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- GA: Raising particularity in half of one sentence of argument isn’t a presentation of the issue
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- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
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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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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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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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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: Scope of search
D.Nev.: SW for def’s trailer for evidence of practicing medicine without a license didn’t support search of a safe
The probable cause was for search of defendant’s trailer for evidence of conducting an illegal medical practice. Nothing in the affidavit supported search of defendant’s safe inside the trailer which was broken open and then a warrant was obtained to … Continue reading
Army Ct.Crim.App.: SW for evidence of sex abuse on computer didn’t include child porn
A military search warrant for evidence of “attempted sexual abuse of a child, abusive sexual contact with a child and other offenses related” did not include child pornography. When child pornography was found, another warrant was required, and CID didn’t … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Def’s motion to suppress because of overseizure is denied for moment; parties to confer on what might be suppressible
Defendant argued that the search warrant for documents exceeded the scope of the warrant. Counsel’s declaration was insufficient, but the court recognizes the argument and orders the parties to confer and determine that which they can agree. United States v. … Continue reading
WY: It was reasonable for officer to believe backpack behind driver was his for consent search; no objection from passenger
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress the search of his backpack in the car of another when the other consented to a search of the car. Defendant’s backpack was behind the driver, not him, … Continue reading
MA: Def’s furtive movement was hiding a small quantity of MJ, and that didn’t justify search of the backseat area when he was out of car
During a traffic stop, defendant lifted himself up consistent with hiding something, and that justified an order to get out of the car. When only a small quantity of marijuana was found, the exigency dissipated, and a search of the … Continue reading
NJ: SW including “all persons present or reasonably connected to the property” didn’t permit search of two men in car down street
Two men parked in a car down the street could not be searched under a warrant for nearby property with an “all persons present or reasonably connected to the property” clause. There was no way to connect them to the … Continue reading
PA: Trial court erred in finding separate room in apt searched with SW was somebody else’s separate living quarters
The search warrant was for an apartment, and there was no justification for the trial court’s finding that a separate room inside was really separate living quarters for somebody else. There was no separate entrance or no mailbox. Commonwealth v. … Continue reading
CA6: Where def refused to provide combination to his safe during execution of a SW, it was reasonable to pry it open
Defendant showed the police that he had marijuana inside his home and the police obtained a warrant to search his home. Thus, suppression was not warranted because there was an outright certainty, not just a “fair probability,” that the house … Continue reading
MA: SW for def’s house authorized seizure and a search of his person on his front sidewalk
A search warrant for defendant’s house authorized police to detain and search him on the sidewalk out front of his house and seize his cell phone from him under Michigan v. Summers and state cases applying it. Commonwealth v. Mattier, … Continue reading
VA: Girlfriend’s authority over room didn’t extend to boyfriend’s closed bag
Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his girlfriend’s room because they both were staying there, but he retained it in a closed bag left in her room. She had the authority to consent to a search of the … Continue reading
KS: A vehicle on the curtilage belonging at house may be searched with a SW for the “premises”
A car belonging to the house the target of a search warrant and on the curtilage at the time of execution is subject to search under a warrant for the “premises.” In this case, defendant’s son was sitting in the … Continue reading
MO: Where items included in SW without PC, severance of the warrant is required, not blanket suppression
Officers checked off boxes on a search warrant form about what to search for (not a good way to present a warrant). Items 1-9 (property) that were found were supported by probable cause, and item 10 (corpse) wasn’t, but that … Continue reading
PA: Warrant said “residence,” so it was not limited to garage, even though the PC was directed at it
The drug search warrant specified “the residence,” but the primary focus was the garage because that’s what the police knew. That did not mean, however, that only the garage could be searched. In the course of the drug investigation, police … Continue reading
OR: SW for trace evidence on carpets allowed search of carpet cleaning equipment
In an attempted murder case, defendant was convicted of conspiracy. “[P]olice had a warrant to search the entire residence for evidence, and that DNA, blood or blood spatter, hair, and trace evidence were the types of evidence that one could … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Searching a Bible during a house drug search was reasonable in case it was hollowed out
Searching a Bible during a house drug search was reasonable in case it was hollowed out. A page was dog eared and noted as potentially relevant to the case. Opening the Bible was reasonable under the circumstance. The case starts … Continue reading
CA3: “Computer hardware” and “any equipment” in a child porn SW includes cell phones
“The warrant, as written, defines ‘computer hardware’ broadly. Horton does not and cannot argue that his cell phone is not ‘computer hardware’ as it is defined in the warrant, which includes ‘any equipment’ (emphasis added) capable of transmitting computer data. … Continue reading