Archives
-
Recent Posts
- techdirt: The Problems Of The NCMEC CyberTipline Apply To All Stakeholders
- W.D.Ark.: Parole search waiver moots lack of PC argument
- AR: RS shown for boating while intoxicated stop
- W.D.Mo.: Wrong address in SW wasn’t fatal where right house was searched
- NY: Failure to show independent source for officer’s observation of def required reversal
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
-
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
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)
-
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
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
Website design by Wally Waller, Little Rock 
Category Archives: Body searches
WaPo: In horrifying detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches
WaPo: In horrifying detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches by Susan Ferriss, Center for Public Integrity:
TX8: Hospital can’t be sued under § 1983 for medical negligence and battery in conducting intensive body, pelvic, and rectal searches for CBP that produced nothing at all
Plaintiff, an El Paso resident, was stopped at the border coming into El Paso from visiting a friend and subjected to several searches for drugs, including taking her to the appellant hospital for x-rays and a pelvic exam. Nothing was … Continue reading
MN: SW for drugs in rectum to be retrieved by anoscopy was reasonable under Winston
Following the three factor test of Winston v. Lee, the search warrant for defendant’s rectum performed at a hospital by a doctor by anoscopy was reasonable. It was an affront to dignity, but it was a reasonable and safe procedure. … Continue reading
LA5: Parole officers were stalking horses for police acting without RS
Defendant’s parole search was without reasonable suspicion. In addition, the parole officers were acting at the request of law enforcement officers acting on an unsubstantiated tip, and that’s unreasonable in this state. State v. Clay, 2018 La. App. LEXIS 1004 … Continue reading
NY4: Def’s actions supported PC for a body SW
Officers executing a search warrant saw defendant acting like he had something hidden in the back of his pants. Defendant’s squirming and clenching his butt strongly suggested to the officer that he had drugs hidden in his rectum. The search … Continue reading
NY3: Forced prison body cavity search was unreasonable
Defendant’s forced body cavity search in prison was unreasonable under all the circumstances. People v. Holton, 2018 NY Slip Op 02836, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2830 (3d Dist. Apr. 26, 2018):
E.D.Cal.: Prison inmate states 4A claim for digital rectal search in front of other inmates
Plaintiff prison inmate states a claim for a digital search in front of other inmates. Fuentes v. Cal. Dep’t of Corr., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52132 (E.D. Cal. Mar. 29, 2018). The prison strip search here had a legitimate penological … Continue reading
CA4: Officer who obtained court order for minor ptf to be detained and to get an erection so police could photograph it gets no QI; this isn’t remotely reasonable
Plaintiff was a 17 year old that allegedly sent a picture of his erection to his 15 year old girlfriend. Defendant obtained a court order for plaintiff to be transported to a juvenile detention center to masturbate to get an … Continue reading
MassPrivateI: Police in two states use hospitals to take motorists blood without a warrant
MassPrivateI: Police in two states use hospitals to take motorists blood without a warrant:
IL: ER blood draw was private search for diagnostic purposes
“The mere filing of a motion [to suppress] is not proof that a search occurred.” Defendant first failed to prove that he was the subject of the search. Second, even if it was assumed, the hospital took the blood draw … Continue reading
WaPo: Body searches of 900 Georgia students by sheriff’s office leads to $3 million settlement
WaPo: Body searches of 900 Georgia students by sheriff’s office leads to $3 million settlement by Susan Hogan:
ID: Trial court suppressed forced catheterization of OUI suspect in hospital (not an issue on appeal)
The trial court suppressed a forced catheterization of defendant in her OUI case as exceeding her consent. It wasn’t clear whether it was for law enforcement or medical purposes. This wasn’t an issue on appeal (for good reason because it … Continue reading
WaPo: Georgia sheriff, deputies indicted after body searches of 900 high school students
WaPo: Georgia sheriff, deputies indicted after body searches of 900 high school students by Kyle Swenson: The sound system squawked at 8 a.m., just as the school day was revving up at Worth County High School. The campus was now … Continue reading
CA5: Bodycam video showed that this fatal shooting was apparently justified, and that essentially made credibility of the officer irrelevant
In this § 1983 action against a former deputy sheriff, which alleged excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the factual issues identified by the district court on summary judgment were immaterial in light of undisputed filmed facts of … Continue reading
NPR (WMUK): New Baltimore Police Scandal Threatens Criminal Cases
On the body camera video showing planted drug evidence, see NPR (WMUK): New Baltimore Police Scandal Threatens Criminal Cases by Eric Westervelt. Thus far, 40 cases have been dropped.
AP (Police One): Lawsuit: Neb. patrol accused of requiring vaginal exams for female recruits
AP (Police One): Lawsuit: Neb. patrol accused of requiring vaginal exams for female recruits by Margery A. Beck: State Patrol spokesman Cody Thomas said no NSP recruits have undergone the pelvic exams since December 2016
D.Colo.: Full body scan of ADX SHU inmates are reasonable
Submitting Florence ADX SHU inmates to repeated x-ray like body scans inside the prison is not unreasonable. Probable cause is not required since it’s not that invasive. Defendant promised proof they could be harmful, but it wasn’t produced. United States … Continue reading
US News & World Report: S.D. Cops Forced Catheters for Drug Testing
US News & World Report: S.D. Cops Forced Catheters for Drug Testing by Steven Nelson Authorities also allegedly catheterized a toddler because he wasn’t potty-trained.
KSFY: ACLU files suit over forced catheterization process
KSFY: ACLU files suit over force catheterization process: