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- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
- 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
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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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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
OH11: Officer’s delay in investigation of defendant made pursuit no longer “hot pursuit”
The officer had probable cause for defendant’s arrest, but it wasn’t any longer hot pursuit because the officer directed his attention elsewhere. The entry into defendant’s house could not be justified by hot pursuit. State v. Lowe, 2015-Ohio-1064, 2015 Ohio … Continue reading
TX11: Odor of alcohol alone is not probable cause
Odor of alcohol alone is not probable cause. “Trooper Johnson simply was not asked about any physical observations that he made of Appellant’s eyes, speech, or movement; nor was he asked what effect, if any, these observations may have had … Continue reading
CA8: No standing in co-def’s CSLI
One defendant has no standing to challenge CSLI obtained from codefendants’ phones in real time under a court order. A wiretap and a CSLI order can be combined in one application. United States v. Turner, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 4295 … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: Notice of forfeiture certified mail to jail is proper notice
Certified mail of notice of a forfeiture to the jail defendant was residing in was sufficient notice. A motion for return of property under Rule 41(g) has to be filed in the district where the property was seized, and this … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Just arrested snitch was corroborated enough to be believable for PC purposes
The CI was recently arrested in this investigation, and, while he had no track record, his tale was sufficiently corroborated by other information that had been developed to make him believable enough for probable cause. United States v. Arballo, 2015 … Continue reading
NYTimes (AP): Florida: Drug Testing Law Is Dropped
NYTimes (AP): Florida: Drug Testing Law Is Dropped Gov. Rick Scott will not seek United States Supreme Court review of a law that would have required applicants for welfare benefits to submit to drug testing.
MT: Officers entering on a civil standby for a roommate moving out made a valid plain view of MJ grow
Officers were called for a civil standby to assist a woman from moving out of a house where she feared trouble from her roommates. It was objectively reasonable to believe her based on her conversation and because she had a … Continue reading
W.D.Wis.: Where PV warrant was already in system, pretext argument fails
The probation violation warrant was already in the system, and there was no evidence whatsoever that it was procured as a pretext to arrest defendant without probable cause. There was also attenuation because of actual probable cause. United States v. … Continue reading
Cal.4th: Davis GFE applies to pre-McNeely blood testing
California’s 4th District applies Davis good faith exception to pre-McNeely blood testing. People v. Harris, 2015 Cal. App. LEXIS 154 (4th Dist. February 19, 2015):
W.D.N.Y.: Dilated pupils without impaired driving seen by a DRE officer still not PC
Officer’s testimony that he was a drug recognition expert didn’t support probable cause here that defendant was under the influence when driving because there was also no evidence of impairment. United States v. McAuley, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181937 (W.D.N.Y. … Continue reading
AutoBlog: Florida drivers are refusing to talk to police at DUI checkpoints… and taping it
AutoBlog: Florida drivers are refusing to talk to police at DUI checkpoints… and taping it: No one would ever say that it’s fun to go through a DUI checkpoint, at least in part because they slow people down from getting … Continue reading
MN: The search incident doctrine permits a breathalyzer test in a DUI case, so a refusal charge doesn’t violate a fundamental right
The search incident doctrine permits a breathalyzer test in a DUI case. Thus, a refusal charge doesn’t violate a fundamental right. State v. Bernard, 2015 Minn. LEXIS 46 (February 11, 2015) (5-2):
WOAI Radio: Bill in Legislature Would Mandate Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients
WOAI Radio (Texas): Bill in Legislature Would Mandate Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients by Jim Forsyth: An old argument has roared back to life in Texas, as a prominent Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill requiring that welfare recipients undergo … Continue reading
CO: Davis GFE applies to a pre-McNeely DUI blood draw
Because state law said it was proper at the time, Davis good faith applies to a warrantless blood draw “problematic” under McNeely. People v. Barry, 2015 Colo. App. LEXIS 95 (January 29, 2015):
ND: Refusal to submit statute doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment under McNeely
The North Dakota refusal to submit statute doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment or state constitution under McNeely. State v. Birchfield, 2015 ND 6, 2015 N.D. LEXIS 5 (January 15, 2015):
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
Cal.2: Continued combativeness of DUI suspect was exigency for no BAC warrant
Defendant was driving a semi that had a head-on collision with another vehicle where defendant was driving on the wrong side of the road. He stopped nearly ½ mile from the accident. When police arrived he was combative and profane … Continue reading