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Recent Posts
- MD: Hot pursuit can be days later, here exigent CSLI to find him
- D.D.C.: Alleged illegal arrest doesn’t void DNA SW
- S.D.Fla.: Inventory that omitted “miscellaneous personal items” was not unreasonable
- CA4: That ptf charged with witness intimidation didn’t do it again wasn’t material for Franks
- CO: Not 4A or state constitutional violation for govt to access def’s computer via peer-to-peer sharing with BitTorrent software
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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:
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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)
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LII State Appellate Courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
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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: SCOTUS
NYTimes: Court Leader or Leading Dissenter? Chief Justice’s Fate Tied to Election
NYTimes: Court Leader or Leading Dissenter? Chief Justice’s Fate Tied to Election by Adam Liptak: WASHINGTON — In Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s 11 years on the Supreme Court, his unfolding legacy has been marked by a debate over … Continue reading
Esquire: The Bill of Rights Is Hanging by a Thread
Esquire: The Bill of Rights Is Hanging by a Thread by Charles P. Pierce: The law is supposed to be our protector, not our enemy.
SCOTUSBlog: The Court after Scalia: Scalia’s absence may help preserve the exclusionary rule
SCOTUSBlog: The Court after Scalia: Scalia’s absence may help preserve the exclusionary rule by Orin Kerr:
Alt-Right blames Obama for SCOTUS amendment to Rule 41
I never bother to read World Net Daily because it is essentially wrong on everything. Last night’s emails includes this headline: WND: DEC. 1: WHEN 4TH AMENDMENT WILL BE DESTROYED by Craige McMillan Exclusive: Craige McMillan warns of reg that’ll … Continue reading
ABAJ: Chemerinsky: What will the presidential election mean for SCOTUS? [One of those Duh! articles]
ABAJ: Chemerinsky: What will the presidential election mean for SCOTUS?
The Atlantic: How Did Justice Scalia Shape American Policing?
The Atlantic: How Did Justice Scalia Shape American Policing? by Barry Friedman: Donald Trump wants a Supreme Court appointee like the formidable late judge. But Scalia had a controversial and sometimes conflicted opinion on law enforcement.
ABAJ: Chemerinsky: Has the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Fourth Amendment?
ABA Journal: Chemerinsky: Has the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Fourth Amendment? by Erwin Chemerinsky: In the recently completed Supreme Court term, Utah v. Strieff was the only major decision where the conservatives prevailed in an ideologically divided … Continue reading
Orin Kerr: Garland could be confirmed by lame duck Senate without a hearing
Consider Orin Kerr’s observation that the Senate could confirm Merrick Garland in a lame duck session without any hearings.
Bustle: The Shooting Of Alton Sterling Makes This Sonia Sotomayor Dissent More Potent Than Ever
Bustle: The Shooting Of Alton Sterling Makes This Sonia Sotomayor Dissent More Potent Than Ever by Hillary E. Crawford:
NYTimes: In Dissents, Sonia Sotomayor Takes On the Criminal Justice System
NYTimes: In Dissents, Sonia Sotomayor Takes On the Criminal Justice System by Adam Liptak: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court term had barely gotten underway in early November when Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued her first dissent. A police officer’s “rogue conduct,” … Continue reading
Hot Air: The Fourth Amendment covers everyone … including suspected criminals
Hot Air: The Fourth Amendment covers everyone … including suspected criminals by Taylor Millard: It’s completely understandable why “law and order” conservatives are defending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Utah v. Strieff case. Edward Strieff Jr. had a … Continue reading
EFF: Racial Bias and Arrest Tech
EFF: Racial Bias and Arrest Tech by Jennifer Lynch and Adam Schwartz: Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court took away a little more of your right to be free from unlawful police searches. In a 5-3 decision in Utah v. … Continue reading
Verdict: A Potential Landmine in Waiting in Utah v. Strieff
Verdict: A Potential Landmine in Waiting in Utah v. Strieff by Sherry F. Colb:
Hot Air: The Fourth Amendment wasn’t created to protect the guilty
Hot Air: The Fourth Amendment wasn’t created to protect the guilty by Jazz Shaw:
SCOTUS: Birchfield v. N.D.: refusing a blood test cannot result in charges
A breath test may be performed incident to an arrest without a warrant. A blood test requires a warrant or exigency. “Motorists may not be criminally punished for refusing to submit to a blood test based on legally implied consent … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Utah v. Strieff: Even if stop lacked RS, finding an arrest warrant on def justified his search; the warrant is attenuated from the stop (so they can violate the 4A if there’s a warrant out)
Defendant was stopped leaving a drug house under surveillance. He gave his name, and an arrest warrant came back for him. Attenuation is found without regard to the validity of the stop. The attenuation doctrine is not limited to the … Continue reading
Today is the 50th Anniversary of Miranda v. Arizona
WaPo: The right to remain silent, brought to you by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI by Richard Willing. Say what you will about Hoover, he knew from the FBI’s experience that warned suspects would still talk and their statements … Continue reading
SCOTUS approves Rule 41 change permitting SW for remote access of electronic stored data, including “the Cloud”
On April 28th, SCOTUS notified Congress of amendments to F.R.Crim. 41 (also Rules 4 & 45)) to permit searches of remotely stored electronic data–essentially search warrants for the Cloud. The Rule change is effective December 1, 2016. The ACLU’s insightful … Continue reading
WaPo: Supreme Court hears arguments in drunken-driving cases
WaPo: Supreme Court hears arguments in drunken-driving cases by Robert Barnes: All states to some extent say that motorists suspected of drunken driving can lose their licenses by refusing to submit to an alcohol test. But North Dakota, Minnesota and … Continue reading
Slate: Blood Tests and Bad Lawyering
Slate: Blood Tests and Bad Lawyering by Mark Joseph Stern: The Supreme Court finds unity in the face of bumbling attorneys and a tough Fourth Amendment case. The justices of the United States Supreme Court are at their best when … Continue reading