Archives
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Recent Posts
- CA2: No 4A requirement for SWs being issued with notice to target
- CA6: Denying ptf access to his own bathroom during a search of his house stated 4A claim
- W.D.Mo.: Not exactly following the inventory policy doesn’t make it unreasonable under 4A
- GA: No IAC for not challenging complete cell phone download before search
- DNYUZ: CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues
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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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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)
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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: Probation / Parole search
D.Nev.: Parolee with traffic warrants fleeing from car and tossing keys justified parole search of car
Las Vegas officers were randomly running license plates and they ran a Saturn’s plates on a Walgreen’s parking lot after the occupant went into the store. It showed that the owner had outstanding traffic warrants and was on parole. The … Continue reading
Cal.1: Juvenile probation order to disclose all electronic passwords was overbroad
Juvenile probation order to disclose all electronic passwords was overbroad, following other recent cases. In re Ricardo P., 2015 Cal. App. LEXIS 931 (1st Dist. Oct. 22, 2015):
WA: One who cohabitates with a probationer can object to search of shared bedroom
Defendant cohabitated with a probationer. He was present and objected to the search of their bedroom, which he had the right to do. What was found was inadmissible against him. State v. Rooney, 2015 Wash. App. LEXIS 2462 (Oct. 13, … Continue reading
OH7: Burning MJ coming from an apartment is a misdemeanor and not sufficient exigency to enter
Police answered a loud music call at 5 am in an apartment building, and they could smell burning marijuana outside defendant’s apartment door. Burning marijuana is a misdemeanor and not sufficient exigency for a police entry. A 1995 Ohio case … Continue reading
Cal.1st: Probation condition to reveal all passwords to search phones and social media was overbroad
A juvenile’s probation conditions required that he and his family turn over all passwords to cell phones and social media sites. The condition is overbroad considering what probation seeks to accomplish (seeing if he has stolen iPhones), and it implicates … Continue reading
Cal.1: A probationer’s guest can challenge the scope of search provision
Defendant lived in the garage next to a probationer’s house. He could challenge the scope of search provision of the probationer when the police searched the garage, too, as a probation search because it effected him. (In contrast, parolees have … Continue reading
Cal.1: Parole searches in CA only require any officer have knowledge defendant is on supervision, not even the conditions
For a parole search in California, it’s only required that the officer objectively reasonably know that the defendant is on post-release community supervision (PRCS) not even the conditions. People v. Douglas, 2015 Cal. App. LEXIS 840 (1st Dist. September 28, … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: In parole searches, federal court’s duty is to determine if state law complied with
The Michigan parole search regulation has been sustained in the Sixth Circuit, and it requires reasonable suspicion. The court’s duty is to determine whether the regulation was complied with by reasonable suspicion, and it was. United States v. Brown, 2015 … Continue reading
IL: Refusal of consent to a parole search is a violation of parole conditions in itself
Under Illinois law, refusal of consent to a parole search is a violation of parole conditions in itself. That did not make the consent invalid. The court was entitled to believe he consented knowing that he had 800 g of … Continue reading
KY declines to suppress parole search where violation of some procedural rule but not the Fourth Amendment
Defendant was subject to a parole search condition, and the search violated some internal policy of the Department of Corrections. It did not, however, violate the Fourth Amendment, and the court holds that the policy violation did not require that … Continue reading
C.D.Ill.: Calls to wife showed exigency for potential removal of drugs hidden in safe in house
Defendant’s calls to his wife showed there was exigency in the contents of a safe at their house because he wanted it moved immediately. That was exigency. Also, she had apparent authority to consent. United States v. Simmons, 2015 U.S. … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Riley doesn’t require SW for parole search of cell phone
Riley doesn’t apply to a parole search of a cell phone because of the defendant waiving his Fourth Amendment rights by accepting parole. United States v. Johnson, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106925 (N.D.Cal. August 13, 2015). Even though the patdown … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Def’s parole status admissible to show why he was subjected to a rigorous search so motives of officers wouldn’t be questioned
Defendant’s being on parole was admissible to explain why he was subjected to a rigorous search because, otherwise, the officers’ motives might be questioned. United States v. Johnson, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105518 (N.D.Cal. August 11, 2015):
S.D.N.Y.: Def’s waving in PO was consent to enter
Defendant’s gesture to parole officers at his door was reasonably interpreted by them as waving them in. Once they were inside he didn’t protest. When his girlfriend came out of a room, they asked if there was anybody else in … Continue reading
TN: Fleeing, crashing, and abandoning car, taking another, and fleeing to another state is abandonment of the first car
“By leaving his crashed vehicle in a position that was blocking the roadway and fleeing in another vehicle [to another state], the defendant manifested through his own actions an intent to abandon the truck and its contents. As a result, … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Police daily briefing provided PO with RS of a probation violation
Defendant’s PO received a daily brief from the police that mentioned that defendant was in a car stopped and identified as a gang member. One of his conditions of parole was to avoid gang activity. That was justification for a … Continue reading
CA2: A can in a brown paper bag justified a drinking in public stop; just because it might have been a soft drink isn’t determinative
The district court erred in suppressing a stop by a parole officer of a parolee walking down the street with an apparent beer can in a brown paper bag that concealed what it was. Just because it could have been … Continue reading
OH10: Asking for DL of driver of parked car was a stop of everybody in the car
Defendant was in a parked car with others when the police pulled up. It became a stop of everybody in the car under Brendlin when the officer asked for ID, and there was no reasonable suspicion of any crime whatsoever. … Continue reading