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Recent Posts
- FL: Violation of knock-and-announce statute doesn’t require exclusion
- 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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General (many free):
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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
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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)
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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
NE: Expansive SW for cell phone in a shooting case with multiple participants was reasonable
The search warrant for defendant’s cell phone was expansive, but it was evidence in a shooting case where defendant and others were involved. Moreover, the good faith exception applied. State v. Goynes, 303 Neb. 129 (May 17, 2019):
W.D.N.Y.: Def had no REP in his passenger’s cell phone that was being tracked which incidentally tracked him
“Here, there is no evidence that Defendant had possession of, or any subjective privacy interest in, Mr. Daniels’ cell phone. Law enforcement did not observe Defendant using the tracked cell phone, and the cell phone was not registered to Defendant. … Continue reading
CA7: SW to seize a cell phone implicitly carries authority to search it
“Cosby argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence seized from his cell phone. He argues that the warrant, though authorizing seizure of the device, did not authorize the agents to view its contents. But … Continue reading
D.Idaho: Forced use of fingerprint biometric to unlock a smartphone violates 5A
The district court granted the initial search warrant based on the showing of probable cause, but then it denied a second application to force the owner to open it. The compelled use of biometrics to unlock the phone violates the … Continue reading
PA: Cell phone left recording in a college coed bathroom was treated as abandoned property despite intention to return later
Defendant hid a recording smartphone in a coed bathroom at Villanova University that a female student found and turned over to the University Police. The phone was essentially abandoned even though he intended to return to recover it later, and … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Govt can’t show PC for search of cell phone, and GFE doesn’t apply either
The search warrant for defendant’s cell phones had inserted “no charge at this time” for the crime under investigation. The phone was seized without a warrant from a traffic stop, then searched under the warrant, but you can’t tell what … Continue reading
NJLJ: Must a Criminal Defendant Turn Over Cellphone Passwords? NJ Supreme Court Will Decide
NJLJ: Must a Criminal Defendant Turn Over Cellphone Passwords? NJ Supreme Court Will Decide by Suzette Parmley:
Cal.4 dissent: Riley and Sansom require RS for cell phone probation search
Defendant was subjected to a probation search of a cell phone where the underlying crime had nothing to do with cell phones or the internet. The dissent believes that Riley and Sansom together require reasonable suspicion for a cell phone … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: SW for entire cell phone in auto burglary is suppressed as both without nexus and overbroad
An arrest warrant doesn’t give authority to search a cell phone with the arrest. After a search warrant was issued for the phone for the crime of auto burglary, there is no nexus to the crime, and the search warrant … Continue reading
Just Security: Split Over Compelled Decryption Deepens With Massachusetts Case
Just Security: Split Over Compelled Decryption Deepens With Massachusetts Case by Michael Price and Zach Simonetti:
N.D.Cal.: Visiting defendant in the USM lockup directing him to provide his password for his cell phone seized under a SW exceeded the scope of the warrant
Visiting defendant in the USM lockup directing him to provide his password for his cell phone seized under a search warrant exceeded the scope of the warrant. United States v. Maffei, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70314 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 26, … Continue reading
MA: Pinging a cell phone is a search, but here it was with exigent circumstances
Pinging a cell phone to find its location was a search under the Massachusetts Constitution and Fourth Amendment, but it was reasonable because the state showed true exigent circumstances. Commonwealth v. Almonor, 482 Mass. 35 (Apr. 23, 2019). Washington declines … Continue reading
EFF: Google’s Sensorvault Can Tell Police Where You’ve Been [It’s essentially CSLI but held by Google]
EFF: Google’s Sensorvault Can Tell Police Where You’ve Been by Jennifer Lynch. It’s essentially CSLI but held by Google:
NY1: No due process violation in telling def he could bring cell phone to precinct house where it was ultimately seized
The state didn’t deny due process by telling defendant he could bring his phone with him to the precinct to talk with the officers because he would “probably be coming back.” Instead, they seized his phone then obtained a search … Continue reading
CA8: Entry onto def’s back porch with arrest warrant was reasonable
The entry to defendant’s back porch was reasonable because he was there with an arrest warrant. On the back porch he saw some potential equipment for a meth lab. When the police applied for a search warrant, the product of … Continue reading
DE: SW for cell phone’s movements didn’t authorize complete search of the phone’s contents
The probable cause for the search warrant of defendant’s cell phone was only for specific location information. “However, the search warrant authorizes a search and seizure of information broader than GPS location information. Specifically, the search warrant allows the State … Continue reading
ND: State failed to show abandonment of apparently lost cell phone with screen locked
The trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress because the State did not meet its burden of showing that defendant intentionally abandoned his cell phone. Although the phone was found lying in a parking lot in front of … Continue reading
CA9: Call from jail to def’s cell phone advising him to have another flee was PC for phone
A jail phone call to defendant’s cell phone telling him to tell another to flee was probable cause for a search of the phone. United States v. Carter, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 10906 (9th Cir. Apr. 12, 2019).* Officers acted … Continue reading