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- 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
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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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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: Drug or alcohol testing
MO: Driver had standing because passenger was owner of car
Defendant was driving his girlfriend’s car, and she was the passenger. Stopped for a traffic offense, the officer found a warrant from another town, but advised that they didn’t want him arrested on it. The paperwork on the car was … Continue reading
Daily Report: Private Probation Firm Halts Drug Tests Without Court Order
Daily Report: Private Probation Firm Halts Drug Tests Without Court Order by R. Robin McDonald: One of the largest providers of private probation services in Georgia will temporarily stop requiring people on probation to submit to and pay for drug … Continue reading
TN: Passing the FST didn’t negate PC; bloodshot and watery eyes, smelled of alcohol, admitted to 3 beers
Passing the FST didn’t negate probable cause. The officer observed defendant speeding, and, when the officer approached defendant he smelled alcohol, defendant had bloodshot and watery eyes, and defendant told the officer he had consumed three beers. State v. Silva, … Continue reading
WI: Exigency permitted warrantless blood draw of apparent heroin OD, even though he was given antidote
Officers and paramedics were called by friends to a man not breathing in a house. Defendant was found and it had signs of a drug overdose. His blood was drawn to test it, and he was given an injection of … Continue reading
KS decides four cases on implied consent: “refusal to submit” cannot be prosecuted under due process
Punishing withdrawal of implied consent in a suspected DUI case violates due process. “Refusal to submit” cannot be separately prosecuted. Four cases decided Feb. 26th: State v. Ryce, 2016 Kan. LEXIS 107 (Feb. 26, 2016):
IL: Warrantless blood draws pre-Neely are valid under GFE
Illinois law before McNeely permitted warrantless blood draws, and pre-McNeely searches would be valid under Davis good faith. People v. Harrison, 2016 IL App (5th) 150048, 2016 Ill. App. LEXIS 73 (Feb. 18, 2016). A 2254 petitioner gets a COA … Continue reading
ME: Four failed breath tests in 90 min was exigency for warrantless blood draw
The state showed exigent circumstances for a warrantless blood draw. The officer took defendant to a nearby police station where he had after hours access to get a breath sample, but the machine wasn’t working and he didn’t know it. … Continue reading
TX3: Where there was a magistrate at municipal building 24 hours a day, 2½ mi. away, failure to get warrant voids blood draw
There was a magistrate on duty 24 hours a day at the municipal court building, which was about 2½ miles from the scene of the accident, but the officer made no effort to obtain a search warrant. The statute required … Continue reading
Vox: North Carolina is the latest state to find welfare recipients rarely use illegal drugs
Vox: North Carolina is the latest state to find welfare recipients rarely use illegal drugs [.3%] by Victoria M. Massie:
AP: Lawsuit: Private probation company forced illegal drug tests
AP: Lawsuit: Private probation company forced illegal drug tests by Kate Brumback: A private probation company illegally required people on probation for traffic offenses to submit to drug tests at their own expense to profit the company, according to a … Continue reading
SD: Hospital blood draw was for medical purposes, not as agent of police; “small town” folks working together argument fails
Just because this DUI happened in a small town and the hospital drew blood from defendant on admission, as it usually does, that doesn’t mean that the hospital was acting as an agent of the police when doing the blood … Continue reading
TX2: Warrantless blood draw under TX statute still unconstitutional where no warrant exception applies
The nonconsensual and warrantless search and seizure of defendant’s blood, which the officer conducted under Tex. Transp. Code § 724.012 and without facts supporting an independent exception to the warrant requirement, violated the Fourth Amendment. State v. Swan, 2016 Tex. … Continue reading
Grits for Breakfast: Blood draw vote casts light on CCA Fourth Amendment divisions
Grits for Breakfast: Blood draw vote casts light on CCA Fourth Amendment divisions:
MN: Charging driver with the crime of refusal violates 4A and due process
Charging a driver with violating Minnesota’s refusal statute for refusing to submit to a urine test implicates a fundamental right because a warrantless search of the driver’s urine would not have been constitutional under an exception to the warrant requirement. … Continue reading
OR: Hyperventilating def was exigency for dispensing with blood draw warrant as time wore on
Because the warrant process [despite Oregon’s use of telephonic warrants] would take 2½ hours, there was exigency for defendant’s blood draw in the hospital. Moreover, defendant was hyperventilating when he was stopped, and they didn’t know whether he was faking … Continue reading
KY: DUI roadblock failed state’s well established standards
Kentucky DUI roadblock failed the standards adopted a decade ago, and the stop had to be suppressed. Some standards were complied with, but not enough to make the court comfortable with this one. Commonwealth v. Cox, 2015 Ky. LEXIS 2010 … Continue reading