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- 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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General (many free):
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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
FL1: Failure to show exigency or get SW for realtime CSLI required suppression
Defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy as to his realtime cell phone location information, and the failure of the police to get a search warrant or show exigent circumstances requires suppression. Herring v. State, 2015 Fla. App. LEXIS 7750 … Continue reading
Business Insider: A federal court just dealt a potentially huge blow to cellphone privacy
Business Insider: A federal court just dealt a potentially huge blow to cellphone privacy by Maxwell Tani: The government doesn’t need a warrant to search cellphone tower location records, a federal appeals court in Atlanta has ruled. In a potentially … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Eleventh Circuit rules for the feds on cell-site records — but then overreaches
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Eleventh Circuit rules for the feds on cell-site records — but then overreaches by Orin Kerr: The en banc Eleventh Circuit has ruled that historical cell-site records are not protected by the Fourth Amendment under the third-party … Continue reading
CA11 (en banc): CSLI third party information accessed under the Stored Communications Act does not violate the Fourth Amendment
CSLI third party information accessed under the Stored Communications Act does not violate the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Davis, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 7385 (11th Cir. May 5, 2015) (en banc) (4 concurrences, 2 dissents):
The New American: DOJ Lifting Veil on Secret Cellphone Tracking
The New American: DOJ Lifting Veil on Secret Cellphone Tracking by Bob Adelmann: Thanks to increasing pressure from the public and from publications such as ARS Technica and the Wall Street Journal to disclose just how the Justice Department is … Continue reading
TechCrunch: Protecting Users’ Location Data From An Unconstitutional Search
TechCrunch: Protecting Users’ Location Data From An Unconstitutional Search by Eric Gunderson: Location data is highly sensitive. It contains information about where we live, our daily habits and our network of friends. We discover new places to go; avoid traffic … Continue reading
Grits for Breakfast: AT&T: Historical cell-phone location data provides ‘detailed and intimate portrayal of the targeted person’s daily habits and work and leisure routines’
Grits for Breakfast: AT&T: Historical cell-phone location data provides ‘detailed and intimate portrayal of the targeted person’s daily habits and work and leisure routines’: At a hearing Wednesday evening on HB 2263 by Rep. Bryan Hughes requiring warrants for the … Continue reading
CT: CSLI was harmless error, even if unreasonably obtained
Even if the cell site location data for defendant’s phone was unreasonably obtained, it showed only that his phone was in the area of the crime not him, and he attempted to rebut it by claiming that his truck was … Continue reading
CA8: No standing in co-def’s CSLI
One defendant has no standing to challenge CSLI obtained from codefendants’ phones in real time under a court order. A wiretap and a CSLI order can be combined in one application. United States v. Turner, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 4295 … Continue reading
Fierce Mobile Gov’t: ACLU: Gov’t getting cellphone records without a warrant can reveal where you sleep, pray, love
Fierce Mobile Gov’t: ACLU: Gov’t getting cellphone records without a warrant can reveal where you sleep, pray, love by Dibya Sarkar: A group of civil liberties, public interest and other groups are arguing that the government violated the Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
S.D.Tex. “constrained” to grant cell phone dump of records from seven providers to pinpoint one user captured on a video using his cell phone before committing a crime
Cell phone dump of records from seven providers to pinpoint one user captured on a video using his cell phone before committing a crime is granted. In re Cell Tower Records Under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d), 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: CSLI governed by SCA, and PC not yet required
Historical cell site location information is governed by the SCA, and it has sufficient Fourth Amendment protection because a showing of something is required to get the information without probable cause. Besides, the good faith exception would have to apply. … Continue reading