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- IN: Overdose call led to EMS telling police what they saw and that led to SW
- NY1: A mental health defense waives REP in the medical records about it
- MA: When a likely Franks violation comes out at trial, def gets to reopen the suppression issue
- RI: Challenge to one sentence of 8-page cell phone records SW fails; totality has to be considered
- WaPo: Subpoena bill would curtail secretive tool used to target government critics
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
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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: Community caretaking function
CA4: Landlord could consent; defendant had been evicted and locks changed
Defendant had been evicted from his apartment by the landlord who had changed the locks. He had also expressed to her a desire to vacate and was leaving unwanted stuff behind. The landlord could not produce the key because her … Continue reading
NJ: When an officer asks for a DL and registration, he can only go looking for it if the owner refuses or can’t
“[T]he trooper was required to provide defendant with the opportunity to present his credentials before entering the vehicle. If such an opportunity is presented, and defendant is unable or unwilling to produce his registration or insurance information, only then may … Continue reading
CA10: Not clearly established that confiscating weapons from a potential suicide even after he was removed to the hospital was unreasonable
It was not clearly established that confiscating weapons from a potential suicide even after he was removed to the hospital was unreasonable in 2010. Arden v. McIntosh, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 12725 (10th Cir. July 23, 2015):
FL2: State “protective custody” doesn’t permit search incident; entry into jail here, however, made it valid
When defendant was taken into “protective custody” under state law as drug impaired, his backpack couldn’t be searched incident to arrest because it’s not an arrest. However, he ended up at the jail, and an inventory at the jail was … Continue reading
AZ: The community caretaking exception does not apply to homes
The community caretaking exception does not apply to homes, citing conflicting authorities. Here, defendant was believed by the police to have an excessive amount of mercury in his house, something not contraband. A firefighter trained in hazardous materials entered the … Continue reading
AZ: 911 hang up call justified entry onto curtilage and look in windows when no one answered door
Police received a 911 hang up call, and the call back was unanswered. They are treated as emergencies, and two officers responded. No one answered the door, so they went to a window to look in, and a marijuana plant … Continue reading
TX14: Inventory of def’s vehicle proper even though his mother was called to pick it up
Despite the fact the officer called defendant’s mother about picking up his vehicle after his DUI arrest and gave her 15 minutes to get there, the officer could inventory the vehicle while waiting in case she didn’t show rather than … Continue reading
NE: Passenger standing out sunroof at 1:30 am justified community caretaking stop
The community caretaking function applies to passengers, and here the passenger was standing half out of the sunroof of a car at 1:30 am. That was justification for a stop. State v. Rohde, 22 Neb. App. 926, 2015 Neb. App. … Continue reading
WA: A patdown of a runway juvenile before putting him in the patrol car was reasonable, but the full search of the person was not
A patdown of a runway juvenile before putting him in the patrol car was part of the community caretaking function. A complete search, however, was not. No weapon was found during the patdown, and the search of the pockets afterward … 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
E.D.Mich.: If you decorate your walls with child porn, calling 911 not a good idea
This pretty much sums it all up: “Defendant Tilman Williams chose to decorate his apartment with sexually explicit photographs of young girls. In doing so, he assumed serious risks. One such risk: if he had a medical emergency and allowed … 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
IL: Stop of man walking on median of divided highway justified by community caretaking function
Defendant’s stop was based on the community caretaking function because he was walking on the median of a divided highway approaching evening on a hot summer day and there was no apparent reason for that. His conviction of resisting, however, … Continue reading
CA7: Detention of a minor based on a report from a friend she was suicidal was reasonable
This minor’s § 1983 suit alleges a Fourth Amendment violation when she was taken to a hospital and subjected to a mental health examination based a report from a school friend that she had attempted to kill herself. The police … Continue reading
OH7: After neighborhood shootout, bullet holes in door across street and no answer justified community caretaking entry
Police responded to a shootout on the street, and an officer went to defendant’s house and saw fresh bullet holes in the door. He knocked and got no answer. The next door neighbor said that the occupants had to be … Continue reading
WI: Defendant was in a fight and called the police; no reason for community caretaking search of his house
Defendant and his brother got beat up by multiple people, and the police were called to his house. His brother had already left, leaving a blood trail to his car. On the totality, the police entry into defendant’s house was … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Community caretaking entry must be objectively reasonable and still be wrong
Officers’ legitimate concerns that a person inside a house was in danger or restrained, although wrong, were reasonable, and that authorized an entry under the community caretaking function. The fact they were wrong doesn’t matter if their belief was reasonable. … Continue reading