November 2025 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-25,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 500,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 47,000 posts since 2003 (30,000+ on WordPress as of 12/31/24) -
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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
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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)
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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
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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew -
"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, Little Rock 
Category Archives: Cell phones
D.R.I.: Removing back cover of cell phone to see the serial number not unreasonable during inventory
Defendant was in a car that was stopped for overtinting, and that led to a tow and inventory. The police searched for and obtained the serial numbers of four cell phones found during the inventory. They were not otherwise searched, … Continue reading
CA9: Supervised release condition of cell phone searches was reasonable
“Koyanagi next challenges the special condition of supervised release requiring him to submit to periodic suspicionless searches of his electronic data. [¶] Koyanagi’s constitutional challenges to this condition are unavailing. See United States v. Bare, 806 F.3d 1011, 1018 n.4 … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: No 5A protection on phone pass code, and inevitable discovery applies
The foregone conclusion rationale for access to passcodes for cell phones. There was no Fifth Amendment privilege to providing the passcodes. Inevitable discovery applies. United States v. Zhengdong Cheng, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6437 (S.D.Tex. Jan. 12, 2022):
S.D.Tex.: BOLO that matched defendant’s car was RS for stop
A BOLO that matched defendant’s car was reasonable suspicion for a stop. United States v. Yanez, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6376 (S.D.Tex. Jan. 12, 2022). Cell phone communication and text messages about drug deals with the defendant gave probable cause … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: RS parolee is into drugs justifies PO’s cell phone search
State parole officers with reasonable suspicion defendant was involved in drugs could seize and search his cell phone. United States v. Devaughn, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5406 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 11, 2022). There was no reasonable suspicion for a probation search … Continue reading
CO: Particularity of cell phone SW was harmless error and didn’t even have to be decided
Defendant’s claim that his cell phone search warrant violated the particularity requirement does not have to be decided because, if error, it is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt on this record. Pettigrew v. People, 2022 CO 2, 2022 Colo. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA8: “Delay in searching a phone is immaterial to the reasonableness of a seizure, however, when the device has independent evidentiary value.”
Defendant went through airport security in Long Beach with a gun in a bag. A further stop and search of him found seven cell phones. They were ultimately searched with a warrant finding text messages detailing drug deals. The delay … Continue reading
TX5: Knowledge def regularly deleted info from cell phone was exigency for seizure
The officers had information that defendant routinely deleted information from his call logs and text messages. That was exigency for a warrantless seizure of the phone. A later warrant was obtained for the phone. Veal v. State, 2021 Tex. App. … Continue reading
PA: Cell phone SW has to protect privacy, but an internet-based crime will permit a broad search
Because of the nature of the invasion into privacy, a cell phone search has to be as limited as the search of a home, and the probable cause defines the scope of the search. All they had for starters was … Continue reading
CA10: Cell phone search for evidence of sex trafficking could be broad; this was particular enough
The cell phone search warrant in this sex trafficking case allowed search of everything on the phone that could contain evidence of sex trafficking as defined under Oklahoma law. It was not overboard because the information sought could have taken … Continue reading
D.Idaho: Fact of app on cell phone that deletes photos when viewed doesn’t undermine PC for them
The court issued a search warrant for defendant’s cell phone for photographs of nude minors. The fact he had an account that allegedly deleted pictures when they were viewed doesn’t undermine the probable cause. United States v. Young, 2021 U.S. … Continue reading
MS: No REP in contraband cell phone in prison
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a contraband cell phone in prison. United States v. Jackson, 866 F.3d 982 (8th Cir. 2017). Walker v. State, 2021 Miss. App. LEXIS 502 (Dec. 7, 2021). Accord: United States v. Basaldua, … Continue reading
TN: No standing in text messages on codef’s cell phone
Defense counsel could not be ineffective for not moving to suppress text messages on the codefendant’s cell phone where defendant had no standing. Wells v. State, 2021 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 553 (Dec. 7, 2021). There is no reasonable expectation … Continue reading
SC: Officers obtained text messages in murder case with emergency request
The state’s obtaining CSLI here is not suppressed. Officers worked backwards from the murder victim’s cell phone and an emergency request for text messages and got them and linked them to defendant. It was inevitable that defendant’s CSLI would be … Continue reading
MO: Even if 4A IAC, no prejudice
Even if defense counsel was ineffective for not moving to suppress files found on his computer that corroborated his child rape victim, he can’t show prejudice because of other exhibits in evidence which were incontestable. The post-conviction court erred in … Continue reading
WA: No REP in text message exchange
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages exchanged with another, even under the state’s more protective constitution of “private affairs.” State v. Pouncy, 2021 Wash. App. LEXIS 2811 (Nov. 30, 2021) (unpublished).* The reasonableness of a traffic … Continue reading
N.-M.: Statement attenuated from unlawful cell phone seizure
Defendant was arrested after NCIS forced entry into his barracks room arresting him at gunpoint coming out of the shower for allegations of sexual conversations with an minor. NCIS seized his cell phone without a search authorization. Ultimately, his cell … Continue reading
DE: Carpenter doesn’t apply to specific cell tower dumps obtained by SW
Carpenter doesn’t apply to specific cell tower dumps obtained by search warrant. “The warrants present in this case are not a top-to-bottom search of any and all stored data of the digital contents of the devices and ‘any other information/data … Continue reading
WI: Contempt for failing to provide passcode for search of phone is reversed because it is now moot by SW
The owner of a cell phone was held in contempt for not providing a passcode to his phone so police could search it. They did not yet have a warrant. After defendant was held in contempt, the police obtained a … Continue reading