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Recent Posts
- CA8: Def’s 20 prior arrests helped show voluntariness of consent
- TX1: No standing to challenge seizure of ketamine off co-def, but PC was lacking for his own arrest
- KS: 13 days pole camera surveillance violated no REP
- E.D.Va.: WaPo reporter’s SW was overbroad and 1A protected
- CAAF: GFE applies to cell phone’s geolocation data because of substantial basis for the search authorization
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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)
--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: Seizure
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
N.D.Cal.: Waving money and looking nervous on a street corner was RS to a trained narcotics officer
A police officer stopping behind an already parked car isn’t a stop of the person who is free to walk away, United States v. Kim, 25 F.3d 1426 (9th Cir. 1994), but it is of the car. Here, officers had … Continue reading
OH9: Where the car in which defendant was a passenger was going to be inventoried, def’s detention for officer safety was reasonable
The continued detention of the defendant passenger in a car, incidental to the stop of the driver, pending the inventory of the car was reasonable. The trial court resolved a fact dispute and concluded that defendant consented to a search … Continue reading
NC: Taking defendant’s driver’s license back to the patrol car to run it is a seizure of the person and not de minimus under Rodriguez; RS required
Taking defendant’s driver’s license back to the patrol car to run it is a seizure of the person and not de minimus under Rodriguez. Reasonable suspicion is required. State v. Leak, 2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 445 (June 2, 2015) (2-1):
OR concludes that pulling a package out of sorting line violates possessory interest
The recipient of a package has, under U.S. Mail regulations, a limited right to control the package even when in transit because it can be redirected. Here, the package was pulled out for a dog sniff. (Decided under Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
CA4: Denial of consent to enter but admission of meth justified seizure of house to get a SW
Officers came to defendant’s house to do a knock-and-talk about a methamphetamine lab. “Then one of the troopers asked Appellant if he would consent to a search of the home. He refused to consent and informed the troopers they were … Continue reading
CA3: Officers confronted with an unknown call of a screaming woman were not unreasonable in waiting to sort it out, even though it resulted in a delay of getting a woman to the hospital where she died
In a “tragic” case of a young woman dying from lock of oxygen to the brain from an asthma attack, police responded to a 911 call of a “woman screaming” and didn’t know what they had. When they arrived, the … Continue reading
PA: Fourth Amendment applies to mental commitment proceedings
The Fourth Amendment applies in mental commitment proceedings, and there must be probable cause for the seizure of the person the state seeks to commit. The fact that the criminal rules don’t apply to these proceedings does not mean that … Continue reading
MD: Painstaking discussion of a mere “accosting” and a stop
Distinguishing between a mere accosting of persons in a parked car and a stop, the court finds this was a detention governed by the Fourth Amendment and without reasonable suspicion. There was a call at 12:11 am about “drug activity” … Continue reading
KS: Davis GFE applied to a blood draw process valid at time but later held unconstitutional
Defendant was involved in a head-on accident and was unconscious at the hospital when his blood was drawn. The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies because, at the time of the blood draw, it was lawful under state … Continue reading
IN: Transporting to stationhouse is a seizure
Transporting a juvenile down to the station was a seizure requiring probable cause, and here it was lacking. The patdown was unreasonable. D.Y. v. State, 2015 Ind. App. LEXIS 147 (March 11, 2015). Officers had probable cause for the search … Continue reading
D.Alaska: It was reasonable to seize a store where heroin was being sold pending getting a SW
Officers could enter a store where heroin sales were allegedly occurring to seize the store. They told the defendant to put down his phone, and that was reasonable to preserve evidence. A call came in to the phone and the … Continue reading
W.D.Tenn.: Summers doesn’t prohibit a search of a defendant near execution of a search warrant when there is probable cause for search of person
Summers doesn’t prohibit a search of a defendant near execution of a search warrant when there is probable cause for a search of his person. United States v. Matlock, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181607 (W.D.Tenn. October 24, 2014). Defendant was … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Emergency lights alone doesn’t prove a “stop”; defendant was already parked
Defendant was already parked, so he wasn’t stopped, and the officer’s use of the emergency lights on his police car are not determinative of whether there was a “stop.” There was no display of weapons, touching of defendant, no coercive … Continue reading
OH8: Nine gang officers stopped and surrounded a group of men on the street; no reasonable suspicion
A gang unit was driving in a four vehicle convoy into the hood. When they came upon a group of men, the cars all stopped and nine officers got out and surrounded them. All officers were armed with visible weapons, … Continue reading
NYLJ: Challenge to State’s Retention of Seized Computers Dismissed
NYLJ: Challenge to State’s Retention of Seized Computers Dismissed by Andrew Keshner: The state’s seizure and two-year retention of computers during a criminal case did not amount to unlawful taking, a Fourth Department panel ruled, reversing a Court of Claims … Continue reading
OR: Officer pulled into gas station behind defendant and made him talk, thereby making it a stop
Defendant pulled into a gas station, gassed up, and bought a drink. When he came out, a police car was parked behind him, and the officer required him to talk about the reason for the “stop.” This became a stop … Continue reading
Daily Report: Judge Again Rejects Attorney’s Suit Over Courthouse Security Dispute
Daily Report: Judge Again Rejects Attorney’s Suit Over Courthouse Security Dispute by Alyson Palmer: A federal district court judge has once again rejected a lawsuit by an Atlanta lawyer who claims she was injured in a 2010 dispute with a … Continue reading