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
CA7: Parole search permitted of gym bag left in cousin’s car when defendant wasn’t present
Defendant was on parole and suspected of being involved in a shooting. He left a gym bag in his cousin’s car. The parole search condition permitted the search of his gym bag even though he wasn’t present at the time. … Continue reading
CA9: Parole search includes the car the parolee was driving when stopped
Defendant’s argument that a parole search of a parolee driving a car can’t include the car is rejected. A gun was found hidden under the cover the of gearshift lever. United States v. Bautista, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 4798 (9th … Continue reading
OH5: Defendant didn’t rebut the presumption of regularity of the warrant
Defendant didn’t rebut the presumption of regularity of the warrant. “There is a presumption of regularity when an arrest or a search is authorized by a warrant. A judicial officer has conducted a prior review of the facts and circumstances … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Passenger’s unexplained flight from car was abandonment of his backpack
In a traffic stop, the passenger fled for no apparent reason. The backpack he left behind was abandoned property. Officers waited for his return before searching it. United States v. Nowak, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35351 (D.S.D. March 19, 2015), … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Hotel room qualified as temporary residence for parole search
A parolee was staying in a hotel room between residences, and the officers had probable cause to believe that evidence of counterfeiting would be found there. Therefore, the hotel room qualified as a temporary residence subject to parole search. United … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Where parole search required RS, anonymous tip consistent with other violation information was enough
A parole search under Michigan law only requires reasonable suspicion. An anonymous tip in the past has been held not enough. Here, however, the anonymous telephone tip was consistent with some of defendant’s parole violations, so here it’s enough. United … Continue reading
IN: Walking drug dog through house as a probation search was reasonable
Probation searches in Indiana can be by any law enforcement officer on reasonable suspicion, and defendant was on electronic monitoring at home. Such searches are always governed by reasonableness, and the court does not find it unreasonable to walk a … Continue reading
CO: Juvie probation wouldn’t be deterred by suppressing DNA taken in violation of statute
Taking a DNA swab from a juvenile on probation violated the state statute on juvenile probation, but the court declines to suppress the evidence because probation officers cannot be deterred from committing such statutory violations. “Juvenile probation officers performing a … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Govt failed to show defendant was aware of conditions of probation for probation search
Defendant was arrested for something after he was put on probation in state court but before the formal sentencing order and written conditions were completed. The government failed to show that defendant was aware of his conditions of probation that … 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
ID: A parole officer can direct a police officer to conduct a parole search
A parole officer can direct the police to conduct a parole search. Also, one cannot argue on appeal that which was not presented to the trial court, here a state constitutional argument against the search. Nevertheless, it is rejected on … Continue reading
MD: Search of defendant’s car can’t be justified as a parole search when the officer was unaware of parole status at the time
The search of defendant’s car can’t be justified as a parole search when the officer was unaware of parole status at the time of the search. State v. Donaldson, 2015 Md. App. LEXIS 3 (January 28, 2015): None of the … Continue reading
CA4: Use of a drug dog for a walk-through of a house of one on supervised release violates Fourth Amendment
The use of a drug dog for a walk-through of a house of one on supervised release is suppressed, and it was contrary to precedent, so no good faith exception. United States v. Hill, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 499 (4th … Continue reading
CA10: Govt used Doppler radar to determine if defendant was in house, but court doesn’t have to decide constitutional question
Defendant was wanted for not reporting to probation, and there was a warrant for his arrest. The government used Doppler radar to determine whether defendant was in his house at the time. The court has concerns about the use of … Continue reading
D.Alaska: Incomplete tape recording of SW application doesn’t warrant suppression
The tape recording of the officer’s testimony supporting the issuance of the search warrant by a state court judge was incomplete. Nevertheless, there is no constitutional violation because what there is supports the warrant. Compliance with state law on this … Continue reading
M.D.Ga.: Def’s probation search of gun safe was with RS of drugs, even if door had to be peeled
Officers had reasonable suspicion for a probation search of defendant’s house, and that included his gun safe. They could have peeled the door but didn’t, and defendant’s giving the combination was essentially moot because the officers could have broken in. … Continue reading
OH4: Padlocked bedroom in house shared with probationer couldn’t be searched by PO
Police and a probation officer entered defendant’s premises because his housemate was on probation. A padlocked bedroom could not be searched because there was no reason to believe it was the probationer’s. One officer testified to hearing noises inside, another … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Warrantless PO’s search of cell phone with reasonable suspicion was reasonable
Warrantless search of a sex offense probationer’s cell phone by state PO on reasonable suspicion he was arranging a liaison with a 15 year old was reasonable under Riley and Knights read together. United States v. Dahl, 2014 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading