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- 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
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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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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. 
Monthly Archives: April 2014
SCOTUS decides Navarette: RS from a 911 call suggesting drunk driving
Navarette v. California 12–9490 (April 22, 2014). Syllabus: A California Highway Patrol officer stopped the pickup truck occupied by petitioners because it matched the description of a vehicle that a 911 caller had recently reported as having run her off … Continue reading
AZ: GPS on another’s vehicle targeting def as driver gave standing; no GFE where no prior state authority
Officers placed a GPS on another person’s vehicle knowing that defendant would be driving it, and he was the target. That gave him standing. The good faith exception doesn’t apply because there was no binding state precedent that said GPS … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: DNA swab a search; taking a second was reasonable here
The taking of DNA by a buccal swab is a search, and here it would be reasonable. While the defendant concedes he was at the scene, he didn’t stipulate the issue away, so the government gets another buccal swab for … Continue reading
SCOTUS cert. grant in Heien v. North Carolina: Can mistake of law provide reasonable suspicion?
SCOTUS cert. grant: Heien v. North Carolina (13-604). ScotusBlog here. Issue: Whether a police officer’s mistake of law can provide the individualized suspicion that the Fourth Amendment requires to justify a traffic stop. Note: This is on the defendant’s petition … Continue reading
C-Span: Privacy Laws Related to the Use of Drones
C-Span: Privacy Laws Related to the Use of Drones Jeramie Scott (EPIC) spoke by phone about the privacy issues related to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) by law enforcement agencies.
Des Moines Register: Two-thirds frown on personal, commercial drone use
Des Moines Register: Two-thirds frown on personal, commercial drone use “Nearly two-thirds of people asked in a new Pew Research Center survey say personal and commercial drones have no place in U.S. airspace.”
The Atlantic: Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City
The Atlantic: Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City by Conor Friedersdorf: A sergeant in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department compared the experiment to Big Brother, even though he went ahead with it willingly. Is your city … Continue reading
KS: Trash pull lacked nexus to house; buying fertilizer not PC for a grow operation
Officers did a trash pull because a person living at the target address bought “perlite soil conditioner and liquid fertilizer from the Green Circle Garden Center.” (They were running LPNs of people buying that stuff.) In the trash bags was … Continue reading
AOL & LAT: LAPD Apologizes For Tampering With Patrol Car Recording Equipment
LATimes: LAPD apologizes to commission for not alerting it to tampering: “Top Los Angeles police officials Tuesday publicly apologized to their civilian bosses for not promptly alerting them that officers had tampered with recording equipment in patrol cars to avoid … Continue reading
CA6: No standing in a carjacked car; EMS didn’t seize passed out suspect
Defendant had no standing in a stolen car. He carjacked it five days earlier, and he was found unconscious in it sitting at the gas pumps of a convenience store. EMS arrived, and he revived. He wasn’t really “seized” by … Continue reading
CT declines to require warrant for closed containers under automobile exception
CT declines to require separate warrant requirement for containers under the automobile exception under its state constitution. Virtually all states are in accord under their state constitutions. State v. Williams, 2014 Conn. LEXIS 104 (April 29, 2014):
OH2: Warrant on passenger led to stop being reasonably extended; officer was outnumbered
During a traffic stop, the officer learned there was an outstanding warrant on a passenger who had to be arrested. The officer asked if there was anything in the car he needed to be aware of, and they said no. … Continue reading
D.Mass.: “Mild ruse” to gain entry by consent to serve an immigration warrant did not violate the Fourth Amendment
A “mild ruse” to gain entry by consent to serve an immigration warrant did not violate the Fourth Amendment. United States v. De La Cruz, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54126 (D. Mass. April 18, 2014):
LA Times: How technology [LPN scanners] helped crack the Kansas City highway shooter case
LA Times: How technology helped crack the Kansas City highway shooter case by Matt Pearce. Police license plate scanners helped find the person alleged to be the highway shooter:
When Did This Become This?
Credit: http://pumabydesign001.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/police-state-when-did-this-become-this.jpg See also Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (2013). Anybody out there remember “Adam-12” (1968-75) produced by Jack Webb of “Dragnet” (1951-59) fame? I’m dating myself, and likely my view of … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Cops’ prior false statements in other cases leads court to discredit them on protective sweep
Because of inconsistencies in the officers’ testimony and one with a bad reputation for the truth, the court concludes that a protective sweep on a consent entry here was invalid. This is a case where the government turned over impeaching … Continue reading
LA4: Def consented to entry on knock-and-talk, and circumstances inside supported protective sweep
Officers were aware of defendant’s being involved with drugs, and they came to do a knock-and-talk, and he let them in. Once inside, they could hear other people in the back, a “commotion” with barking dogs, and they could smell … Continue reading