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- USA Today: Cell phone SW for cause of crash
- Treatise on sale to 11/1
- MD: While protective sweep information made it into SW affidavit, there was PC without it
- N.D.Ga.: A Customs forensic search of a cell phone away from the border was still a border search
- CA6: State officer’s arrest for violation of federal MJ law likely wouldn’t violate 4A
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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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"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: Standing
New law review article: Notice and Standing in the Fourth Amendment: Searches of Personal Data
Jennifer Daskal, Notice and Standing in the Fourth Amendment: Searches of Personal Data, 26 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 437 (2017). Abstract:
W.D.N.Y.: “Affidavit of personal knowledge” to show standing isn’t satisfied by the officer’s police reports
The Second Circuit requires an affidavit of personal knowledge to establish standing to contest a search. The officer’s report wasn’t enough just because the officer believed that defendant’s residence was the target of the search. United States v. Lewis, 2018 … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: No standing to complain of CSLI for somebody else’s phone
Defendants have no standing to challenge the seizure of CSLI on telephone numbers they don’t complain are theirs. United States v. Pizarro, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60539 (S.D. N.Y. Apr. 10, 2018).* Police seizure of an SD card was by … Continue reading
IL: Def’s actions after stop to inquire rose to RS
Police encountered defendant and others in a car in a neighborhood where it didn’t seem to belong. The officers pulled up next to their car and talked. Based on furtive movements, the officer believed that defendant had a gun he … Continue reading
CA4: Jardines didn’t bar officers from following burnt marijuana smell to def’s apartment
Two officers on bike patrol rode through an apartment complex and smelled burning marijuana. They followed their noses and sniffed at defendant’s place and knocked. The district court erred in suppressing because it read too much into Jardines. The officers … Continue reading
NJ: Police break-in into apartment building common hallway violated REP
In 2010, police broke into the outer door of a two unit apartment building and looked in defendant’s open door. By then, the state courts had already held there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common hallway of … Continue reading
CA8: No standing to challenge a DEA administrative subpoena just used to identify his storage unit for a dog sniff
Defendant had no standing to complain that a DEA administrative subpoena was used to identify the storage unit that was his so the DEA could use a drug dog on his storage unit. Defendant’s plain error argument that a tracking … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Chiropractor’s co-def in insurance fraud had no standing in the clinic’s records or chiro’s phone
Defendant was a co-defendant with Schultz, a chiropractor, charged with false insurance claims. “The Court concludes that Defendant Hassan does not have standing to challenge the evidence obtained from Defendant Schulz because Defendant Hassan did not have a reasonable expectation … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Where def shared a car with one key, he had no standing when it was searched when he was out of possession
Defendant lacked standing in the car a gun was found in. He was free to use the car when he wanted, but he wasn’t at the time of the search. It was his grandfather’s car, there was one key, and … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Affidavit for SW didn’t support def’s claim of standing
Defendant relied on the affidavit for search warrant as showing his standing, but it didn’t resolve the question, so he fails in his burden of proof and lacks standing. The government showed nexus in the 61 page affidavit for residences … Continue reading
OH8: No standing in a package neither sent nor to be received by def
Defendant lacked standing to challenge the placing of the GPS tracking device on the package because she was neither the sender nor addressee of the package and demonstrated no reasonable expectation of privacy in the package. The police could validly … Continue reading
GA: Def failed to show standing in apt he was arrested in in early morning hours
Being arrested in an apartment that’s not yours doesn’t confer standing without some proof of a relationship to the property. The evidence at the suppression hearing did not address defendant’s status relative to the apartment; i.e., whether he was the … Continue reading
M.D.Ga.: Defs had standing in borrowed car; no RS because defs’ answers were objectively reasonable
Defendants borrowed a car and had standing in the car because it contained personal records being transported. The stop was unreasonably extended by questions about the trip. The officer found them suspicious, but the court does not. The defendants’ answers … Continue reading
S.D.Ala.: Handwritten corrections on SW required a hearing as to how and why
The government contended in its brief on the motion to suppress that the search warrant was supported by controlled buys and didn’t otherwise support the CI. That requires a hearing. Corrections whiting out the address and changing it is enough … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Affidavit for SW judicially estopped govt to claim no standing
The affidavit for the search warrant alleged the house was defendant’s house. The government was judicially estopped from claiming otherwise in the proceeding without real evidence the affidavit was wrong. [I’ve been arguing this for years; see Treatise § 4.03.] … Continue reading
CA11: Becoming defensive about some questioning during stop didn’t rise to RS
Being in a high crime area and then becoming defensive only when the officer asked defendant where his mother lived when it came up was not reasonable suspicion. Defendant’s frisk was unreasonable on the totality. Suppressing the gun found on … Continue reading
NY4: Scope of search claim defaulted by not presenting it to trial court
A facial challenge to a search warrant is a question of law, and no hearing is required. On the application, probable cause was shown along with the CI’s reliability. Defendant’s claim the search exceeded the search warrant is defaulted for … Continue reading
AR: State’s auto insurance database isn’t up to date, but missing insurance record is still PC for a stop
A computer check showed defendant’s vehicle insurance was cancelled, although the database was admittedly often not current with this warning: “The insurance information is provided by the Department of Finance and Administration. Valid insurance policies may exist that are not … Continue reading