Archives
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Recent Posts
- Reason: Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech
- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
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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 -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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State courts (and some USDC opinions)
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
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"On the Docket"–Medill
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S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
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General (many free):
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Lexis.com $
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F.R.Crim.P. 41
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
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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: Independent source
D.Mass.: SW for premises included def’s separate locked bedroom
The search warrant for the premises also permitted a search of defendant’s locked separate bedroom only accessible from the common area. United States v. Cecchetelli, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 224649 (D.Mass. Nov. 22, 2021). A host of things added up … Continue reading
DC: PC from the fair inference def had more than the “permissible amount” of MJ
“From all the foregoing, Officer Lojacono could reasonably believe that there was a fair probability that the amount of marijuana he saw in the car exceeded the legally permissible amount” of two ounces. Thus, the automobile exception applied. Harris v. … Continue reading
CT: SW for blood was independent source from extension of stop
The search warrant for defendant’s blood is a valid independent source from the alleged extension of the stop. State v. Fields, 2021 Conn. App. LEXIS 341 (Sept. 28, 2021).* The circumstances of this stop and arrest are objectively reasonable, so … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Subpoena for phone records not shown to be from independent source
Defendant’s motion in limine against AT&T records is granted. The government failed to show an independent source that it knew of information sought before an illegal search. “The government did not shown that the decision to subpoena the records was … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: SW issuing judge has judicial immunity
You can’t sue a judge for issuing a warrant where there’s no allegation that the judge abandoned the judicial role [harkening to good faith exception too]. Kolle v. Kyle, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 148629 (S.D.Ohio Aug. 9, 2021). The smell … Continue reading
S.D.Ind. & E.D.La.: New crime during arrest not suppressed
Even crediting defendant’s version of events, the exclusionary rule would not be applied to the video of defendant’s violent resistance during his arrest. United States v. Hill, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111803 (S.D. Ind. June 14, 2021). Defendant’s new crime … Continue reading
CA2: Even if an administrative search was pretext for a criminal search, there was an independent basis for later SW
Defendants argued that an administrative search was a pretext for a criminal search. A later search warrant was based on independent information from state wiretaps. “Here, assuming arguendo that the administrative search was improper, suppression of the evidence obtained from … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Parolee’s curfew violation justified parole search
A stop and search of a parolee for a curfew violation was reasonable. United States v. Joseph, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32456 (S.D. N.Y. Feb. 22, 2021). Officers entered with an arrest warrant and later followed up with a search … Continue reading
CO: Cell phone SW’s lack of particularity here not cured by second warrant; independent source state’s burden and not proved
The state obtained a search warrant for defendant’s cell phone which they later conceded lacked particularity. They sought a second warrant to attempt to cure, but they failed to put on proof at the hearing that the independent source rule … Continue reading
CA8: “where one draws the line between” independent source and inevitable discovery doctrines “is unimportant”
“Although the distinction between the independent-source and inevitable-discovery doctrines is not sharp …, where exactly one draws the line between the two doctrines is unimportant.” United States v. Baez, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 40551 (8th Cir. Dec. 29, 2020):
M.D.Pa.: Traffic stop may be highly technical, but it still has a factual and legal basis
“Although many reasonable people may agree that the stop at issue here was a highly technical, ‘ticky-tacky’ sort of traffic stop, there is no doubt that Florida law requires a driver to stop at a clearly marked stop line before … Continue reading
MA: Obtaining CSLI by SW in 2014 was independent source against 2010 obtaining by request (and Carpenter was 2018)
The state obtained defendant’s CSLI without a showing of probable cause in 2010. In 2014, they sought it again with a search warrant. Carpenter came in 2018. The independent source doctrine applied in the 2014 search, and defense counsel wasn’t … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Reissuance of a better SW to Google after a motion to suppress wasn’t unreasonable
As to one challenged search of Google, when the government says it won’t use challenged evidence at trial, the motion to suppress becomes moot. A motion to suppress another search warrant to Google led to reissuance of a search warrant … Continue reading
GA: Even if GPS tracker was unconstitutionally placed, it didn’t affect later SW for vehicle
Defendant first claimed the vehicle was his when the officer asked, and he consented to a search of it. After a few loose rounds of ammunition were found, he disavowed ownership. It turned out there was also a tracking device … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Late night view through def’s apartment window violated Jardines but there was still PC without it
Officers conducted a drug investigation into defendant’s apartment and ultimately went to his window in the night to look in and used a flashlight. That was a violation of the Fourth Amendment under Jardines, and the view has to be … Continue reading
CA9: 4A standing isn’t jurisdictional, so it doesn’t have to be decided
Standing for Fourth Amendment purposes is not jurisdictional, so the court can consider the merits instead. United States v. Spadafore, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 2922 (9th Cir. Jan. 28, 2020). The legality of the search warrant for defendant’s car is … Continue reading
CO: After first SW for cell phone was suppressed for Franks violation, second was valid with independent source
Defendant was subjected to two search warrants for his cell phones in possession of the police. A motion to suppress the first search was granted because the officer recklessly included false information that deprived it of probable cause. The police … Continue reading
CA9: Info of illegal search was put into second SW affidavit and independent PC was shown
In a felon in possession case, there was a prior illegal search by state troopers. ATF picked up the case immediately and applied for a search warrant that included the information from the illegal search, and there was independent evidence … Continue reading
NJ: While first DNA sample violated 4A, second was based on independent source and was valid
The first DNA sample taken from defendant violated the Fourth Amendment. The state, however, got a do over and it used untainted information to get a second which was valid based on independent source. State v. Camey, 2019 N.J. LEXIS … Continue reading
ID: State didn’t preserve independent source issue below so it can’t argue it on appeal
A motion to suppress cell phone contents was granted, and the state appealed. At trial, it cited a case without stating the holding that was an independent source case, and that’s not enough. In addition, the state didn’t litigate independent … Continue reading