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- TX3: DUI blood draw while in restraint chair not 4A unreasonable
- 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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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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)
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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
The Recorder: Analysis: Why Is the Justice Department Knocking Harder at Apple’s Backdoor?
The Recorder: Analysis: Why Is the Justice Department Knocking Harder at Apple’s Backdoor? by Frank Ready (“Apple once again finds itself in the crosshairs of another encryption debate, but placing constant pressure on the company and other tech giants may … Continue reading
NJLJ: ‘Private Enclave’? Supreme Court Deciding Whether Cellphone Passcodes Are Protected
NJLJ: ‘Private Enclave’? Supreme Court Deciding Whether Cellphone Passcodes Are Protected by Suzette Parmley (“The case ‘could cause the court to diverge on constitutional amendments’ and have a seminal impact, Justice Barry Albin said during the arguments at the Richard … Continue reading
ABAJ: Defendant challenges ‘classic dragnet search’ for Google cellphone data within robbery radius
ABAJ: Defendant challenges ‘classic dragnet search’ for Google cellphone data within robbery radius by Debra Cassens Weiss:
D.Minn.: Search and seizure of cell phone was private search
Three adults worked to get access to defendant’s cell phone because he was sexting a minor. “Moreover, even assuming solely for the sake of argument that Dustin Clark had wrongfully taken Minor A’s phone from Defendant Walsh and Deputy Bennett … Continue reading
WaPo: How William Barr could make everyone’s iPhone more vulnerable
WaPo: How William Barr could make everyone’s iPhone more vulnerable:
PA: SW for cell phone extraction executed after expiration was treated as a warrantless search
A search warrant executed on cell phones for extraction of data expired four days before the search. Therefore, the search was warrantless, and the trial court should have suppressed. Commonwealth v. Bowens, 2020 Pa. Super. LEXIS 22 (Jan. 17, 2020). … Continue reading
NYTimes: Does the F.B.I. Need Apple to Hack Into iPhones?
NYTimes: Does the F.B.I. Need Apple to Hack Into iPhones? By Jack Nicas (“There are tools to crack into the phones at the center of a new dispute over encryption. But the F.BI. says it still needs Apple’s aid.”)
MO: When there’s one black phone to be seized and searched, that’s all the SW needs to describe
Identifying the thing to be searched as a “black Samsung cell phone with a black case” was specific enough without including the phone number or serial number when there was only one in hand. State v. Bales, 2020 Mo. App. … Continue reading
NJ: State failed to show exigency for warrantless phone records search
Under New Jersey statute and constitution, cell phone records and CSLI required a showing of probable cause and a court order since 2010. Exigent circumstances were a recognized exception, and the state failed to show exigency here. State v. Manning, … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Multiple cell phones in car in a cross-country drug run was PC to search the phones
Multiple cell phones in the car in a cross-country drug transportation enterprise was probable cause for searching the phones with a search warrant. “The Court finds that these facts, considered in the totality of the circumstances, provided the issuing magistrate … Continue reading
NYTimes: F.B.I. Asks Apple to Help Unlock Two iPhones
NYTimes: F.B.I. Asks Apple to Help Unlock Two iPhones by Jack Nicas and Katie Benner (“The request could reignite a fight between the Silicon Valley giant and law enforcement over access to encrypted technology.”)
WaPo: FBI asks Apple for help cracking Pensacola gunman’s iPhones
WaPo: FBI asks Apple for help cracking Pensacola gunman’s iPhones by Devlin Barrett: The FBI is pressing Apple for help opening iPhones that belonged to the Saudi military student who killed three people last month at a naval base in … Continue reading
M.D.Pa. Delay in searching cell phones wasn’t unreasonable because def was in jail out of possession anyway
The delay between seizing defendant’s cell phones and searching them wasn’t unreasonable considering he was in jail and would have had no access to them anyway. United States v. Carey, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1150 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 6, 2020). … Continue reading
D.Mont.: With court ordered pinging of cell phone, govt violated no REP in following the pings
Once officers had a warrant authorizing capturing defendant’s cell phone pings back even in 2015, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements in public when they were following him based on the result of the pings. Therefore, … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Def sought Franks hearing but got a separate suppression hearing which led to his losing on merits of Franks claim
Defendant got a suppression hearing, but not yet a Franks hearing. The USMJ was “on the fence” about whether a Franks hearing was required. Ultimately the findings of fact and conclusions of law supported a lack of materiality on the … Continue reading
FL1 certifies to the FL S.Ct. whether the password to a cell phone is protected by the 5A
FL1 certifies to the FL S.Ct. whether the password to a cell phone is protected by the Fifth Amendment. Pollard v. State, 2019 Fla. App. LEXIS 18978 (Fla. 3d DCA Dec. 23, 2019): What is the proper legal inquiry when … Continue reading
Ars Technica: Feds reap data from 1,500 phones in largest reported reverse-location warrant
Ars Technica: Feds reap data from 1,500 phones in largest reported reverse-location warrant by Kate Cox (“The search warrants demanded nine hours’ worth of location history from Google.”):
WY: Def’s contradictions of travel compared to car rental agreement and lies about criminal history was RS
Defendant was stopped for following too close in a rental car. It was reasonable for the trooper to suspect defendant rented the car to transport drugs because there were obvious contradictions between the car rental agreement and his travel plans, … Continue reading
TX1: Def lost REP in his mislaid phone that somebody found and opened to try and discern the owner to return it
Defendant mislaid his cell phone, and he didn’t abandon it. Nevertheless, it was available for anyone to pick up and turn in to somebody to help find him. Moreover, it wasn’t passcode protected, and it was reasonable for someone to … Continue reading
MA: The fact co-conspirators coordinated in planning the crime was nexus to def’s cell phone
The state showed a nexus to defendant’s cell phone and the crime under investigation because the participants were coordinating with each other before hand. “We have no evidence that the purpose of the cell phone call between the defendant, when … Continue reading