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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
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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: Automobile exception
LA5: Scope of auto exception search is the PC that authorizes it
Defendant’s car was subject to the automobile exception because it was mobile, despite being parked and not running. “The scope of the warrantless search of an automobile is not defined by the nature of the container in which the contraband … Continue reading
VI: Govt couldn’t rely on inventory to justify search when the vehicle wasn’t impounded
Officer’s knowledge that defendant possessed a firearm was not reasonable suspicion in itself because one could possess a firearm in the VI, albeit with a license. When officers observed bullet holes in the car and defendant was nervous and evasive, … Continue reading
AR: Search of def’s wallet in a frisk was unreasonable
The officer made a drug arrest in the park, and defendant was around and fidgeting with his hands repeatedly going in and out of his pockets. A frisk of defendant for a weapon was reasonable, but a search of his … Continue reading
SCOTUSblog: Argument analysis: Rental cars, reasonable expectations of privacy and property rights
SCOTUSblog: Argument analysis: Rental cars, reasonable expectations of privacy and property rights by Amy Howe. Transcripts: Byrd & Collins
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Justices to consider scope of Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception”
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Justices to consider scope of Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception” by Amy Howe:
OR: Mobility is all that’s required for auto. exception under state const. too
As long as the vehicle was mobile and there was probable cause, the automobile exception applies. “In sum, the automobile exception applies in this case because defendant’s car was mobile when officers encountered it in connection with defendant’s felony arrest … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Driving unlicensed vehicle not ground for search under search incident or automobile exception
Driving an allegedly unlicensed vehicle doesn’t support a search incident for paperwork on the vehicle. The automobile exception didn’t support a search either because there was no probable cause. After defendant was handcuffed and away from the vehicle, a Long … Continue reading
TX: Mere furtive gesture not enough for PC
Defendant went into a bar known for drug activity, stayed a few minutes, came out to his car, and drove off. There was a traffic offense and furtive gestures toward the console. The officer stopped him and searched the car. … Continue reading
D.Minn.: DHS could stop airplane on ground for pilot certificate inspection; after PC found, airplane subject to automobile exception because of mobility
Federal officers can seek a pilot certificate inspection (PCI) of any airplane. 14 C.F.R. 61.51(i). “Although it seems obvious that the agents were interested in Defendants’ plane for drugs—and therefore that the PCI was merely a pretext to dig around—officers … Continue reading
PA: The automobile exception does not apply in one’s own driveway
“We granted the petition for allowance of appeal filed by Daniel F. Loughnane to determine whether the Superior Court erred by holding that the federal automobile exception, adopted by this Court in Commonwealth v. Gary, 625 Pa. 183, 91 A.3d … Continue reading
OH3: Search incident under Gant isn’t automatic in a DUI arrest; more indicators required
OVI (DUI) is not an offense where there is per se evidence to be found in the vehicle by search incident under Gant (or the automobile exception). Something more than just the offense is required to use the stop to … Continue reading
CA6: Auto exception continues to place of inventory; heroin found by plain feel
Defendant’s car was pulled over for a missing license plate and overtinting. The “plain” smell of marijuana was evident, and he was removed from the car for a patdown. The patdown revealed heroin by plain feel, which was valid. The … Continue reading
D.Nev.: PC for automobile exception continues into impoundment
Probable cause for a vehicle search under the automobile exception continues into impoundment for later inventory even though the vehicle is immobilized by where it is. Also, permission from the owner gives the driver of a car standing. United States … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Seeing def in house of another permitted entry to arrest on an arrest warrant
Seeing defendant in the house of another was justification for entry into the home to arrest him on a warrant under Steagald. United States v. Terrell, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175483 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 24, 2017). Defendant was stopped for … Continue reading
CA5: Thumping a spare tire on PC wasn’t an unreasonable search
“Here, the agent articulated several observations which, based on his eight years of experience at this [immigration] checkpoint, indicated that the truck’s spare tire contained contraband. Viewing this testimony in the light most favorable to the Government, and giving due … Continue reading
N.D.Fla.: Car on private property subject to automobile exception; 28 day delay in SW for cell phones unreasonable
Defendant’s car was subject to the automobile exception even though it was parked on private property. Waiting 28 days to get a search warrant for cell phones made the search unreasonable. United States v. Civil, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 158377 … Continue reading
Cert. granted: Collins v. Virginia (does automobile exception apply to search a vehicle parked near to a house on curtilage)
Cert. granted: Collins v. Virginia, 16-1027 (ScotusBlog) Issue: Whether the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter private property, approach a house and search a vehicle parked a few feet from the … Continue reading