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- Reason: Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech
- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
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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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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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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"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
CA11: SW was not bare bones and a reasonable officer could rely on it; therefore, qualified immunity
A search warrant issued for plaintiffs’ place based on a “13 year” drug investigation that led to trace evidence of drug usage in the basement. The charges filed were ultimately dismissed. The officers were qualifiedly immune because of the issuance … 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
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
TX13: Neither automobile exception nor search incident permit warrantless blood draw for DUI
Exigent circumstances didn’t justify the warrantless blood draw. Neither the automobile exception nor the search incident doctrine can be used to search a person’s blood. Smith v. State, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 12372 (Tex. App.– Corpus Christi-Edinburg November 13, 2014):
OH3: Slightly pulling out bra by bottom elastic exposed nothing and wasn’t a strip search
Pulling defendant’s bra out slightly by the bottom elastic not exposing her breasts was not a strip search in violation of state statute or the Fourth Amendment. State v. Murphy, 2014-Ohio-5002, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS 4861 (3d Dist. November 10, … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Cell phone found in automobile exception search could be seized for SW
Defendant’s cell phone found in a car searched under the automobile exception could be seized pending getting a search warrant for it. There was probable cause to believe evidence of the crime would be found there. United States v. Palermo, … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: With smell of MJ in car and it couldn’t be found, officer could look under hood and into air cleaner
In a traffic stop, the officer could smell marijuana and that gave probable cause to search. He couldn’t find it in the passenger compartment, so he could look in the engine compartment. United States v. Hollis, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
AR: Locked safe in car could be searched without warrant under automobile exception
Where the automobile exception applies to a car, the state does not need a search warrant to search a locked safe found in it. State v. Crane, 2014 Ark. 443, 2014 Ark. LEXIS 586 (October 30, 2014). The government did … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Apartment was searched with a warrant; def’s car down street was searched under automobile exception
Officers had probable cause to search defendant’s car for drugs under the automobile exception. They had a search warrant for his apartment but it didn’t include the car which was parked down the street. They had, however, plenty of information … Continue reading
CA6: Exigency supported seizure of animals from pet store, but not its records
Animal control officers seized animals and records from a pet store in Chattanooga for lack of water, food, and proper care. The animal seizure was valid and did not violate any clearly established right. The business record seizure, however, could … Continue reading