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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)
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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: May 2014
Wired: Cops Must Swear Silence to Access Vehicle Tracking System
Wired: Cops Must Swear Silence to Access Vehicle Tracking System by Kim Zetter: Vigilant Solutions, founded in 2009, claims to have the nation’s largest repository of license-plate images with nearly 2 billion records stored in its National Vehicle Location Service … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh: Woman jailed two weeks for recording Chicago P.D.’s internal affairs officers can sue for a Fourth Amendment violation
WaPo: Volokh: Woman jailed two weeks for recording Chicago P.D.’s internal affairs officers can sue for a Fourth Amendment violation by Eugene Volokh: From Moore v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill. Apr. 28, 2014) — it’s a long excerpt, but … Continue reading
Business Insider: Liberal Supreme Court Justice Comes To The Defense Of Scalia
Business Insider: Liberal Supreme Court Justice Comes To The Defense Of Scalia by Corey Aawar Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made some surprisingly positive comments about fellow Justice Antonin Scalia during a recent Wall Street Journal interview. … Continue reading
WaPo: Apple, Facebook, others defy authorities, notify users of secret data demands
WaPo: Apple, Facebook, others defy authorities, notify users of secret data demands by Craig Timberg: Major U.S. technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly complying with investigators’ demands for e-mail records and other online data, saying that users … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Commentary: From the bench to the podium
SCOTUSBlog: Commentary: From the bench to the podium by Lyle Denniston: In ways large and small, the idealized expectation that the Supreme Court will stay outside the political arena continues to diminish in a country with polarized partisanship and fragmented … Continue reading
NY3: No-knock and nighttime search warrant to gather DNA from person is excessive and suppressed
No-knock and nighttime search warrant to gather DNA from person is excessive and suppressed as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. It wasn’t going anywhere. A Yankees cap was left at the scene of a robbery and shooting, and the … Continue reading
ND: Furtive movements when pulled over justified officers’ guns drawn and console search
Defendant was stopped because the LPN didn’t match the car. His furtive movements at the time of the stop justified the officers drawing down on him, handcuffing, and searching the console. State v. Scheett, 2014 ND 91, 2014 N.D. LEXIS … Continue reading
Austin American-Statesman: Lawsuit: Travis County Jail inmates had calls to attorneys recorded, shared
Austin American-Statesman: Lawsuit: Travis County Jail inmates had calls to attorneys recorded, shared by Nicole Chavez: The Travis County sheriff’s office and other law enforcement agencies are being accused of violating attorney-client privilege after a private firm in Dallas installed … Continue reading
Retuers: Georgia governor signs law to drug test some welfare recipients
Retuers: Georgia governor signs law to drug test some welfare recipients by David Beasley: Under the bill, testing could be required if authorities have a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of drug use. A person failing the test would temporarily lose benefits, although … Continue reading
The Atlantic: The Shaky Legal Foundation of NSA Surveillance on Americans
The Atlantic: The Shaky Legal Foundation of NSA Surveillance on Americans by Conor Friedersdorf: What the final clause of the Fourth Amendment means in interpreting the government’s rights
Politico: Surveillance orders declined in 2013
Politico: Surveillance orders declined in 2013 by Josh Gerstein: The Obama administration said it filed 1,655 applications with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2013, down from 1,856 the previous year. The court maintained its controversial record of virtually never … Continue reading
TX6: DUI blood draw without warrant here violated 4A
The taking of defendant’s blood without a warrant violated McNeely. “In light of the United States Supreme Court’s remand of Aviles and in light of the reasoning in Villarreal and Sutherland, we conclude that, in the absence of a warrant … Continue reading
IN: A person has a right to refuse to answer a knock-and-talk; refusal not exigent circumstances
A person has a right to refuse to answer a knock-and-talk, and that refusal isn’t exigent circumstances. Here, the police came to the juvenile’s house because of a noise complaint, found a store shopping cart in the back of a … Continue reading