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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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General (many free):
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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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: Standing
D.Utah: Owner of the truck doesn’t always have standing in the trailer being pulled
Defendant had no standing in a stolen trailer even though he owned the truck pulling it. Similar is United States v. Abreu, 935 F.2d 1130, 1132 (10th Cir. 1991). United States v. Hayes, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22860 (D.Utah February … Continue reading
MA: Egregious police conduct can confer target standing, but this case just doesn’t measure up
Egregious police conduct can confer target standing, but this case just doesn’t measure up. Commonwealth v. Santiago, 470 Mass. 574, 24 N.E.3d 560 (2015): We reaffirm the view stated in Scardamaglia, 410 Mass. at 380, that in a case where … Continue reading
CA11: Def’s silence when driver was asked to consent to search of a bag on passenger side floorboard was apparent authority
Defendant had standing to contest the search of his bag in a car, even though he wouldn’t have standing in the rest of the car. The driver had apparent authority to consent to a search of the bag and it … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: Def’s stop was without RS on the totality
Officers drove into the parking lot of an extended stay hotel in Dallas known for its being a high crime area. Defendant was first seen peeking out a propped open door at the end of the building. The officers circled … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: Def’s efforts to distance self from drugs at suppression hearing costs him standing
The defendant’s statements to the USMJ that he was neither a resident nor a guest at the house searched denies him standing to contest the search there. United States v. Griffin, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3695 (E.D. Tenn. January 13, … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Hospital owners and doctors had no standing in its bank or patient records
The operator of a small hospital corporation with at most 25 employees had no standing in the bank records of the corporation. Because they might have standing in their own offices doesn’t translate into standing over bank records. As to … Continue reading
NC: Parking lot of a multi-unit apartment building is not curtilage
The parking lot of a multi-unit apartment building is not curtilage. Police seizure and testing of a discarded cigarette butt tossed there did not require a warrant. State v. Williford, 2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 1 (January 6, 2015). Defendant was … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: CSLI collection was shown to be with cause; def likely didn’t even have standing
Defendant used the cell phone of another in this alleged criminal enterprise, and it is doubtful that he has standing to complain of the cell site location information collection. Even if he did have standing, it was all obtained by … Continue reading
D.Vt.: Def had no REP by giving a load of MJ to a driver to take to him in another state
Defendant packed marijuana in a trailer and entrusted it to a driver to take it to him in Vermont. The trailer was stopped in Illinois, subjected to a dog sniff, and the marijuana was found. The driver agreed to continue … Continue reading
IA: Defendant claimed no interest in the house searched or what was seized, so he lacked standing
“The flaw in Jackson’s [IAC] argument is that he never claimed any expectation of privacy at his girlfriend’s apartment. In fact, Jackson claimed to have no interest in the apartment, denying he resided there or that any of the possessions … Continue reading
D.Alaska: Incomplete tape recording of SW application doesn’t warrant suppression
The tape recording of the officer’s testimony supporting the issuance of the search warrant by a state court judge was incomplete. Nevertheless, there is no constitutional violation because what there is supports the warrant. Compliance with state law on this … Continue reading
IA: State’s constructive possession argument at trial precluded raising standing for the first time on appeal
By arguing constructive possession in the trial court and not mentioning standing, the state waived standing for appeal. “The State claimed in the district court and on appeal that Baylor had constructive possession of the drugs found in the car. … Continue reading
D.N.J.: No REP in a burner phone def didn’t claim he used and wasn’t subscribed to anybody
This defendant has no reasonable expectation of privacy in somebody else’s cell phone or the records of its use. He never used it or claimed any interest in it. He also lacks any standing in an unsubscribed burner phone. The … Continue reading
OH12: Def had no standing to contest pinging wife’s cell phone even though police were looking for him
Defendant was a suspected heroin dealer taking his family on runs to Boston to get the heroin. When defendant left, they went to his house and did a trash pull and got his wife’s cell phone number from a bill … Continue reading
ID applies McNeely and requires a warrant for DWI blood draws
McNeely requires a warrant for DWI BAC blood draws. State v. Halseth, 2014 Ida. LEXIS 313 (December 2, 2014). The EEOC sent emails about age discrimination to hundreds of plaintiff’s employees. The company sued the EEOC claiming, inter alia, a … Continue reading
CA2: State officers lied about body cavity SW for def’s wife; suppressed as to her but not him; no standing
State officers in Vermont “outrageously” lied to defendant’s wife to get her to submit to a body cavity search for drugs after she’d been detained nearly six hours and was groggy and hanging her head from being handcuffed to a … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Generally, absent owner of a car loaned to somebody else doesn’t have standing to challenge the stop and then search of the car
Generally, the absent owner of a car loaned to somebody else doesn’t have standing to challenge the stop and then search of the car. United States v. Gonzalez, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162121 (E.D. Mich. November 19, 2014). Because of … Continue reading
CA11: Warrantless search of cell phone cured by later warrant on independent PC
The warrantless search of defendant’s cell phone had plenty of independent probable cause for later issuance of state and federal search warrants for it. “Additionally, the evidence relayed above was not obtained via any police misconduct but, rather, was obtained … Continue reading