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- Jail searches: (1) body scan led to SW for body cavity search and (2) biometric scans reasonable
- D.Haw.: Ex parte communications about SW issuance doesn’t require later recusal
- CA5: Bogus traffic stop can’t support frisk
- Jezebel: One Piece of Flock Camera Data Put This Innocent Woman in Jail for 13 Days
- CA3: Coast-to-coast collective knowledge
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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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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)
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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: Probation / Parole search
Jail searches: (1) body scan led to SW for body cavity search and (2) biometric scans reasonable
Plaintiff was subjected to an electronic body scan that led to a body cavity search with a warrant for an apparent mass inside him. This search was reasonable. Brown v. Suess, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 220823 (W.D.N.Y. Sep. 28, 2026). … Continue reading
NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
The suppression order for defendant on coerced consent is reversed. The trial court engaged in its own research into facts to make the decision on acquiring the affidavit for a later warrant, the distance between things, and the temperature at … Continue reading
CA3: Ptfs pled a 4A claim for CPS workers demanding entry without sufficient exigency
Plaintiffs plausibly pled violations of the Fourth Amendment for child protective services demanding and gaining entry into the home without a sufficient showing of exigency to protect the children. Also, the special needs doctrine doesn’t apply here. O’Bryant v. N.J. … Continue reading
ID: Violation of statute in parole arrest doesn’t require suppression
While defendant’s parole arrest by a police officer violated state statute, neither the Fourth Amendment nor state constitution require suppression. State v. Satterfield, 2026 Ida. LEXIS 129 (Sep. 11, 2026):
D.Utah: Younger abstention applies to a person with common interest
Younger abstention applies to a person with common interest with a person who had their case adjudicated adversely in state court. Valdez v. City of Provo, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 204752 (D. Utah Sep. 9, 2026). Information that defendant has … Continue reading
DC: Def on supervision before sentencing had no REP in GPS monitoring
Defendant was on high intensity supervision with GPS for his current conviction, but he hadn’t yet been sentenced. Officers didn’t need a warrant to obtain his GPS data. “This case involves a defendant who had been adjudicated guilty, and PSA … Continue reading
CA9: Ptfs didn’t meet burden of showing administrative subpoena was 4A violation or in bad faith
Bad faith administrative subpoenas are grounded in the Fourth Amendment, but the burden is high in showing bad faith, and plaintiffs didn’t meet it. Queerdoc, PLLC v. DOJ, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 24567 (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2026) (“The prohibition … Continue reading
S.D.W.Va.: Admission to a little marijuana in backpack didn’t justify search of her car trunk
Defendant’s admission to the officers she had a little marijuana in her backpack didn’t justify a search of the trunk. United States v. Bowling, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 169576 (S.D. W. Va. July 30, 2026). Plaintiff’s § 1983 false arrest … Continue reading
Cal.1: Search condition for mental health diversion was within court’s discretion
The trial court acted within its statutory discretion imposing a search condition on defendant during his mental health diversion. His criminal history justified it. Thompson v. Superior Court, 2026 Cal. App. LEXIS 459 (1st Dist. July 30, 2026). One defendant … Continue reading
NY1: 911 call about shooting in apartment building led officers to def’s apartment and exigency justified entry
“The record supports the court’s conclusion that the warrantless entry into defendant’s apartment was justified under the emergency doctrine …. The officers received a 911 call reporting that someone was shot in the building; found a bullet on the floor … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Supervised release search condition permitted cell phone search
The warrantless search of defendant’s cell phone was reasonable because he was a supervised release. The timing of the search after the seizure of the phone was also reasonable. United States v. Yama, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160332 (E.D. Cal. … Continue reading
MT: Exigency is found in the totality of circumstances
In a domestic dispute, officers had exigent circumstances to enter on the totality of circumstances. Defendant challenged them one-by-one, but the totality applies. State v. Friscia, 2026 MT 158 (July 21, 2026). It was not reasonably subject to dispute that … Continue reading
CA6: Despite two guns being suppressed from arrest on bare-bones arrest affidavit, third gun was later validly seized by independent source
The first search warrant was based on a bare-bones arrest affidavit. Two guns were seized and a third left behind. The seizure of the third gun was valid by the independent source doctrine. “Because investigators would have sought and obtained … Continue reading
ND: Probation search of cell phone was reasonable
Probation search of defendant’s cell phone, whether he owned it or merely possessed it, was reasonable. He claimed it was someone else’s he had with permission. State v. Warner, 2026 ND 133 (July 9, 2026). Habeas petitioner’s Fourth Amendment ineffective … Continue reading
CA11: Yahoo not a govt actor in scanning emails for CSAM
Yahoo and NCMEC didn’t act as government agents when they scanned defendant’s email account for hash values of CSAM. They were not required to do so, but did so and warned customers they would. NCMEC passed on the information to … Continue reading
CO: Anonymous report of student smoking pot in school justified backpack search
An anonymous report to a school official the juvenile was smoking pot in class justified a search of his backpack under T.L.O. Suppression order reversed. People in interest of T.J.W., 2026 CO 38 (June 1, 2026). Defendant’s parole search was … Continue reading
W.D.Wash.: Immigration arrest warrants can be signed by ALJs without violating 4A
“‘[C]onsistent with the Fourth Amendment, immigration authorities may arrest individuals for civil immigration removal purposes pursuant to an administrative arrest warrant issued by an executive official, rather than by a judge.’ Gonzalez v. U.S. Immigr. & Customs Enf’t, 975 F.3d … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: PO not needed for a parole search
Defendant’s claim of “reverse stalking horse” parole search because the PO wasn’t present fails. There was reasonable suspicion for the search. United States v. Rose, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103581 (E.D. Tenn. May 11, 2026). The government gets the credibility … Continue reading
D.D.C.: PO’s alleged violation of probation regulations doesn’t warrant suppression if a reasonable mistake
Even if GPS monitoring by a Community Supervision Officer under D.C. law violated regulations, a reasonable mistake of law (Heien) overcomes the violation, and it is not suppressed. United States v. White, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92214 (D.D.C. Apr. 27, … Continue reading
D.Idaho: Not unreasonable for PO to hand over def’s cell phone to LEO for extraction after RS developed from Snapchat app
Defendant missed a PO visit, and they went to his house. There, they got his cell phone and looked at his Snapchat app finding messages between him and a 14 year old. It was not unreasonable for them to hand … Continue reading