Archives
-
Recent Posts
- D.Utah: Minor time detours to writing up a traffic ticket didn’t unreasonable extend this stop; the dog was quickly on its way
- KY: Despite lack of nexus, SW sustained under GFE
- CO: DNA could be seized from trash
- CA8: Nebraska statute allowing SWs to cross state lines doesn’t violate 4A
- WA: Sweat patch as condition of release violated state constitution’s privacy provision
-
-
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: Drug or alcohol testing
OR: No exigency for warrantless entry into home for BAC when another warrant required for that anyway
In a DUI case, the state did not show exigent circumstances to enter defendant’s home to take him into custody to then have to seek a search warrant for his blood anyway. State v. Ritz, 361 Ore. 781, 2017 Ore. … Continue reading
WA: Random UAs valid as condition of probation for DUI
“At issue in this case is whether a court may require a probationer convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) to submit to random urinalysis testing (UAs) for controlled substances. In particular, this issue centers on whether this testing violates … Continue reading
PA: Conflict of laws: PA law applies as site of crime even though blood draw in NY
Defendant had a DUI accident in Pennsylvania and his blood was drawn at an ER in New York for medical purposes. New York law would exclude the evidence, but Pennsylvania law would not because the doctor-patient privilege doesn’t apply in … Continue reading
PA has two on DUI blood tests; TN applies GFE to pre-McNeely blood draw
Hospital blood draw from an unconscious defendant at the hospital was inadmissible without a warrant or exigent circumstance. Commonwealth v. Myers, 2017 Pa. LEXIS 1689 (July 19, 2017). “Based on the reasoning set forth in Neville and Graham, we find … Continue reading
TX13: Untested hospital drawn blood sample has to be obtained by SW not subpoena
Defendant was in a car wreck and hospitalized. The other person in the wreck died. At the hospital, he was treated and released, but blood was drawn for medical purposes but never analyzed by the hospital. The officer obtained a … Continue reading
KS implied consent statute unconstitutional under Birchfield
The Kansas implied consent statute, K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 8-1025(a), is facially unconstitutional under Birchfield. State v. Ryce, 2017 Kan. LEXIS 327 (June 30, 2017). Under the Tennessee child exploitation statute, “process” that must be executed by the prosecutor means arrest … Continue reading
IA: Breath test of boater was valid as search incident under 4A but not state const.
“[T]he breath test [of a boater] constituted a search incident to arrest excepted from the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement under Birchfield.” State v. Pettijohn, 2017 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 78 (June 30, 2017):
NYTimes: Why We Shouldn’t Drug Test Poor People
NYTimes: Why We Shouldn’t Drug Test Poor People by Jamila Michener and Julilly Kohler-Hausmann President Trump with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin this month. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The Senate Republicans’ stalled effort to repeal the Affordable Care … Continue reading
NC: Warrantless blood draw from unconscious driver violated 4A
“We now address the application of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Birchfield v. North Dakota and Missouri v. McNeely to the situation at bar, specifically, the warrantless blood draw from defendant for purposes of determining blood alcohol content. We hold … Continue reading
CA5: 15 minute delay between traffic offense and stop wasn’t constitutionally “stale”
15 minute delay between traffic offense and stop wasn’t constitutionally “stale.” Also, collective knowledge applies to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Zuniga, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 9958 (5th Cir. June 5, 2017). The smell of alcohol after driving the wrong … Continue reading
PA: Once SW issues for clothes and DNA removed, no further warrant needed for DNA testing
DNA lawfully seized from defendant’s clothes did not require a separate warrant to test it. Defendant doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his victim’s DNA on him. Once DNA is lawfully taken, there is no longer any reasonable … Continue reading
WA: Implied consent law now includes testing for THC influenced driving, and it’s constitutional
The implied consent law includes testing for THC concentration, and it is constitutional. Kandler v. City of Kent, 2017 Wash. App. LEXIS 1176 (May 15, 2017). Officers adequately explained date discrepancies in the paperwork and use of a search warrant … Continue reading
TN: Warrantless blood draw was exigent; seeking a warrant would delay it beyond 3 hours
The warrantless draw of defendant’s blood was justified on the basis of exigent circumstances. The officer acted reasonably by authorizing a warrantless blood draw so as to prevent a delay of over three hours before defendant’s blood could be preserved … Continue reading
CA6: Officer arresting on warrant for failure to perform community service that was mistakenly issued had QI
The officer executing a warrant that should not have been issued by the court in the first place for plaintiff’s failure to perform his community service had qualified immunity. Beckham v. City of Euclid, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 8453 (6th … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Search for gun outside house in curtilage was reasonable based on exigency or public safety
A search outside for a gun was reasonable for both public and officer safety. Officers responded to a domestic call at 2 am and there were four brothers there who concerned them. United States v. Sturdevant, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
Arkansas Times: State spends $30,000 drug testing TANF recipients for drugs, nabs 2
Think Progress: States spend millions to drug test the poor, turn up few positive results by Josh Isreal (“They spent $1.3 million to find just 369 drug users.”) My own state: Arkansas Times: State spends $30,000 drug testing TANF recipients … Continue reading
WaPo: Want Medicaid coverage? A drug test should come first, Wisconsin governor says
WaPo: Want Medicaid coverage? A drug test should come first, Wisconsin governor says by Paige Winfield Cunningham: Now that House Republicans have squandered their shot at reordering Medicaid, governors who want conservative changes in the health program for low-income Americans … Continue reading
CA10: Random drug testing of juvenile detention supervisors was reasonable
The special needs doctrine justified warrantless random drug testing of juvenile detention officers. A documented problem of drug abuse is not required before they can be tested. The government satisfies its burden for random drug testing in this context balanced … Continue reading