Archives
-
Recent Posts
- W.D.N.Y.: Possibility of co-conspirators in mass murder justified emergency disclosure request to Apple, Verizon, and Facebook
- E.D.N.Y.: Flight out a window is exigency for police to enter
- W.D.Tenn.: A driveway isn’t always curtilage
- FL: Violation of knock-and-announce statute doesn’t require exclusion
- TX3: DUI blood draw while in restraint chair not 4A unreasonable
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
-
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)
-
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] -
“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
DE: SW also for documents permitted seizure of a cell phone because nexus was shown; second warrant for contents of phone
Police were justified in entering defendant’s apartment without a warrant under the clothing exigency to retrieve clothing reasonably calculated to lessen the risk of injury to defendant, who was wearing only a t-shirt, underwear, and no shoes to go to … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: A CP SW for “‘computers’ and related material” includes a cell phone and SD card
A search warrant for child pornography for “‘computers’ and related material” permitted a search of a cell phone and an SD card found during the search. At the minimum, their search was in objective good faith. United States v. Tatro, … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Controlled buys and watching def to go his storage unit for more was PC
Defendant had been coming and going from a storage unit where the police knew he stored methamphetamine. “There had been controlled purchases of methamphetamine directly from Leyva-Martinez. Officer Milone and other OPD officers had sufficient probable cause to stop the … Continue reading
FL5: Pre-Riley cell phone search incident valid under Davis GFE
Pre-Riley cell phone search incident: “We agree that the initial search violated Burton’s Fourth Amendment rights but nevertheless affirm the denial of his motion to suppress evidence based on the exception to the exclusionary rule articulated by the United States … Continue reading
CA6: SW for cell phone based on PC defeats § 1983 case over phone search
“Professional hunter William ‘Spook’ Spann sued his former employee and several officers from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for alleged violations of his constitutional rights during an investigation into his hunting practices. The district court … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: The gov’t had individualized suspicion for a forensic border search of def’s cell phone
The post-arrest, off-site forensic search of defendant’s phone was instead a border search, which did not require a warrant supported by probable cause. The first search of defendant’s phone conducted at the airport was a routine border search that did … Continue reading
MN: Police had exigency to seize cell phone during murder investigation
Police were interviewing defendant in a murder case. Once her story started making no sense anymore, an officer seized her phone and then applied for a warrant to search it. The officer had exigent circumstances to seize the phone to … Continue reading
NY3: Cell phones may be seized and searched under SW for computers, processors, and drives
A search warrant for computers, processing units, and drives didn’t say “cell phone,” but cell phones may be seize under that description. People v. Victor, 2016 NY Slip Op 03551, 2016 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3425 (3d Dept. May 5, … Continue reading
Android Central: Your privacy, your fingerprints and the fifth amendment
Android Central: Your privacy, your fingerprints and the fifth amendment by Jerry Hildenbrand: You can be forced to provide your fingerprint to access the data on your phone. But you don’t have to make it easy.
IN: Walking into a house during a drug raid justifies a frisk
Defendant drove up to a house in the process of a drug raid. Eight people were in custody. Defendant was stopped when he got to the door, and he was frisked and a gun was found. The search was valid … Continue reading
WaPo: All Writs Act and cracking into cell phones
WaPo: Morning links by Radley Balko: Of the 41 cases in which law enforcement officials invoked the All Writs Act to ask courts for permission to forcibly unlock a cellphone, and for which the reason for the request is known, … Continue reading
CIO Today: Court Orders Suspect To Unlock iPhone with Finger
CIO Today: Court Orders Suspect To Unlock iPhone with Finger by Shirley Siluk: While authorities can’t search for data on your cellphone without a warrant, once they’ve obtained that warrant they can force you to unlock your device with your … Continue reading
GA: Cell phone search was harmless because of another legally searched phone
While defendant was being interviewed by the police, his cell phone was on the table getting text messages from “Head.” The officer opened the phone to see Head’s number. Whether the search of the phone was lawful or not doesn’t … Continue reading
The Fourth Amendment in the Information Age by Robert S. Litt, Yale L.J.
The Fourth Amendment in the Information Age by Robert S. Litt, 126 Yale L.J. __:
NYLJ: Passcodes, Privacy and Public Safety: Apple vs. DOJ
NYLJ: Passcodes, Privacy and Public Safety: Apple vs. DOJ by Peter Crusco: Revelations that the Department of Justice (DOJ) in mid-March with the help of an undisclosed tech company discovered an access vulnerability and new method to unlock the Apple … Continue reading
C.D.Ill.: Opening a flip phone to see the screen is a “search” under Hicks
Opening defendant’s flip phone to see the home screen is a search under Hicks. The phone was clearly seized under the Fourth Amendment. The government, however, showed probable cause for a search warrant for the phone, and that was independent … Continue reading
NYTImes: U.S. Opens Another iPhone, This Time With the Keycode
NYTImes: U.S. Opens Another iPhone, This Time With the Keycode by Eric Lichtblau: The Justice Department said Friday night that it had gained access on its own to a locked iPhone used by a Brooklyn drug dealer, the second time … Continue reading
NYTimes: F.B.I. Director Suggests Bill for iPhone Hacking Topped $1.3 Million
NYTimes: F.B.I. Director Suggests Bill for iPhone Hacking Topped $1.3 Million by Eric Lichtblau and Katie Benner: The director of the F.B.I. suggested Thursday that his agency paid at least $1.3 million to an undisclosed group to help hack into … Continue reading
NPR: Lawful Hacking: Should, Or Can, The FBI Learn To Overcome Encryption Itself?
NPR: Lawful Hacking: Should, Or Can, The FBI Learn To Overcome Encryption Itself? by Alina Selyukh: A major theme that emerged from this latest hearing (though it’s been discussed by some cybersecurity experts before) was the ability or the need … Continue reading
NPR: The Next Apple-FBI Question: Who Can Know How The iPhone Was Hacked?
NPR: The Next Apple-FBI Question: Who Can Know How The iPhone Was Hacked? We know that a third party helped FBI crack the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. But many questions remain. Should the FBI reveal … Continue reading