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- S.D.Ohio: Affidavit alleged only that drug dealers use cell phones, and that’s not PC; but GFE saves it
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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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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)
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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: Informant hearsay
NY4: Pinging cell phone was harmless error even if a warrant was required
The pinging of defendant’s cell phone to find him was without a warrant. If it was constitutional error, it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. People v. Moorer, 2018 NY Slip Op 00754, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 697 (4th … Continue reading
CA7: Summary judgment for gov’t premature in case alleging frame up by crime lab analyst
Summary judgment was improperly granted for the government in a FTCA case that plaintiff was framed by knowingly false testimony from an arson lab analyst. Remanded. Bunch v. United States, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 2283 (7th Cir. Jan. 30, 2018). … Continue reading
HI: Defendant could properly be prosecuted for refusing a breath test, but not a blood test
Defendant could properly be prosecuted for refusing a breath test, but not a blood test. State v. Wilson, 2018 Haw. App. LEXIS 25 (Jan. 26, 2018).* Defendant was a mere passenger in the car searched, and he lacks standing to … Continue reading
DE: Def’s texting victim was nexus to the cell phone
Defendant’s texting the victim gives nexus to the cell phone. There was a temporal limit on the warrant. State v. Rizzo, 2018 Del. Super. LEXIS 44 (Jan. 26, 2018) There was reasonable suspicion for seizure of a FedEx package from … Continue reading
NE: Having only key to rented car glovebox and not to car itself didn’t give standing
Having a key to the glovebox of a rented car, but not to the car itself, was not a sufficient reasonable expectation of privacy in the rented car to have standing. Defendant couldn’t get into the car without somebody else … Continue reading
OR: CI privilege doesn’t require production of CI for in camera review if there is PC
While “Defendant does not challenge the trial court’s further determination that the affidavit contained sufficient information to establish the CI’s reliability and credibility,” he faults the trial court for not having the CI produced for in camera review. The identity … Continue reading
OH5: Working meth lab is exigency
Defendant was initially stopped with information from a CI amounting to reasonable suspicion that he was purchasing precursors and ingredients to manufacture methamphetamine. When the police got to his house, it was apparent there was a working meth lab, and … Continue reading
NY4: Officer had RS for encounter that def fled from and hid object under leaves in flight
The officer had reasonable suspicion for an encounter and defendant fled from him, hiding an object under leaves in flight which was abandonment. People v. Thacker, 2017 NY Slip Op 09081, 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 9104 (4th Dept. Dec. … Continue reading
S.D.Ind.: SI of duffle bag at feet of handcuffed suspect reasonable when he wouldn’t answer questions about having gun
Search incident of defendant’s duffle bag was reasonable because, while handcuffed, his hands were relatively mobile around his waist and he refused to answer questions about whether he had a gun. United States v. Veach, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 209971 … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Search of house for drug trafficking revealed a surveillance system and DVR; it was reasonable to conclude evidence of trafficking would be on it too for a separate SW
When executing a search warrant for drugs and guns, founded on a strong showing of probable cause, and the police finding pounds of methamphetamine and multiple firearms, discovery of surveillance cameras and a DVR not connected to a satellite or … Continue reading
PA: Anonymous tip man on specific bus was armed was insufficient for stop and frisk of def
An anonymous tip that a man on a specific bus was carrying a gun was insufficient to stop and frisk the defendant. When the officer drew a gun on him he was detained, and his subsequent actions could not be … Continue reading
CA3: Frisk was justified by RS and plain feel of drugs resulted
The officer had reasonable suspicion to frisk defendant, and the drugs in his pocket were discovered by plain feel. United States v. Graves, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 25157 (3d Cir. Dec. 13, 2017). Smell of marijuana during a traffic stop … Continue reading
Cal.6th: Citizen informant’s report def matched a BOLO of a sex offender justified talking to him, and his probation search condition justified search
A San Jose bus driver thought that a passenger on a bus was a person there was a BOLO out on for having committed a lewd act on a child on a bus that was captured on the bus video. … Continue reading
D.Md.: Nexus shown by def’s car driven to drug deal was registered at his house and he left there to do the deal
Defendant was alleged to have left the address his car was registered at to go to a controlled buy. That showed nexus to the house. United States v. Goldsberry, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199446 (D. Md. Dec. 4, 2017). Defendant … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: CI “working off” his own case is not inherently unbelievable because he needs substantial assistance for a 5K1.1
A CI “working off” his own case is not inherently unbelievable. If anything, such a CI has an incentive to be truthful because, if he’s not, he could lose a USSG § 5K1.1 reduction for not substantially assisting the government. … Continue reading
CA8: Def failed to show omission of CI’s background would have vitiated PC
“Claybron argues that the omission of the confidential informant’s background information weighed so heavily on her credibility that, had it been considered, the warrant would not have issued. ‘We review the trial court’s findings of fact for clear error and … Continue reading
LA5: CI’s story provided PC for defendant’s stop for a hand-to-hand transaction police then observed
The CI provided probable cause for defendant’s stop for a hand-to-hand transaction. The CI’s story was that was what was going down, and defendant came up to the car and leaned in. While the officers didn’t see what happened in … Continue reading
NC: IP address on pizza order led to PC for SW for def’s house as robber of driver
A Domino’s driver was robbed and hit with a baseball bat and knocked out. Police looked for possible robbers but found nobody. A “confidential source of information” (actually citizen informant who’s identity was withheld for protection against retaliation) said that … Continue reading
NM: Citizen informant’s call about erratic driving was RS for stop when the vehicle was found
Citizen informant’s call to the police about erratic driving was reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop when the car was found. State v. Tidey, 2011-NMCA-068, 2017 N.M. App. LEXIS 103 (Oct. 17, 2017). The stop was justified by a lane change … Continue reading