonable. He gets qualified immunity, … Continue reading
OR: Emergency aid exception applies to animals in distress
The emergency aid exception applies to animals in distress. Here it was cattle. State v. Hershey, 286 Ore. App. 824, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 907 (July 19, 2017). There was plenty of probable cause, but defendant’s Franks argument that the … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Any exigency ended with def’s arrest; no facts showed others present
Any exigency involving defendant in his house evaporated when he was arrested and handcuffed. The mere possibility others are present can be exigency, but it requires pointing to actual facts, not possibilities. The court credits defendant’s own testimony damaging to … Continue reading
NY4: Not granting a continuance of suppression hearing for unavailable witnesses was an abuse of discretion
The trial court erred in granting the motion to suppress for the nonattendance of its police witnesses after they were subpoenaed but didn’t show. The state sought an adjournment which the trial court denied. It was the first request for … Continue reading
MD: A local humane society can seize animals in distress by delegation under state statute but only with exigency
A local humane society can seize animals in distress by delegation under state statute but only with exigency and only to the extent necessary to protect the animal. Rohrer v. Humane Soc’y of Washington Cty., 2017 Md. LEXIS 456 (June … Continue reading
RI: No apparent authority to consent shown; police merely assumed consenter lived there, but she didn’t
The person asked for consent didn’t live there, and the officers made no attempt to find out whether she did. They just assumed she did. The state’s alternative argument of exigency is rejected because the officers never testified to any … Continue reading
CA9: LAPD’s and California’s 30 day vehicle impoundment policy violates 4A
LAPD’s and the State of California’s policy of requiring all impounded vehicles be held 30 days violates the Fourth Amendment. Plaintiff loaned her car to her brother-in-law who was arrested for a suspended license, and the car was impounded. She … Continue reading
CA8: Def retreating from a threshold arrest creates exigency
Defendant came to the doorway of his camper to be arrested, but he “retreated” and turned to go back inside with the officer still holding on to him. A look for a gun, finding one, was reasonable under Santana. United … Continue reading
NE: Evidence of a recent burglary justifies entry on exigency
“Courts generally find sufficient exigent circumstances to justify the warrantless entry into a home when a police officer reasonably believes that a burglary is in progress or was recently committed therein. A burglary indicates an immediate need to secure the … Continue reading
CA9: Exigency supported entry into hotel room when there was another child inside in child sex exploitation case
Defense counsel was not ineffective. The search of defendant’s hotel room for evidence in a child sex exploitation case after she escaped from the room and talked to the police was based on exigency. “ The officers also had exigent … Continue reading
OH9: Potential working meth lab was exigency for entry
Officer’s seeing meth through window and then bottles used for making meth suggested making methamphetamine which is recognized as an exigency. State v. Secriskey, 2017-Ohio-4169, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2217 (9th Dist. June 7, 2017). Defendant gets limited discovery of … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Nailed down plywood sheet wasn’t subject to removal under protective sweep but other exigency for search shown
Police entered because of a hostage situation. Removal of a nailed down plywood cover wasn’t valid as a protective sweep, but it was under exigent circumstances. United States v. Cooks, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83992 (N.D.Ala. April 28, 2017), adopted, … Continue reading
VT: SWs for animals are different than for other property; more likely subject to exigency
Search warrants for animals are different than for other property in that they are alive and more likely subject to exigent circumstances because animal welfare is always a consideration. When executing a warrant for two animals, others apparently in distress … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Officers arrived at an injured person call, and the assailant wasn’t around; protective sweep permissible
“Here, the officers arrived to a chaotic scene. The Defendant was severely injured after being hit by a bottle. There were at least two other individuals present. The Police were told the assailant, who had demonstrated his violent nature, was … Continue reading
CA1: Police had good reason to know drug dealing before knock and talk; they knocked, heard running, and door was sealed; breaking in was reasonable
Prior to the police coming to the door, they knew that six figures in cash had been removed from the place in a plastic bag. When they knocked, they heard running and the door was sealed shut. “Given the totality … Continue reading
IA doesn’t recognize officer’s mistake of law
Defendant was stopped in what was thought to be a county park after midnight, but there was no proof that the park was properly established or had closing hours. Assuming that the officer committed a mistake of law, Iowa does … Continue reading
MO: Two week old information in call to child maltreatment hotline was not stale nor without exigency
A call to a child maltreatment hotline was made two weeks after the observation that motivated the phone call. The exigency still existed for a warrantless entry. State v. Prince, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 348 (April 25, 2017). Defendant’s vehicle … Continue reading
CA4: Exigency didn’t justify search of a car for a weapon where there was no threat and no gun crime
Defendant was stopped and arrested on a police call, but it wasn’t for a gun crime. Therefore, because defendant was cooperative and the scene was completely under control and there were no confederates involved, a search of the car for … Continue reading