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
Cal.App.Div. discusses McNeely and the warrant requirement in DUI cases at length, but concludes defendant consented
Cal.App.Div. discusses McNeely and the warrant requirement in DUI cases at length, but concludes defendant consented. People v. Harris, 225 Cal. App. 4th Supp. 1 (April 11, 2014):
D.Kan.: Pulling up in front of a house where a knock-and-talk is about to occur is not reasonable suspicion
Pulling up in front of a house where a knock-and-talk is about to occur is not reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. United States v. Sims, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53819 (D. Kan. April 18, 2014):
OR: Search of defendant’s dog’s blood in an animal neglect case was a search of a personal effect under state constitution
The search of defendant’s dog’s blood in an animal neglect case was a search of a personal effect under the Oregon Constitution requiring a warrant. State v. Newcomb, 262 Or. App. __, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 538 (April 16, 2014), … Continue reading
Cal.1: Possession of a felt tip marker not a crime without intent to graffitiize
Possession of a felt tip marker is not per se illegal as possession of graffiti tools. Intent to graffitiize still has to be required. The juvenile’s arrest was without probable cause. In re S.F., 224 Cal. App. 4th 1575 (1st … Continue reading
CA11: 911 tipster about a specific car was reliable and not anonymous
Defendant’s claim of lack of reasonable suspicion for his stop was changed between the district court’s denial and the appeal. Nevertheless, there was reasonable suspicion for the stop based on a tip applying to a specific car. The 911 tipster … Continue reading
Tulsa World: After 17 years in prison, a man walks free when a federal judge rules that officers manufactured evidence
After 17 years in prison, a man walks free when a federal judge rules that officers manufactured evidence by Jarrel Wade and Curtis Killman: A man who has spent 17 years in federal prison was freed Friday after a judge … Continue reading
IA: RS for a frisk developed from furtive looks and body movement
Three men were stopped. While Iowa has not adopted the “automatic companion rule,” reasonable suspicion developed from furtive looks and body movement justifying a frisk of two. When one was asked about a weapon, he put up his hands and … Continue reading
D.Vt.: No Fourth Amendment or Rule 41 right to see warrant before execution
Executing officers’ failure to show the search warrant before the search doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Rule 41 doesn’t even require it before hand. United States v. Wint, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52108 (D. Vt. April 14, 2014):
New Law Review Article: GPS “Bullets” and the Fourth Amendment
Matthew F. Meyers, GPS “Bullets” and the Fourth Amendment, 4 Wake Forest L. Rev. Online 18 (2014). Abstract: For as long as there have been cars, there have been car chases. A car chase connotes a dangerous, high-speed dash through … Continue reading
KY: Judge who signed the SW is not automatically disqualified from hearing the motion to suppress
The judge who signed the search warrant is not automatically disqualified from hearing the motion to suppress by the Canons of Judicial Ethics and the “appearance of impropriety” standard. There might be cases where the facts would support it, but … Continue reading
WA: Being an MMJ patient doesn’t negate PC for SW for grow operation
Whether the target of a search is a medical marijuana patient is an affirmative defense at trial. Therefore, it doesn’t factor into the probable cause determination. State v. Reis, 2014 Wash. App. LEXIS 759 (March 31, 2014). Defendant was arrested … Continue reading
Cal.1st: Unverified report student shot another on a school bus the day before justified a locker search that found a sawed-off shotgun
The search of the juvenile’s school locker was validly based on an unverified report that he shot somebody on a school bus the day before. It was reasonable for the school officials to act on that information. A sawed-off shotgun … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Airport TSA “screenings” are “searches” within the Fourth Amendment and the FTCA
Airport TSA “screenings” are “searches” within the Fourth Amendment and the FTCA because they can search people and their belongings and then seize things. Here, however, plaintiff doesn’t state a claim. Armato v. Jane Doe 1, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
eff.org: In the One-sided Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, It’s Hard to Get The Whole Story
eff.org: In the One-sided Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, It’s Hard to Get The Whole Story by Nadia Kayyali and Kurt Opsahl: While most courts in the United States are adversarial—each party presents its side and a jury, or occasionally a … Continue reading
Reuters: Cell phone search case is easy call for Supreme Court
Reuters: Cell phone search case is easy call for Supreme Court by Jack Shafer: (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)
Motherboard: Every Drone Mission the FBI Admits to Flying
Motherboard: Every Drone Mission the FBI Admits to Flying by Shawn Musgrave:
D.D.C. once again rejects email SW request as overbroad, original concerns still unaddressed
The government brings a second search warrant application for an email account, and it is rejected again as overbroad. The concerns of the prior opinion are not addressed. Also, the government’s contention that copying emails is not a “seizure” is … Continue reading
IL: Can’t claim self-defense for shooting police during illegal entry and deny shooting at same time
The trial court properly denied defendant a self defense instruction for shooting a police officer during what he claimed was an illegal entry into his home where he also denied even shooting the officer. People v. Pandolfi, 2014 IL App … Continue reading