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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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 / 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
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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
Cal.4th: Probation search for “property” does not include “electronic data”
The juvenile’s probation search condition for his “property” does not reasonably include electronic data. In re I.V., 2017 Cal. App. LEXIS 392 (4th Dist. April 28, 2017):
techdirt: Legislators, School Administrators Back Off Cellphone Search Bill After Running Into ACLU Opposition
techdirt: Legislators, School Administrators Back Off Cellphone Search Bill After Running Into ACLU Opposition by Tim Cushing:
Yahoo! Tech: A Former NSA Lawyer Explains Why Searching Phones at the Border Is a Waste of Time
Yahoo! Tech: A Former NSA Lawyer Explains Why Searching Phones at the Border Is a Waste of Time by Brian Feldman
CA2: Def’s attempted flight from a stop added to the RS
Officers were on a drug stakeout and saw the defendant watching the street, although there were no cars. He went in a building and came out with a plastic bag with a brick shaped object in the bottom. Officers tried … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Violation of state law in issuing a cell phone search warrant not ground to suppress in federal court
A cell phone search warrant issued in violation of Georgia law would not be suppressed in federal court. Also, Rule 41 and the Fourth Amendment are not coextensive, so the alleged violation of Rule 41 is not necessarily a violation … Continue reading
LA5: No REP in cell phone provider’s records
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone call details kept by the service provider under the third-party doctrine. State v. Savage, 2017 La. App. LEXIS 609 (La.App. 5 Cir. April 12, 2017) (decided under Fourth Amendment and … Continue reading
W.D.Ark.: Govt had independent source for cracking password on Android phone by software so def’s suppressed confession doesn’t suppress phone
While defendant’s confession was suppressed, his passwords to his phone were not because it was an Android phone, and the government could get in to an Android phone with its software. Thus, there was an independent source. United States v. … Continue reading
TX: Texas Const. grants no special protection to third party information; here CSLI and numbers dialed
Third party cell phone information is not protected by the Texas Constitution. It grants no greater rights than the Fourth Amendment. If the drafters wanted it broader, they could have said so. The information was available to law enforcement under … Continue reading
S.D.Ind.: T-Mobile’s policy to do a data dump on any T-Mobile phone linked to a robbery of one of its stores doesn’t make it a government agent
A T-Mobile store was robbed, and their policy is to do a data dump including CSLI of any T-Mobile phone number potentially linked to the robbery. That does not make them a government agent in the data dump. United States … Continue reading
Forbes: US Immigration Splurged $2.2 Million On Phone Hacking Tech Just After Trump’s Travel Ban
Forbes: US Immigration Splurged $2.2 Million On Phone Hacking Tech Just After Trump’s Travel Ban by Thomas Fox-Brewster:
E.D.Mich.: Seizure of cell phone to preserve its evidence for a SW was reasonable
Seizure of defendant’s cell phone found near him when he was arrested was reasonable to preserve evidence until a search warrant could be obtained. United States v. Hamilton, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54953 (E.D. Mich. April 11, 2017):
WaPo: Border agents can look at everything on your cell phone. Congress should change that (editorial)
WaPo: Border agents can look at everything on your cell phone. Congress should change that (editorial): PRETTY MUCH everyone can agree that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents should be able to freely search travelers’ bags at the border. Their … Continue reading
NYTimes: Border Officers Nearly Double Searches of Electronic Devices, US Says
NYTimes: Border Officers Nearly Double Searches of Electronic Devices, US Says by Ron Nixon:
NPR: U.S. Border Patrol Agents Step Up Cell Phone Searches
NPR: U.S. Border Patrol Agents Step Up Cell Phone Searches: The border patrol has almost tripled the number of people it demands turn over their cell phones coming into and leaving the U.S. Some in Congress now want to require … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Def’s actions gave RS for cell phone and computer searches when he came into O’Hare from the Philippines; he’d already been selected for secondary inspection
Defendant arrived at O’Hare on a flight from the Philippines. The government described how they took the passenger manifest of incoming flights and looked for likely candidates for a secondary search of computers and cell phones. Defendant had been there … Continue reading
CA11: No nexus shown for cell phone SW, but def was on probation, so inevitable discovery applies
Cell phone search warrant failed to show nexus between the phone and the alleged crime. In considering remedy, the court decides not to apply the good faith exception and instead goes with inevitable discovery. Defendant was on probation and there … Continue reading
NBC: Comey: FBI Couldn’t Access Hundreds of Devices Because of Encryption
NBC: Comey: FBI Couldn’t Access Hundreds of Devices Because of Encryption by Tom Winter, Tracy Connor and Pete Williams: On a day when civil liberties groups were expressing alarm at the tools the CIA has apparently developed for using electronic … Continue reading
Tenth Amendment Center: To the Governor: Montana Passes Bill to Ban Warrantless Collection of Electronic Data
Tenth Amendment Center: To the Governor: Montana Passes Bill to Ban Warrantless Collection of Electronic Data by Mike Maharrey:
EFF: The Bill of Rights at the Border: Fourth Amendment Limits on Searching Your Data and Devices
EFF: The Bill of Rights at the Border: Fourth Amendment Limits on Searching Your Data and Devices by Stephanie Lacambra: