Archives
-
Recent Posts
- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
- W.D.Tex.: What is the duty of the neutral and detached magistrate?
- D.Me.: Yes, more investigation could have been done, but there’s still PC on what there was
- CA3: Brady doesn’t apply to SW materials
- E.D.Mich.: Person a cell phone was given to as gift could consent to search
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
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, 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. 
Monthly Archives: April 2014
N.D.Ga.: The contents of a notebook are not in “plain view” in a consent drug search
When defendant consented to a search for drugs, packaged money fell within plain view, but a spiral notebook does not. United States v. Jaimez, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187277 (N.D. Ga. May 21, 2013):
SC: Informant not properly supported; showing of PC fails under GFE
The affidavit for the search warrant was false in that it omitted that the informant was really an agent of the police in this endeavor, but it wasn’t material enough for Franks. The crux of the case is that the … Continue reading
ABAJ: Nursing mom wins $75K settlement from TSA over airport incident; at PHX, of course
ABAJ: Nursing mom wins $75K settlement from TSA over airport incident by Martha Neil: A California woman who says airport security screeners working for the federal Transportation Security Administration violated the agency’s own rules and prevented her from traveling with … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: The Fourth Amendment and the Global Internet
Orin S. Kerr, The Fourth Amendment and the Global Internet, Stanford Law Review (forthcoming). Abstract:
WaPo: Lawsuit: Audio depicts another police conspiracy to plant drug evidence
WaPo: Lawsuit: Audio depicts another police conspiracy to plant drug evidence by Radley Balko: From a lawsuit filed in a California federal court
S.D.N.Y.: Inventory in aid of car forfeiture was valid
Defendant was arrested at home for money laundering. A protective sweep of the premises revealed a Lamborghini and Ferrari in the garage, and they were seized for forfeiture. An inventory of the vehicles in aid of the forfeitures was proper. … Continue reading
OH12: Boots were seized incident to arrest; no SW needed for DNA testing
Defendant’s boots were seized either incident to his arrest or out of the jail property room, and no warrant was needed to submit them to the crime laboratory for DNA testing. State v. Alltop, 2014-Ohio-1695, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS 1650 … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: BOP nurse is not a law enforcement agent
A nurse in a federal prison was not acting in a law enforcement capacity in evaluating injuries to an inmate. United States v. Andrews, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56159 (N.D. W.Va. April 23, 2014). Two controlled buys were probable cause. … Continue reading
NYT: Taxi Driver Charged in $28,000 Toll Fraud; caught by pings from lost E-ZPass
NYT: Taxi Driver Charged in $28,000 Toll Fraud by J. Daivd Goodman: Caught by using a lost E-ZPass that always transmits its signal. He tailgated and piggybacked other drivers through the gates. Then the pings were matched to video. Moral: … Continue reading
AntiWar.com: What Fourth Amendment? Police Raids Go Beyond the War on Drugs [like an offensive Twitter post?]
AntiWar.com: What Fourth Amendment? Police Raids Go Beyond the War on Drugs by Lucy Steigerwald:
The Week: Why Antonin Scalia was right to defend a drug dealer
The Week: Why Antonin Scalia was right to defend a drug dealer by Michael Brendan Dougherty: The conservative justice’s exquisite defense of the Fourth Amendment is a credit to the American justice system.
WSJ: Justice Department Defends Email Searches
WSJ: Justice Department Defends Email Searches by Joe Polazzolo: The Justice Department is taking on a federal magistrate judge in Washington who says the agency’s practice of requesting bulk email in criminal investigations violates the privacy rights of Americans. Department … Continue reading
ME: Psych ward strip search without justification stated a claim
Plaintiff was ordered strip searched in a psych unit, allegedly without any justification that there were drugs on her. When she refused, two male security guards were called to do it. The law was clearly established at the time so … Continue reading
FL1: No standing in disclaimed cell phone seized from own house
Defendant didn’t have standing to contest the seizure of cell phones she expressly disclaimed ownership in just because they were taken out of her house. State v. Fosmire, 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 5739 (Fla. 1st DCA April 22, 2014).* Defense … Continue reading
TN: Opening car door of person asleep in car in parking lot was unreasonable
Because Tennessee hasn’t yet recognized a community caretaking search, an officer opening a car door of somebody apparently asleep behind the wheel at night in a parking lot was unreasonable. There was no report of a “person in peril” or … Continue reading
IL: Mere arrest doesn’t justify towing and inventory
Defendant was a passenger in a car stopped by the police. The driver was being arrested, and he gave the keys over to the defendant. The defendant had stuff in the trunk. The giving of the keys created standing. Mere … Continue reading
NYT: Beleaguered Albuquerque Department Reports Another Fatal Shooting by Police
NYT: Beleaguered Albuquerque Department Reports Another Fatal Shooting by Police by Trip Jennings and Fernanda Santos: An Albuquerque police officer fatally shot a suspected car thief on Monday during a foot chase in which, officials said, the suspect pointed a … Continue reading
BLT: DOJ Challenges Denial of Search Warrant for Email Account
BLT: DOJ Challenges Denial of Search Warrant for Email Account by Lee Tillman: Federal prosecutors are pushing back against U.S. District Magistrate Judge John Facciola, who says the government has repeatedly filed search warrant applications for electronic information that run … Continue reading
Reflections on Navarette: What guards against fictitious police reports? Nothing, really
So, on reflection, what does Navarette do to guard against the fictitious 911 call that somebody was driving erratically to justify a stop? Absolutely nothing. In most all of the prior cases, the officer follows for a little while and … Continue reading