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- CA6: State officer’s arrest for violation of federal MJ law likely wouldn’t violate 4A
- D.N.M.: Shared driveway outside of fence and gate was not curtilage
- CA6: Knowing passcode to cell phone shows common authority over it to consent
- VI: Smell of MJ no longer PC in VI since legalization
- Reason: 3 Charlotte Cops Resign After Group Chat Reveals Competition To Arrest the Most Black People
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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: Arrest or entry on arrest
E.D.Ky.: Def’s handcuffing was not an arrest, but it was custody for Miranda purposes
“The Court finds that Sydnor was not placed under formal arrest when officers handcuffed him at the beginning of the search. However, Sydnor was in custody for purposes of Miranda during the search. Regarding the statements themselves, the first one … Continue reading
MN: Arrest warrant permits entry into home of third party for arrest of guest
“Neither the United States Constitution nor the Minnesota Constitution requires police to obtain a search warrant before entering a third party’s home to execute a lawfully issued arrest warrant for a guest.” State v. deLottinville, 2017 Minn. LEXIS 55 (Feb. … Continue reading
FL: Hot pursuit for misd possession of MJ and nonviolent fleeing does not permit warrantless entry into the home
Hot pursuit for misdemeanor possession of marijuana and nonviolent fleeing does not permit a warrantless entry into the home. State v. Markus, 2017 Fla. LEXIS 233 (Jan. 31, 2017), aff’g Markus v. State, 160 So. 3d 488 (Fla. 1st DCA … Continue reading
ID: Driving on a suspended DL supports a search incident of the person
The officer knew defendant had a suspended DL, and seeing him drive to a convenience store justified his detention and arrest. A frisk incident to the arrest produced drug paraphernalia which was validly found. State v. Lee, 2017 Ida. App. … Continue reading
OR: Detention at gunpoint wasn’t attenuated from statement
Defendant’s stop and detention was with a show of force, and his statement wasn’t attenuated from his de facto arrest. Suppression order affirmed. State v. Pichardo, 360 Ore. 754 (Jan. 20, 2017), aff’g 275 Ore. App. 49, 364 P.3d 1 … Continue reading
NY2: Search of house for weapon after protective sweep was unreasonable
Defendant was reported to have assaulted people outside his house with a small bat and a brandishing a firearm. Police arrived, and he ran inside. Police kicked the door in, secured him, cleared the house [a protective sweep] putting the … Continue reading
D.P.R.: PC permits a warrantless arrest for a felony; no right to arrest at earliest possible time
If there is probable cause for an arrest without a warrant, it doesn’t matter that officers had time to get an arrest warrant and didn’t or that they didn’t arrest at the earliest possible time. An arrest warrant is not … Continue reading
OH8: 911 call about a door open and a possible break-in justified police entry to check
A minister called the police to report the door of a warehouse across the street was open, and he felt something was wrong and it must be a break-in. The police respond and enter and see a marijuana grow operation. … Continue reading
NJ: Officer’s entry into def’s home for def to retrieve his ID was without justification and therefore was unreasonable
An investigative stop in an apartment complex parking lot, not based on reasonable suspicion, did not justify following defendant into his home to get his ID, especially after the officer did a quick patdown before they went in. Once inside, … Continue reading
OH6: Because OH limits minor misdemeanor searches more than the 4A, search of def because of marijuana flakes on shirt was unreasonable
Defendant was a passenger in a vehicle stopped for suspicion the driver had a suspended DL because of a computer check. Defendant was made to get out of the vehicle despite being blind. The officer noted marijuana flakes on his … Continue reading
D.Idaho: Def’s flight from an unreasonable stop, after initial detention, wasn’t attenuated
Defendant’s flight and dropping gun from an illegal arrest here wasn’t an intervening circumstance. There was nothing in the 911 call that justified defendant’s stop in the first place. Defendant complied at first, and then fled. United States v. Gallinger, … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Def, a citizen of Mexico suspected of drug trafficking in his mother’s car, was lawfully arrested when he was lured to a border crossing to talk about her permanent resident status
Defendant’s mother, a citizen of Mexico who crossed regularly at Tecate, was arrested for importation of meth in her car, which she claimed was a gift from her son. Officers were looking for him and finally found him in Mexico … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Undocumented alien was held w/o PC and interrogated; exclusionary rule applies
“This is a story about law-enforcement officers who take shortcuts in their zeal to make arrests and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibit them from doing so.” Defendant was validly stopped, but he was … Continue reading
D.Me.: Detaining def, taking his hotel room key, and moving him from outside the hotel to just outside his hotel room was an arrest; but here with PC
Detaining defendant, taking his hotel room key, and moving him from outside the hotel to just outside his hotel room was a clear indication to defendant he was under arrest. On the totality of circumstances, however, there was probable cause … Continue reading
WaPo: The Watch Blog: DOJ report: Arrests without PC, held for days without a lawyer; here it’s a “CID hold”
WaPo: The Watch Blog by Radley Balko: Incredible Justice Department report finds brazen and systemic police abuse in Louisiana. Officers in two departments made hundreds of “secret” arrests without probable cause. The arrests typically included strip-searches, and arrestees could be … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: While merely being close to another for whom there is reason to frisk or arrest is not PC, here there actually was PC
The FBI had more than reasonable suspicion based on mere propinquity to others. There were specific facts involving defendant that rose to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Amaya, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174615 (N.D.Ill. Dec. 16, 2016).* Defendant’s cell site … Continue reading
DE: CI reported arrest warrant for def so he was arrested; no warrant, however, so search incident was invalid
A CI told the police that defendant had a warrant for his arrest. Without checking, the police arrested. There was no warrant, and the search incident to arrest is void. State v. Rodriguez, 2016 Del. Super. LEXIS 642 (Dec. 21, … Continue reading
OH11: Uncorroborated anonymous call about suicide threat brought police to house; entry unjustified
Defendant was arrested for obstructing because he told officers to come back with a warrant after they showed up at his house at midnight to check on defendant’s son. The police received an anonymous call that defendant’s son had a … Continue reading
OH11: Hot pursuit into a house after a misdemeanant reasonable
A man and a woman were walking in the middle of the road, and the woman was having difficulty standing up. This was a potential violation of statute, plus the officer had some possible concerns with the medical condition of … Continue reading