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- 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
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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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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)
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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: May 2014
WFMZ TV: Bangor Area School District teachers vote no to random drug testing
WFMZ TV: Bangor Area School District teachers vote no to random drug testing by Will Lewis A year ago the school board passed the ground breaking measure, but it can’t be implemented without union approval. The Bangor Area School District … Continue reading
NPR: Can Cop-Worn Cameras Restore Faith In New Orleans Police?
NPR: Can Cop-Worn Cameras Restore Faith In New Orleans Police? by Martin Kaste: Body-worn video cameras are quickly becoming standard-issue for American police, especially at departments in the process of reform. And in New Orleans, the troubled police department is … Continue reading
NYT: House Passes Restraints on Bulk Data Collection
NYT: House Passes Restraints on Bulk Data Collection by Johathan Weisman and Charlie Savage: In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement between the White House and Congress on a major national security issue, the House passed legislation on Thursday that … Continue reading
NYT: Some Privacy, Please? Facebook, Under Pressure, Gets the Message
NYT: Some Privacy, Please? Facebook, Under Pressure, Gets the Message by Vindu Goel: The move responds to complaints that the service’s privacy settings are too complicated and that people often don’t know who can see what they’re posting.
WaPo: Updates on Magistrate Judge Facciola’s cases
WaPo: Updates on Magistrate Judge Facciola’s cases by Orin Kerr: I’ve blogged several times about Magistrate Judge Facciola’s recent opinions denying government applications for warrants and court orders involving digital evidence. Here are three updates for readers who are following … Continue reading
Politico: House curbs NSA data collection
Politico: House curbs NSA data collection by Alex Byers: Civil-liberties activists and tech companies say the bill doesn’t go far enough.
M.D.Pa.: Throwing a bag over a fence to hide it from the police was not an abandonment
Throwing a bag over a fence to hide it from the police was not an abandonment. United States v. Curran, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68634 (M.D. Pa. May 19, 2014): Although Defendant obviously endeavored to hide the bags from police, … Continue reading
WaPo: Police misconduct roundup 5/20
WaPo: Police misconduct roundup by Radley Balko The good, the bad, and the ugly
D.Mass.: Police searching for CP left without a computer; its later seizure was covered by warrant
The police executed a search warrant for computers for child pornography. After they left the house, defendant’s grandfather called them to say that there was another computer in a closet that was not seized. He consented to that seizure. The … Continue reading
MA: Exigency for warrantless pursuit entry still applied 90 minutes after a murder
Warrantless police entry to arrest was with probable cause and exigent circumstances, although it was 90 minutes after a shooting. It was close enough to the shooting that the delay in getting a warrant could lead to flight or destruction … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Double Reasonableness and the Fourth Amendment
Sam Kamin & Justin Marceau, Double Reasonableness and the Fourth Amendment, 68 U. Miami L. Rev. 589 (2014). Introduction: Legal doctrine is replete with reasonableness tests. In fact, it is unlikely that any area of law lacks a reasonableness test … Continue reading
consitutioncenter.org: Warrantless Cellphone Searches At Center of Fourth Amendment Program At the National Constitution Center
consitutioncenter.org: Warrantless Cellphone Searches At Center of Fourth Amendment Program At the National Constitution Center: Philadelphia, PA (May 19, 2014) – Can the police search the digital contents of a cellphone without a warrant or does it violate the Fourth … Continue reading
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center: NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center aims to be a one-stop source of cutting-edge information on the proliferation of drones inside the United States. It collects news from leading publications across the nation; features a comprehensive … Continue reading
ChicagoTribune: NSA data-gathering may run into California roadblock
ChicagoTribune: NSA data-gathering may run into California roadblock by Sharon Bernstein, Reuters: SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – The federal government would need a warrant from a judge if it wants the cooperation of California officials in searching residents’ cellphone and computer … Continue reading
Cincinnati.com: Pants full of candy erupts into legal battle; SW for PD’s office
Cincinnati.com: Pants full of candy erupts into legal battle by Kimball Perry: A Hamilton County theft case involving a man who stuffed $200 worth of candy in his pants erupted into a heated legal battle that has left defense attorneys … Continue reading
IL: Pulling along side a pedestrian and telling him to stop and get his hands out of his pockets is governed by Terry
Pulling along side a person walking and telling him to stop and to get his hands out of his pockets is a command not a request and governed by Terry. Here, there was not reasonable suspicion. In re Rafeal E., … Continue reading