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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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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
WaPo: No cell phone warrants without search protocols, magistrate judge rules
WaPo: No cell phone warrants without search protocols, magistrate judge rules by Orin Kerr: The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for the police to search a phone. But can a judge reject a warrant application because it does not tell … Continue reading
Daily Finance: To Combat Fraud, Visa Wants to Track Your Smartphone
Daily Finance: To Combat Fraud, Visa Wants to Track Your Smartphone by Ken Sweet: NEW YORK — Those days of calling your bank to let them know that, yes, you really are in Thailand, and yes, you really did use … Continue reading
ABC News 10 Sacramento: Sacramento Co. Sheriff’s Dept. updates its cell phone spying tools
ABC News 10 Sacramento: Sacramento Co. Sheriff’s Dept. updates its cell phone spying tools The department filed a two-page grant application in August 2013 with the California Office of Emergency Services requesting $300,000 for a new Stingray device. The sheriff’s … Continue reading
Recorder: Prosecutors Skeptical of Bill to Require Warrants for Data Searches
Recorder: Prosecutors Skeptical of Bill to Require Warrants for Data Searches by Cheryl Miller: SB 178, which seeks to extend the U.S. Supreme Court’s logic on cellphone searches, has backing from Big Tech, but law enforcement will push back.
D.Ore.: Second cell phone search warrant 29 mo after first was not unreasonable
The first search warrant for defendant’s phones was valid, and the government could have still used the phones as evidence. But, 29 months later, the government sought a second search warrant to look at the phone again, and found more … Continue reading
S.D.Ill.: 9 day delay in getting SW for phone seized on exigent circumstances not unreasonable
A nine day wait to get a search warrant for a cell phone admittedly seized on exigent circumstances was not unreasonable, particularly where the defendant didn’t ask for it back. United States v. Winn, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15240 (S.D. … Continue reading
IN: The facts of a neighborhood feud that ended in murder suggested nexus to def’s house for the murder weapon
In a neighborhood feud murder case, the known, albeit limited, facts strongly suggested that defendant was the shooter and thus the murder weapon would be found at his house. This was sufficient nexus. Also, citizen informants don’t have to be … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: No REP in a cell phone call by an inmate from inside a prison
The government had wiretaps on cell phones used inside a prison to conduct drug sales and collect “taxes” on those drug sales. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a cell phone conversation coming from inside a prison by … Continue reading
IA: Riley applied to a cell phone search from 2010
Defendant’s cell phone was searched in 2010, well before Riley, but a motion to suppress was filed and denied pre-Riley. The state concedes on appeal that Riley controls and attempts to get the contents of the phone in under exigent … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: SW not required for cell site location information; the third party doctrine hasn’t changed
A search warrant is not required for cell site location information. Jones is inapplicable, and the third party doctrine hasn’t changed. United States v. Lang, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7553 (N.D. Ill. January 23, 2015):
BLT & NYT: Feds Reveal New Details About Secret Database of Phone Records
BLT: Feds Reveal New Details About Secret Database of Phone Records by Zoe Tillman: The U.S. Department of Justice, forced by a judge to reveal information about a secret law enforcement database of phone records, on Thursday disclosed new details … Continue reading
The Hill: [Sen.] Judiciary [Committee] presses FBI on cellphone spying
The Hill: [Sen.] Judiciary [Committee] presses FBI on cellphone spying by Mario Trujillo: The leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are pressing the Obama administration for more information about a program that collects Americans’ cellphone data using technology that mimics … Continue reading
GA: Riley applied to a case not yet final; no GFE because no prior binding authority
A cell phone search in a DUI stop was suppressed under Riley, even though the search occurred long before Riley. The defendant was still litigating, and he hadn’t yet even been convicted. Also, no good faith exception for the muddled … Continue reading
WaPo: German researchers discover a flaw that could let anyone listen to your cell calls
WaPo: German researchers discover a flaw that could let anyone listen to your cell calls by Craig Timberg: German researchers have discovered security flaws that could let hackers, spies and criminals listen to private phone calls and intercept text messages … Continue reading
TechDirt: DOJ Leans On Old Laws And Even Older Cases To Argue Against Privacy Expectations In Cell Site Location Data
TechDirt: DOJ Leans On Old Laws And Even Older Cases To Argue Against Privacy Expectations In Cell Site Location Data by Tim Cushing: from the it’s-1979-all-over-again! dept Last month, AT&T entered an amicus brief in the US v. Quartavious Davis … Continue reading
D.N.J.: No REP in a burner phone def didn’t claim he used and wasn’t subscribed to anybody
This defendant has no reasonable expectation of privacy in somebody else’s cell phone or the records of its use. He never used it or claimed any interest in it. He also lacks any standing in an unsubscribed burner phone. The … Continue reading