Archives
-
Recent Posts
- D.Alaska: Def’s half hour detention was without RS
- CA9: When the PC for SW dissipates, the search must stop; no GFE
- C.D.Cal.: SW for all software in gambling case was overbroad and no GFE
- E.D.Mich.: State environmental inspector who entered property to look at unlicensed seawall gets QI
- S.D.Fla.: SW for def’s house included his tent outside
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
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)
-
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
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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)
-
“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: Cell phones
E.D.Mich.: State environmental inspector who entered property to look at unlicensed seawall gets QI
Plaintiff built a seawall on an inland lake without a permit. State environmental inspectors came to look and referred him for a violation of regulations. He sued in federal court for Fourth Amendment trespass. Despite it being clear the inspector … Continue reading
CA4: Cell phone non-forensic border search doesn’t require individualized suspicion
“Border searches do not require a warrant to be reasonable. And if a border search is routine, individualized suspicion is not required either. But law enforcement may not conduct a nonroutine border search without individualized suspicion. Under our precedent, forensic … Continue reading
ND: Probation search of cell phone was reasonable
Probation search of defendant’s cell phone, whether he owned it or merely possessed it, was reasonable. He claimed it was someone else’s he had with permission. State v. Warner, 2026 ND 133 (July 9, 2026). Habeas petitioner’s Fourth Amendment ineffective … Continue reading
CA1: SW for iPhone 6S didn’t permit search of iPhone 13 despite same phone number
A search warrant for an iPhone 6S did not authorize a search of an iPhone 13 with the same phone number. Also, the good faith exception does not apply. Alleged exigency doesn’t save this search. United States v. González-Arocho, 2026 … Continue reading
D.D.C.: A cell phone SW without PC in a felon in possession case is a general warrant because of its intrusiveness
Cell phone warrant for felon in possession case is quashed. No probable cause or nexus to the crime. Just because someone owns a cell phone doesn’t mean the government gets to search it. It is effectively a general warrant. United … Continue reading
CA7: Scrolling through def’s cell phone was a reasonable border search
Scrolling through defendant’s cell phone was a reasonable border search. United States v. Eta, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 19568 (7th Cir. July 6, 2026):
E.D.Ark.: Bivens not extended to knock-and-announce violation and shooting; FTCA applies instead
Bivens won’t be extended to an alleged knock-and-announce violation and a police shooting of the homeowner. SCOTUS should just go ahead and abandon Bivens. It proceeds as an FTCA case. Malinowski v. United States, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 148126 (E.D. … Continue reading
D.Mont.: This ping warrant was based on PC and was not governed by Chatrie
This cell phone ping warrant was based on a showing of probable cause. It was a one-time deal and didn’t involve the factors of Chatrie and geofence warrants. United States v. Kunz, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 148872 (D. Mont. July … Continue reading
Cell phone GPS: WaPo: This little blue dot on your phone is a revolutionary invention
WaPo: This little blue dot on your phone is a revolutionary invention by Katherine Dunn (“U.S. policy used to jam up GPS. Now, those signals beam into your pocket.”):
W.D.N.Y.: Possibility of co-conspirators in mass murder justified emergency disclosure request to Apple, Verizon, and Facebook
In the Buffalo Tops Grocery mass shooting, the emergency disclosure request to Apple, Facebook, and Verizon was based on the possibility there were coconspirators. Even though defendant’s manifesto said he was acting alone, investigators didn’t have to take that at … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: SW for phone 19 months after alleged crimes showed PC
The search warrant for defendant’s cell phone was issued in December 2024 for alleged crimes in April and May 2023. There was still probable cause despite the possibility that defendant had a different phone by then. The search was based … Continue reading
OH1: SW for residence justified seizure of text messages about drug transactions received during execution of warrant
The warrant for defendant’s residence was based on an affidavit that provided a minimally sufficient nexus between the offenses under investigation and the need to search the home, and the officers acted in good-faith reliance on the warrant. Also, two … Continue reading
DE: Cell phone SW was limited by time and data sought, so it was not a general warrant
The warrant for defendant’s cell phone was not for “any and all data,” and it was limited to a specific time frame, July 20, 2020 to November 30, 2021. Officers found a video of defendant having sex with a minor. … Continue reading
VI: Despite ubiquity of cell phones, nexus has to be shown to alleged crime
The suppression of the cell phone is affirmed. The telephonic warrant omitted to mention what it was that the police were seizing. The ubiquity of cell phones isn’t carte blanche to seize any cell phone in a defendant’s possession. There … Continue reading
RI: Challenge to one sentence of 8-page cell phone records SW fails; totality has to be considered
Defendant’s challenge to the search warrant for his cell phone records focused on one sentence adding nothing to the calculus. On the totality, the 8-page affidavit showed probable cause for the cell phone records. State v. Pinkerton, 2026 R.I. LEXIS … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Emergency disclosure requests in Buffalo Tops grocery shooting were valid
The emergency disclosure requests (EDRs) for information about the 2022 allegedly racially motivated Tops grocery store shooting in Buffalo were valid. Officers were looking for potential co-conspirators. United States v. Gendron, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109541 (W.D.N.Y. May 18, 2026). … Continue reading
VI: Cell phone SW didn’t show nexus to crime; possession alone not enough
There was a lack of nexus to cell phone to this alleged crime which voids the search warrant for it, and the good faith exception does not apply. Just having a cell phone on one’s person doesn’t link it to … Continue reading
LA5: SW for cell phone including “cloud based storage accessible by the device” not overbroad
The search warrant for defendant’s cell phone included “or within cloud based storage accessible by the device.” The warrant was not overbroad. State v. Pampas, 2026 La. App. LEXIS 848 (La. App. 5 Cir May 5, 2026). Defense counsel’s failure … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Refusal to submit to warrant to show face to open cell phone was admissible at trial
Defendant’s refusal to comply with a search warrant for biometric opening of his cell phone (here, a face scan) was admissible at trial to show consciousness of guilt. “Given that ‘[i]t is today universally conceded that the fact of an … Continue reading
NY Columbia Co.: Alleged excessive nervousness when multiple police cars arrive at a traffic stop doesn’t add to RS
Defendant’s alleged excessive nervousness wasn’t visible on the video. And, even if he was, that’s a reasonable response to multiple police cars showing up for a routine traffic stop. No reasonable suspicion to continue the stop. People v. Thomas, 2026 … Continue reading