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- CA6: Knowing passcode to cell phone shows common authority over it to consent
- VI: Smell of MJ no longer PC in VI since legalization
- Reason: 3 Charlotte Cops Resign After Group Chat Reveals Competition To Arrest the Most Black People
- E.D.Mich.: Second SW for cell phone data retained by govt was valid
- S.D.W.Va.: “Shocking” nature of immigration raid on a Mexican restaurant at lunchtime didn’t warrant suppression
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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 -
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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)
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"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: Cell site location information
Cato: Communications and Data Meet the Fourth Amendment
Cell site location information at SCOTUS Cato: Communications and Data Meet the Fourth Amendment by Jim Harper: This week and last, the Cato Institute filed amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court to take up two cases dealing with the constitutional … Continue reading
Center for Democracy and Technology: Supreme Court Should Speak Up on Cell Site Location Information
Center for Democracy and Technology: Supreme Court Should Speak Up on Cell Site Location Information by Natasha Duarte:
Law.com: Verizon GC: The Courts Must Tackle Smartphone Privacy
Law.com: Verizon GC: The Courts Must Tackle Smartphone Privacy by Stephanie Forshee: Every time you tweet or watch a YouTube clip on your smartphone, it effectively reveals your location to your carrier. Is this location information private? In a recently … Continue reading
techdirt: After Appeals Court Flip-Flop, Aaron Graham Asks Supreme Court To Examine Warrantless Access To Cell Location Info
techdirt: After Appeals Court Flip-Flop, Aaron Graham Asks Supreme Court To Examine Warrantless Access To Cell Location Info by Tim Cushing:
W.D.Mo.: Realtime cell tracking information can be obtained with Title III wiretap
A Title III warrant also included a request for realtime geolocation information, and it complied with Rule 41. United States v. Piggie, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119718 (W.D.Mo. Aug. 16, 2016):
NE: Third party doctrine unchanged: CSLI has no REP
Defendant’s CSLI information was obtained by court order under the Stored Communications Act, and defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in this third party information. State v. Jenkins, 294 Neb. 684, 2016 Neb. LEXIS 133 (Sept. 9, 2016):
NYLJ: Warrantless Cell Phone Pinging Exigency Analysis
NYLJ: Warrantless Cell Phone Pinging Exigency Analysis by Peter A. Crusco
M.D.Fla.: CSLI information captured by Stingray would be unreasonable under 4A except defs had no standing in burner phones they disassociated themselves from
Use of a Stingray to capture defendants’ cell phone location information in real time was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment [without much discussion], but the defendants lack standing to complain. The mere fact the government referred to the phones as … Continue reading
IN: CSLI is intrusive and protected by 4A; not a mere third party record
CSLI is not just ordinary third party records, and they have Fourth Amendment protection without a warrant. CSLI is collected surreptitiously while bank (Miller) and telephone tolls calls (Smith) are provided willingly and knowingly. Moreover, CSLI is far more intrusive … Continue reading
CA2: Govt proved exigency for warrantless pinging of cell phone to locate def after a murder
The government proved a legitimate good faith belief that defendant was dangerous and needed to be apprehended immediately after he was linked to a body found in Vermont. Therefore, warrantless pinging of his cell phone to locate him was reasonable. … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: CSLI is but third party information, following almost every other court
Defendant challenges CSLI and concedes four circuits have held it’s third party information. That’s the holding of the court. United States v. Elima, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87588 (C.D.Cal. June 22, 2016).* Officers entering defendant’s curtilage after following him home … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Warrantless use of stingray device by DEA was unreasonable search
The warrantless use of a cell site simulator to capture information about defendant’s cell phone was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and suppressed. “Thus, even though the DEA believed that the use of the cell-site simulator would reveal the … Continue reading
WY: It was reasonable for officer to believe backpack behind driver was his for consent search; no objection from passenger
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress the search of his backpack in the car of another when the other consented to a search of the car. Defendant’s backpack was behind the driver, not him, … Continue reading
MA: Cell phone SW was issued without PC, but it was harmless error in light of DNA
Massachusetts requires a warrant for CSLI after a certain date, and retroactivity depends on whether the issue was raised at trial. Here, the issue hadn’t been raised at trial from a 2011 crime although the case was on direct review … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: REP in CSLI, but GFE applies where court order sought on PC
Defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his CSLI in this district. Here it was sought by an order with a sufficient showing under § 2703, and the good faith exception applies. United States v. Alvarez, 2016 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
CA4 en banc: CSLI is mere third-party information not requiring SW
CSLI is third-party information the government does not need a warrant to obtain. 221 days worth of information was admissible. It’s up to Congress or SCOTUS to change the third-party doctrine. United States v. Graham, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 9797 … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: State judge’s issuance of CSLI warrant across state lines was likely without jurisdiction, but still saved by good faith exception in federal court
The state CSLI warrant here (and noting the conflict in authorities) was deficient in its factual showing, but not so bad that the SW couldn’t be relied upon in good faith. The fact the cell phone company’s records were out … Continue reading
NV: Neither a warrant nor probable cause is required to get CLSI information
Neither a warrant nor probable cause is required to get CLSI information. Taylor v. State, 132 Nev. Adv. Rep. 27, No. 16-12414 (April 21, 2016):
CA6: CSLI is a mere business record subject to the third party doctrine and accessible without a warrant
CSLI is a mere business record subject to the third party doctrine and accessible without a warrant. United States v. Carpenter, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 6670 (6th Cir. April 13, 2016) (two articles at end of quote):
D.Neb.: Historical CSLI is mere third party information, and no REP in it
“The court notes some of this information has never been protected, and this does not change simply because the phone records arise from use of a cell phone rather than a landline. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 745 (no reasonable … Continue reading