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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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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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"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
D.Conn.: A minor prostitute in a hotel room is exigency for entry
Officers had strong reason to believe a minor prostitute was in a hotel room rented by her pimp, and that was exigency justifying warrantless entry into the room. United States v. Thomas, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3888 (D. Conn. January … Continue reading
Cal.2: Continued combativeness of DUI suspect was exigency for no BAC warrant
Defendant was driving a semi that had a head-on collision with another vehicle where defendant was driving on the wrong side of the road. He stopped nearly ½ mile from the accident. When police arrived he was combative and profane … Continue reading
OH11: Defendant’s admitting she consented to search at trial precluded IAC claim for not challenging consent
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging defendant’s consent when she testified at trial that she consented to the search. State v. Driscol, 2014-Ohio-5608, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS 5436 (11th Dist. December 22, 2014). Defendant’s prior DUI convictions weren’t … Continue reading
PA: No IAC for not challenging entry into house to look for potential domestic violence victim
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging the police entry during a 911 anonymous domestic abuse call that there was screaming coming from inside defendant’s home. When they got there, there was silence, but the silence could have meant … Continue reading
WY: Opening door to home here was not in response to true emergency
Defendant’s mother called the police to say she hadn’t heard from her son in several weeks. The police went to his place and saw that it was apparently occupied: there were fresh tracks in the snow and the sound of … Continue reading
CA9: Cell phone is not a “container” under the automobile exception
In a cell phone search case submitted pre-Riley, the Ninth Circuit applies Riley and also holds that the proffered exigencies of the automobile exception and search incident do not apply to a search of the photographs and text messages on … Continue reading
DE: A frisk has to be based on reasonable suspicion; protocol not enough
A frisk during a traffic stop, without reasonable suspicion and based solely on protocol, violated Terry. “All parties agree that it was permissible for the officers to stop and search the vehicle. There was a broken headlight, and the officers’ … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: IAC claim for illegal search denied because it lacked specifics
“‘Ellis submits that some of the evidence seized were [sic] so done in violation of his Fourth Amendment right[s] against unreasonable search and seizure.’ (Mem. Supp. § 2255 Mot. 6-7.) Ellis supplies no basis upon which counsel could have filed … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: 911 call about burglary in progress led to objectively reasonable warrantless entry
Officers responded to a possible burglary 911 call in an area known for recent burglaries. They talked to the 911 caller, and she told them that the car parked across from the defendant’s house didn’t belong in the neighborhood, and … Continue reading
MO: Entry to talk to defendant about stolen car was without exigency and suppressed
Officers got word that a man was trying to sell a stolen car, and they gave defendant’s address. One drove by defendant’s house five times before finding the car there, so he called for back up, doing a knock-and-talk over … Continue reading
OH4: Difficulty in finding a judge to get a SW at 3 am was exigency for BAC without warrant
Difficulty in getting a search warrant prepared and finding a judge at 3 am was exigency for dispensing with a search warrant in a DUI case because of natural dissipation of BAC. State v. Roar, 2014-Ohio-5214, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS … Continue reading
IN: “No Trespassing” sign and cable across driveway defined curtilage under state constitution; entry required warrant
“No Trespassing” signs used to be not determinative of curtilage. It’s apparent they are becoming so. Here, the defendant had a cable across the driveway, a “No Trespassing” sign, and a surveillance camera. The police were not in hot pursuit … Continue reading
TN: Officer’s lack of experience in getting a search warrant is not an “exigency” for a warrantless blood draw
The officer’s lack of experience in getting a search warrant is not an “exigency” for a warrantless blood draw under McNeely. State v. Gardner, 2014 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 1023 (November 12, 2014) (link not available when posted; go here … Continue reading
Chicago Tribune: New ‘explosives screening team’ deploys to River North CTA station
Chicago Tribune: New ‘explosives screening team’ deploys to River North CTA station by Tony Briscoe: The Chicago Police Department’s newly formed “mobile explosives screening team” swabbed the bags of some passengers entering a River North train station Thursday morning as … Continue reading
CA5: Threatened suicide is exigency
A threatened suicide is an exigent circumstance for an entry, following other circuits. Rice v. Reliastar Life Ins. Co., 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 20581 (5th Cir. October 27, 2014): The Rice Plaintiffs argue that the exigent circumstances exception to the … Continue reading
IN: Injured dog not exigency for warrantless entry into home
Police and animal control officers responded to dogs fighting on the street, and one was bloody and apparently injured and ran into a house through an open sliding glass door. The animal control officer corralled three dogs and requested the … Continue reading
NY: Search of a metal box after arrest on entry on exigency was excessive
Police entered into a house on exigent circumstances after gunshots and arrested everybody. A search of a metal box after everybody was handcuffed and under control was unreasonable because the exigency had abated. People v. Jenkins, 2014 NY Slip Op … Continue reading