November 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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Recent Posts
- D.Ariz.: Smell of alcohol in the car on Navajo Nation was PC
- NY3: No REP in parole GPS monitoring as to police
- TX: An entry into a person’s homestead for civil discovery has limits
- S.D.W.Va.: Subpoenas for records on advocacy positions violated 1A
- CA10: Investigative detention that went on for hours did not become an arrest
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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:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
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Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
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Eighth Circuit
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Tenth Circuit
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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
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LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
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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
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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)
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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
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)
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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: Staleness
NC: Undated Facebook screenshots as a part of PC showed enduring utility in what was sought, so not stale
Defendant’s argument is that Facebook screenshots showing probable cause in the affidavit for the search warrant don’t specify dates of the electronic data that’s being sought from his place. What was being sought is of enduring utility by its nature, … Continue reading
W.D.Ark.: 16 mo. delay in forensic search of electronics was not unreasonable; PC “remained viable”
The omitted facts from the affidavit for defendant’s child pornography search warrant had no bearing on the probable cause determination, so the Franks challenge fails. Defendant’s claim that the affidavit’s reference to two successful downloads of child pornography was false … Continue reading
D.Alaska: SW affidavit accidentally in the jury room during deliberations wasn’t looked at so no error
The search warrant affidavit for the search warrant for defendant’s backpack accidentally went to the jury room in deliberations with the backpack. The court finds that this wasn’t error because 10 of the 12 jurors said they didn’t know that … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: NCIS obtained def’s phone passcode by 4A violation
NCIS obtained defendant’s passcode for his iPhone 6 by a Fourth Amendment violation by seeking to see him enter it when he was consciously trying to avoid them seeing it. Inevitable discovery also does not apply. United States v. Booker, … Continue reading
OH1: Years-old information of trafficking with current info of personal use isn’t PC for trafficking
Where the officer’s affidavit consisted only of years-old stale information and present evidence of personal drug use, there was no probable cause to search the defendant’s residence for evidence of drug trafficking, and the trial court erred in applying the … Continue reading
C.D.Ill.: Failure to execute state SW in 10 days doesn’t automatically trigger exclusionary rule
Failure to execute a state search warrant within 10 days (F.R.Crim.P. 41) where state law says 60 days does not automatically trigger the exclusionary rule. The affidavit for the warrant showed probable cause, and the good faith exception also applies. … Continue reading
CA8: Taking box off FedEx conveyor belt for dog sniff didn’t deprive FedEx of custody
Moving a suspicious looking box from the FedEx conveyor belt to a back room for a dog sniff did not require reasonable suspicion nor did it deprive FedEx of custody of the box. The dog alert provided justification for a … Continue reading
CA7: Without a triggering condition, this was not an anticipatory warrant
Despite defendant’s argument, this was not an anticipatory search warrant. There was no triggering condition, and it was issued with probable cause. United States v. Calligan, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 23402 (7th Cir. Aug. 6, 2021). There clearly was reasonable … Continue reading
OH1: Years old info of drug dealing coupled with current trash pull showing drug use was clearly stale; no GFE
Years old information of drug dealing in another county coupled with a trash pull of recent drug use (not trafficking) was stale, and the search warrant was clearly lacking probable cause. Therefore, the good faith exception does not apply. State … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Court finds RS for a traffic stop, so CI tip doesn’t have to be considered
“Turning to the facts of the instant case, the Court must resolve the central question: did Nations see Defendant commit a traffic violation? Having listened to Nations’ testimony, observed him in open court, and reviewed the video and written transcript … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Def’s response to a SDT showed records existed for later SW; not stale
Defendant’s receipt of and response to a subpoena for fraud records in an older fraud case established timeliness and lack of staleness when the government decided to proceed by search warrant instead. Staleness is a question of probable cause. United … Continue reading
ND: Reasonableness under Heien supported even though erroneous conclusion traffic offense occurred
Whether failure to signal while exiting a roundabout is a traffic offense is a valid reason for a stop or not, it was reasonable for the officer to conclude it was, and that justifies the stop under Heien. City of … Continue reading
GA: Mistake as to smell of MJ v. hemp was reasonable, if there was one
“At most, Gowen’s assertion about the similarity of the smells of hemp and marijuana calls into question the reasonableness of the officer’s belief that he smelled burnt marijuana. Assuming for purposes of this appeal that Gowen’s assertion is correct (even … Continue reading
D.Conn.: Unreasonable delay in getting SW for cell phone defeats GFE
Where the officers impermissibly delayed obtaining a search warrant for defendant’s cell phone, the good faith exception does not apply. The initial seizure of the phone was valid because it was left at a crime scene. United States v. Tisdol, … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: DMV’s computer mistake def’s DL was suspended doesn’t invoke the exclusionary rule under Evans
DMV’s computer mistake defendant’s DL was suspended doesn’t invoke the exclusionary rule under Evans. United States v. Salazar, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103027 (N.D. Ohio June 2, 2021). Defendant’s “regenerating” activity in selling heroin made the warrant application not stale. … Continue reading
WA: Unverified belief in existence of arrest warrant required suppression
Unverified belief there was an arrest warrant for defendant required that the arrest and search be suppressed. State v. Pines, 2021 Wash. App. LEXIS 1223 (May 17, 2021). “Here, while the record is unclear as to when the outstanding warrant … Continue reading
WA: Prior knowledge of arrest warrant became stale
Stale information that a warrant existed for defendant was not probable cause when the warrant had been recalled, and no one checked the day of the arrest. State v. Pines, 2021 Wash. App. LEXIS 1160 (May 10, 2021). Subpoenas to … Continue reading