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- FL: Violation of knock-and-announce statute doesn’t require exclusion
- TX3: DUI blood draw while in restraint chair not 4A unreasonable
- TX1: Def has a duty to make his record on PC and the SW; missing affidavit was on him
- N.D.Ala.: SW not invalid because issuing judge previously represented the target
- The Guardian: ‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
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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: Emergency / exigency
WA: Officer’s opening door for welfare check was minimal when he saw body in plain view
The warrantless entry into the home shared by the victim and defendant was justified because the officer’s concern for the victim was reasonable. She had not reported for work, she was not answering her phone, her car was parked in … Continue reading
CA9: Officers must have PC defendant had a parole search condition before the search
Officers must have probable cause to know defendant had a parole search condition before searching, and here they had that. United States v. Estrella, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 13994 (9th Cir. June 6, 2023). (In my state, it comes up … Continue reading
CA8: ER patient became agitated and security and an LEO realized he was armed; search was reasonable
Defendant came to the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in downtown Minneapolis having been shot in the leg. He refused to let them remove his pants to treat the wound. A hospital protection officer was holding him down, and he … Continue reading
CA7: Home confinement sentence included a valid search waiver
Defendant was serving a home confinement sentence that included a search waiver. Officers developed reasonable suspicion of another crime and a violation of living conditions. The search was reasonable. United States v. Beechler, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 12312 (7th Cir. … Continue reading
TN: By killing one’s host, guest standing is lost
By attacking and killing his hosts, his parents, defendant lost guest standing, if he would have had it at all. Police conducted a welfare check and found severed body parts in plastic tubs and on the stove, including a head … Continue reading
OH9: Growing house fire next door was exigency to clear def’s house
Defendant’s next door neighbor’s house caught on fire, and police at the scene acted reasonably in entering his house to clear it when the fire grew and they reasonably feared it would spread to the houses next door. State v. … Continue reading
AR: Suicide note and no answer at door justified exigent entry
Police responded to a call within minutes of a finding of a suicide note. “One officer called the on-call investigator after knocking on the door and getting no response. It was only then that the officers decided to breach the … Continue reading
D.Haw.: Covid quarantines were not 4A seizures
Hawai’i’s Covid quarantines were not Fourth Amendment seizures to aid government intrusions. For Our Rights v. Ige, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66956 (D. Haw. Apr. 17, 2023). Exigent circumstances for warrantless police action is based on an objective standard. United … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Seizing def as he was opening his door was an invasion of the curtilage without exigency
After an attempted traffic stop, following defendant to his front door and stopping him after the screen door was opened in between it and the front door was curtilage, even in an apartment building. There was no exigency justifying the … Continue reading
CA11: Mere fact of a firearm in the home wasn’t exigency here
“Although Officer Plesnik now arrived with the knowledge that there was a firearm on site, the mere presence of a firearm—without more—did not transform the non-exigent scene into an exigent circumstance and trigger the emergency aid exception. Indeed, by the … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Three days of warrantless real time CSLI was reasonable because of exigency
Three days of real time CSLI was obtained by the police because of a missing child, and it was reasonable as exigency. United States v. Torres, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44017 (D.N.M. Mar. 15, 2023).* No qualified immunity for Tasing … Continue reading
S.D.Ind.: 911 response to stabbing call had report of others inside; that was exigency
The officer arrived at plaintiff’s house because of a 911 call about a stabbing. A man who had been stabbed was outside and he said it happened inside and there were others. That justified the officer’s entry into the house. … Continue reading
TX: Totality of circumstances applies to exigency on warrantless seizure of cell phone
“Rather than announcing a categorical rule that police may never seize personal property simply because a criminal suspect knows he is a suspect, the court of appeals should have analyzed under the totality of the circumstances whether law enforcement’s seizure … Continue reading
GA: Police reentry into hotel room after medical emergency required SW
Officers responded to a medical emergency at a hotel room. They left and reentered to seize contraband, and the reentry required a warrant. The exigency had passed. State v. Wood, 2023 Ga. App. LEXIS 101 (Feb. 28, 2023). The suppression … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Exigency still remained for a second protective sweep of the premises
Enough exigency still remained for a second protective sweep of the premises. United States v. Beard, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29007 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 22, 2023). Collective knowledge from another police department can be relied up to show probable cause. … Continue reading
VA: No exigency on police arrival at a “disorderly” call; entry unreasonable
“When the police arrived in response to the ‘disorderly’ call, there was no ongoing disorderly conduct or any indication of any other ongoing crime. Dickens appeared unharmed when she first opened the door to Officer Thornton’s knock, and she said … Continue reading
CA6: Water heard running in hotel room bathroom supported exigency for avoiding destruction of evidence
Water heard running in the bathroom of a hotel room justified entry to avoid potential destruction of evidence. United States v. Hill, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 785 (6th Cir. Jan. 11, 2023). Defendant’s Franks challenge doesn’t undermine the two critical … Continue reading
GA: Generalizations and experience do not support no-knock warrant
The no-knock provision in this search warrant was not based on a showing of necessity based on this case. It was based on experience and generalities. [In addition, defendant was supposedly standing in the front yard, so what about the … Continue reading
NJ: Opening a car door is a search
Opening a car door is a search. State v. Gray, 2022 N.J. Super. LEXIS 144 (Dec. 20, 2022). “In sum, the Court finds it is clear that Officer Spain’s purpose in opening Defendant’s door and asking him to step out … Continue reading