Archives
-
Recent Posts
- CA5: Deficient privilege log after records search was waiver
- E.D.Ky.: When court can’t tell the dog alerted, motion to suppress granted
- OH1: A malnourished child isn’t exigency for an infant
- E.D.Pa.: Mandamus doesn’t lie to unseal SW papers
- D.Me.: Looking around house when allegedly “freezing” it was an illegal search
-
-
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: SCOTUS
Cert. granted: Collins v. Virginia (does automobile exception apply to search a vehicle parked near to a house on curtilage)
Cert. granted: Collins v. Virginia, 16-1027 (ScotusBlog) Issue: Whether the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter private property, approach a house and search a vehicle parked a few feet from the … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Parties, probable cause and the Fourth Amendment (DC v. Wesby)
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Parties, probable cause and the Fourth Amendment (DC v. Wesby) by Amy Howe: When District of Columbia police officers Andre Parker and Anthony Campanale responded to reports of unauthorized goings-on at a supposedly vacant home nearly a … Continue reading
Constitution Daily: Supreme Court gets ready for “long conference” today re Collins v. Virginia (pet. pending)
Constitution Daily: Supreme Court gets ready for “long conference” today SCOTUSBlog: Issue: Whether the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter private property, approach a house and search a vehicle parked a … Continue reading
Newsweek: What the Supreme Court is Doing This Year Under Trump
Newsweek: What the Supreme Court is Doing This Year Under Trump by Linley Sanders
Law360: Cell Location Searches Assailed In Raft Of High Court Briefs
Law360: Cell Location Searches Assailed In Raft Of High Court Briefs by Shayna Posses:
Techdirt: ACLU Tells Court Long-Term Cell Site Location Tracking Should Require A Warrant
Techdirt: ACLU Tells Court Long-Term Cell Site Location Tracking Should Require A Warrant by Tim Cushing:
Cato: To Apply the Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age, Go Back to Its Text
Cato: To Apply the Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age, Go Back to Its Text by Ilya Shapiro re Cato’s Carpenter amicus brief:
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Carpenter and the eyewitness rule
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Carpenter and the eyewitness rule by Orin Kerr:
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Justices poised to consider, or reconsider, Fourth Amendment doctrines as they assess the scope of privacy in a digital age
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Justices poised to consider, or reconsider, Fourth Amendment doctrines as they assess the scope of privacy in a digital age by John Castellano, Asst. District Attorney of Queens County, New York
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Will the Fourth Amendment protect 21st-century data? The court confronts the third-party doctrine
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Will the Fourth Amendment protect 21st-century data? The court confronts the third-party doctrine by Jennifer Lynch, EFF
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: A defense of the doctrine [Re Carpenter]
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: A defense of the doctrine by David LaBahn, president and CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (with links to other articles in the same vein):
AP: Chief Justice Roberts: Technology poses challenge for court
AP: Chief Justice Roberts: Technology poses challenge for court:
Oregonian: Mohamed Mohamud’s lawyers petition U.S. Supreme Court to review conviction
Oregonian: Mohamed Mohamud’s lawyers petition U.S. Supreme Court to review conviction by Maxine Bernstein: In a 40-page petition filed this summer with the nation’s top court, Mohamud’s lawyers argue that the case raises issues of national importance: the government’s warrantless … Continue reading
SCOTUS avoids deciding El Paso cross border shooting case and remands to CA5
The El Paso-Ciudad Juarez cross border shooting case remanded by SCOTUS to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration in light of a decision from the Court on June 19th on whether Bivens applies. Hernández v. Mesa, 2017 U.S. LEXIS 4059 (June … Continue reading
Mapp v. Ohio decided 56 years ago today
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), on application of the exclusionary rule to the states decided 56 years ago today. Ironically, the exclusionary rule issue wasn’t even argued in the briefs, as noted by the dissent, id. at 676-77. … Continue reading
More news on CSLI cert grant
MIT Technology Review: Warrantless Tracking of Cell Phone Location Data by the Police Could Get Harder EFF: Supreme Court Will Hear Significant Cell Phone Tracking Case techdirt: Supreme Court To Consider Fourth Amendment Implications Of Cell Site Location Info Digital … Continue reading
SCOTUS: cert granted in CSLI case; third-party doctrine to be revisited, but how will it turn out?
Carpenter v. United States, 16-402 (granted June 5, 2017) Issue: Whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cell-phone records revealing the location and movements of a cell-phone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth … Continue reading
Stop and frisk created by SCOTUS 49 years ago today
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was decided 49 years ago today, June 2d. The stop and frisk occurred on October 31, 1963. The Ohio Court of Appeals Eighth District opinion is interesting for its historical value: State v. … Continue reading
BNA: Can You Hear Them Now? Robbers Ask SCOTUS for Phone Privacy
BNA: Can You Hear Them Now? Robbers Ask SCOTUS for Phone Privacy by Jordan S. Rubin: From Criminal Law Reporter
Essay: Judge Gorsuch and the Fourth Amendment, 69 Stan. L. Rev. Online 132
Sophie J. Hart & Dennis M. Martin, Essay: Judge Gorsuch and the Fourth Amendment, 69 Stan. L. Rev. Online 132 (March 2017):