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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)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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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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: Automobile exception
NC: Search incident doesn’t apply to hit-and-run; automobile exception didn’t apply to car partly submerged in ditch
Defendant was the passenger in a car owned by her parents involved in a hit-and-run that fled the scene and ended up in a ditch. The driver ran off because he said he had warrants. She gave the driver’s name. … Continue reading
TX5: A safe removed from a car under the automobile exception was subject to search without a warrant
A safe removed from a car that was otherwise subject to search under the automobile exception was still subject to a warrantless search after it was removed and taken to the police station. Defendant’s effort to compare it to a … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Seizure of car key from around def’s neck to search glovebox was with PC
Seizure of defendant’s car key from around his neck to open glove compartment was with probable cause to search the car interior. His cell phone was also seized and then searched with a warrant. It is not challenged. United States … Continue reading
D.Me.: “The Government appears to argue that close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and warrantless searches so long as the police work was not hallmarked by nefarious intent.”
The warrant was used to search a trailer based on a warrant for the truck, and the warrant was clearly deficient for the trailer. “This case involves a ‘glaring deficiency,’ id., rather than a ‘virtually unnoticeable’ omission. Watson, 498 F.3d … Continue reading
OH1: Automobile exception does not apply to a purse removed from vehicle before PC developed
“In this appeal, we are asked to consider the narrow application of the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement: whether officers may, in the course of a car search, search a container held roughly 25 feet away from … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Clearly established state statute doesn’t translate to clearly established constitutional law
Clearly established state statute doesn’t translate to clearly established constitutional law for § 1983 qualified immunity purposes. Brown v. Tromba, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149020 (D. Nev. Aug. 23, 2023).* “In their reply brief the OSA Defendants cite cases concerning … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Availability of electronic SW doesn’t modify the automobile exception
The fact an electronic search warrant can more speedily be issued for a vehicle search doesn’t alter the automobile exception. The mere fact a vehicle is mobile is all it takes. United States v. Axon, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134408 … Continue reading
OH8: Dog alert on a car permits search of containers in it
A dog alert on a car was probable cause for a search of it and containers, here a backpack. State v. Kumuhone, 2023-Ohio-2586, 2023 Ohio App. LEXIS 2554 (8th Dist. July 27, 2023). “The contemporaneous tip, the visual details that … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Unsubstantiated rumor not RS
Defendant’s stop for being involved in a shooting which was based on nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor from an unsupported CI and the victim that he was involved was without reasonable suspicion. United States v. Cobbs, 2023 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
CA5: Only RS needed for a routine manual border search of a cell phone
The Fifth Circuit follows other circuits to require only reasonable suspicion for a routine manual border cell phone search. Having found child pornography, the government could keep looking. “He argues that the government violated the Fourth Amendment by conducting the … Continue reading
CA8: No need to prove exigency under 4A for automobile exception
No matter what state cases under state law may say, there’s no need to prove exigency in an automobile exception case under the Fourth Amendment, even when the car is temporarily immobilized. United States v. Johnson, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Order to roll down heavily tinted car window is not a search
The order to a motorist to lower his window is not a search, despite the fact the windows were heavily tinted and it made the interior more visible. Two pounds of cannabis on the car seat was probable cause for … Continue reading
ID: Statutory admission of evidence in administrative proceeding is not a separation of powers issue
Admission or exclusion of evidence in an administrative proceeding over a driver’s license is not governed by the rules of evidence, but it does recognize constitutional limitations. That is not a separation of powers issue because it is within the … Continue reading
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
LA5: Unenclosed driveways are not part of the curtilage
“Louisiana jurisprudence has indicated that unenclosed driveways, like the driveway in the instant case, are not part of the curtilage with respect to Fourth Amendment cases.” State v. Bourgeois, 2023 La. App. LEXIS 901 ( La. App. 5 Cir May … Continue reading
CA4: Def gets remand of unexplained warrantless search condition on supervised release
The condition of supervised release that defendant submit to warrantless searches wasn’t explained to him or justified. Remanded. United States v. Davila, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 12714 (4th Cir. May 23, 2023). Plaintiff’s driving, observed by an officer and caught … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Hospital nurse who found drugs on def wasn’t state actor
A nurse in a hospital who found drugs in defendant’s pants was required by policy to search the rest of his belongings. The nurse was not a state actor. United States v. Kunsman, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 84362 (E.D. Pa. … Continue reading
MN: Purse in car could be searched under automobile exception
The warrantless search of defendant’s purse was lawful under the automobile exception because there was probable cause to believe that the car contained a controlled substance, and the purse was a container within that car. State v. Barrow, 2023 Minn. … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Pulling open def’s pocket to search it was intentional and unreasonable; exclusionary rule applied
Pulling open defendant’s pocket to search it was intentional and required applying the exclusionary rule. United States v. Jenkins, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74739 (N.D. W.Va. Apr. 28, 2023). The close relationship between the participants supported probable cause. It was … Continue reading