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- TX1: Def has a duty to make his record on PC and the SW; missing affidavit was on him
- N.D.Ala.: SW not invalid because issuing judge previously represented the target
- The Guardian: ‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
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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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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)
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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: Cell phones
GA: Looking at CP while sitting in a car is PC for the device and car
Defendant was seen in his car looking at child pornography on his cell phone. That gave the police probable cause to enter to seize the phone. They later got a search warrant for it. State v. Palacio-Gregorio, 2021 Ga. App. … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: A year delay in searching this cell phone was not unreasonable when def was in custody
A year delay in searching defendant’s cell phone was not unreasonable. He was a parolee, in custody, and had a significantly reduced privacy interest in the phone. United States v. Davis, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175204 (E.D.Mich. Sept. 15, 2021). … Continue reading
GA: Three year delay in searching cell phone not unreasonable on these facts
Nearly three year delay between seizure of defendant’s cell phone and electronics and their search was not unreasonable here where defendant was in jail throughout and thus he had a far diminished possessory interest. Nelson v. State, S21A0773 (Ga. Sept. … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: RS def was in violation of order of protection justified vehicle stop
Reasonable suspicion defendant was driving a car with a child in it in violation of an order of protection was justification for his stop. When the car was stopped, the smell of marijuana justified its further search. United States v. … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Your Phone Is Your Private Space
The Atlantic: Your Phone Is Your Private Space (“Without evidence of wrongdoing, neither public agents nor private companies should be rifling through the photos on your personal devices.”)
Raw Story: Mo Brooks bellyaches about Congress seizing his phone records: ‘They should not have access to anything’
Raw Story: Mo Brooks bellyaches about Congress seizing his phone records: ‘They should not have access to anything’ by David Edwards:
NY (Kings Co.): SW for cell phone failed to show nexus to the crime
“As such, the People failed to establish a nexus, supported by probable cause, that the cell phone recovered was the cell phone used at the time they allege the defendant committed the charged crimes and therefore cannot satisfy the required … Continue reading
9to5Mac: Apple’s Find My app leads police to arrest suspect after searching for lost iPhone
9to5Mac: Apple’s Find My app leads police to arrest suspect after searching for lost iPhone by Filipe Espósito. (Using the Find My app of the officer’s phone, “The police then succeeded in arresting Sandoval after tracking him for about an … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Cell phone lock screen is in plain view
On a cell phone, “information that simply appears on a lock screen, without requiring digital entry, is in plain view.” United States v. Blair, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 156445 (N.D.Ga. Aug. 18, 2021). Defendant didn’t have a reasonable expectation of … Continue reading
ND: Search of passenger’s person for smell of MJ in car was unreasonable
Defendant’s patdown as a passenger on smell of marijuana was reasonable during the stop, but a search of his person was not. There was no justification for a search of his person. State v. K.V. (In the Interest of K.V.), … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Truck inspection stop valid admin search under Burger
The New Mexico regulatory scheme for truck inspections has already been held to satisfy Burger. Stopping defendants’ truck for inspection at an inspection station was reasonable under that standard. On opening the trailer to compare to the bills of lading, … Continue reading
WaPo: Apple plans to scan iPhones to find sexual predators. Some fear the software could be weaponized.
WaPo: Apple plans to scan iPhones to find sexual predators. Some fear the software could be weaponized. By Reed Albergotti (“The new push pits Apple against civil liberties activists and appears to contradict some of the company’s own long-held assertions … Continue reading
TN: Consent in the face of a threat to get a SW is invalid where no PC
Defendant’s consent in the face of the officer’s threat to get a search warrant was involuntary where there was no probable cause for a warrant. State v. Cohen, 2021 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 356 (July 29, 2021). There was reasonable … Continue reading
CA8: SW for CP didn’t include “cell phone” in “electronic devices,” but GFE covers it
The search warrant here was for electronic devices that could hold child pornography, and it failed to specifically mention defendant’s cell phone. The good faith exception, however, overcame this omission of particularity. United States v. Pospisil, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: “Hot watch” order for real time travel information isn’t disclosable yet; matter still under investigation
The government made an “Application request[ing] an order compelling Sabre, a travel technology firm, ‘to provide representatives of the FBI complete and contemporaneous ‘real time’ account activity’ for an individual subject to an arrest warrant—what the government refers to as … Continue reading
CA2: Parole search valid under “special needs” even without RS
The parole search here lacked reasonable suspicion, but it was justified by the special needs exception to the warrant requirement. “Because a search undertaken by a parole officer of a parolee to detect parole violations is ‘reasonably related to the … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: How long is too long a wait for search of a seized cell phone: reasonableness controls
“A seizure reasonable at its inception because it is based upon probable cause may become unreasonable as a result of its duration. The duration of the seizure pending the issuance of a search warrant must still be reasonable, and reasonableness … Continue reading
CA8: Cell tower warrant to ID robbers was reasonable and with PC
Cell phone tower warrant in an effort to solve multiple robberies by identifying repeated phone use was reasonable when the question is a “substantial basis,” which there was. United States v. James, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 20336 (8th Cir. July … Continue reading