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- Treatise on sale to 11/1
- MD: While protective sweep information made it into SW affidavit, there was PC without it
- N.D.Ga.: A Customs forensic search of a cell phone away from the border was still a border search
- 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
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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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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)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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: Arrest or entry on arrest
GA: Consent to DNA paternity test for sex with 12 year old didn’t bar use of test in criminal case
Defendant’s consent to a DNA test for a paternity test for impregnating a 12 year old didn’t preclude using the evidence in a criminal investigation for having sex with her. Defendant had to know that was possible. Andrews v. State, … Continue reading
Upworthy: Cop doesn’t understand how law works, arrests guy who does for something totally legal
Upworthy: Cop doesn’t understand how law works, arrests guy who does for something totally legal by Adam Mordecai: That awkward moment when your average citizen knows more about the law than the police do.
LA Times: Whittier police officers sue, say they were forced to meet quotas
LA Times: Whittier police officers sue, say they were forced to meet quotas by Veronica Rocha Six Whittier police officers are suing the city, saying they faced retaliation when they complained and refused to meet alleged ticket and arrest quotas.
AP: Student Arrested While Photographing Cop Takes Suit to Trial
AP: Student Arrested While Photographing Cop Takes Suit to Trial by Maryclaire Dale: A college student arrested as he photographed a Philadelphia police encounter with a homeless woman said Wednesday he tried to be “a fly on the wall” until … Continue reading
Does the TSA run warrants on all passengers? Maybe
Defendant’s consent to search a box when he was in custody in a holding cell in Seattle airport’s jail was shown to be voluntary. He said “Go ahead. It’s just helicopter parts.” Heroin and meth were found in a radio … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Arrest of man talking to def outside house before drug raid was without PC; knew nothing of him
Defendant’s arrest, as a man on the street near a house that was to be raided, was without probable cause. Merely getting a bag from the target before the raid wasn’t enough. They really had nothing on him. United States … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: No right to be arrested at earliest possible time
It is not unreasonable to observe a misdemeanor and wait an hour to arrest the defendant when he’s doing something else. Here, they waited for him to leave a bar so the arrest wouldn’t be inside. United States v. Watkins, … Continue reading
AR: Anonymous tip def was in a hotel room was insufficient under Payton for entry on arrest warrant
Defendant was wanted for bank robbery, and the police had an arrest warrant. In a case of first impression, an anonymous tip that defendant was in a hotel room was not enough to base an entry on the arrest warrant … Continue reading
CA3: Federal court can’t enjoin state court to re-seal a SW affidavit accidentally released in a federal case and published by press
John Dougherty was the target of a sealed search warrant and affidavit that led to no indictment. Later, Donald Dougherty (no relation) was indicted and, in his case, the John Dougherty search warrant and affidavit were accidentally filed of record. … Continue reading
NPR: Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Facing More Legal Troubles
NPR: Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Facing More Legal Troubles by Jude Joffe-Block: A federal judge in Arizona is planning a series of hearings to find out if Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio should be held in contempt of court for … Continue reading
CA11: Summers applies to arrest warrant execution, too
Summers, on detaining persons near the scene of search warrants, is applied, in an unreported decision, to arrest warrants, too. Gomez v. United States, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 2118 (11th Cir. February 11, 2015):
S.D.Ill.: Arrest warrant for one person and consent entry didn’t authorize entry into separate apartment in house [excellent discussion of arrest v. search warrants]
Officers had an arrest warrant for Herman Smith at a particular address in Madison, Illinois. They obtained entry by consent. Once inside, they learned that what they thought was a single family residence was really three. They entered defendant’s separate … Continue reading
NYTimes: Ferguson One of 2 Missouri Suburbs Sued Over Gantlet of Traffic Fines and Jail
NYTimes: Ferguson One of 2 Missouri Suburbs Sued Over Gantlet of Traffic Fines and Jail by Monica Davey: Mr. Nelson, who paints buildings but is out of work, is among 15 residents of the St. Louis region who filed two … 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
D.V.I.: Ordering defendant out of his house with guns drawn constitutes a constructive arrest in the home
Ordering defendant out of his house with guns drawn constitutes a constructive arrest in the home. His later consent to search it, however, was found attenuated. United States v. Bailey, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7851 (D.V.I. January 23, 2015): Further, … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: L.A. County Warrant System Needs Fixing
Courthouse News Service: L.A. County Warrant System Needs Fixing by Mat Reynolds: LOS ANGELES (CN) – A federal judge is poised to address a longstanding problem in the Los Angeles County warrant system that incarcerates thousands of innocent people, and … Continue reading
Cal.4: DV improper in state § 1983 case; 14 detention of guests at house at time of raid was likely unreasonable, and no QI
Plaintiff had a big annual Halloween party at his Orange County mansion that the neighbors always complained about. This one was called “Casino Night,” so the OCSO decided to get a search warrant and raid the place with the SWAT … Continue reading
CA7 & Cal.1: GPS placed in 2011 saved by GFE; one case a triple murder
When the GPS was put on defendant’s car in 2011 before Jones, binding precedent said that it was lawful, so the good faith exception applies. United States v. Taylor, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 601 (7th Cir. January 14, 2015); People … Continue reading