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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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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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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"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: June 2014
The Hill: Senators: No ‘watered down’ NSA reform
The Hill: Senators: No ‘watered down’ NSA reform by Julian Hattem Three senators are doubling down on their call for a sweeping end to the National Security Agency’s “dragnet surveillance.” Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall … Continue reading
CA7: Defense counsel’s security clearance doesn’t help see FISA material for Franks challenge
Just because defense counsel has security clearance, he doesn’t get to see all the material used in a FISA warrant for a Franks challenge. Balancing is required. On de novo review, defense counsel doesn’t get it. United States v. Daoud, … Continue reading
AL: Entry into third party’s home without SW to arrest was invalid as to third party
The U.S. Marshals had an arrest warrant for Nolan, and they put out word on the street. A CI reported that Nolan was at defendant’s house playing video games, so they went there and entered to arrest him. The entry … Continue reading
AP: GPS Tracking Case Has Left Unsettled Questions
AP: GPS Tracking Case Has Left Unsettled Questions by Eric Tucker: Judges around the country are grappling with the ripple effects of a 2-year-old Supreme Court ruling on GPS tracking, reaching conflicting conclusions on the case’s broader meaning and tackling … Continue reading
ACLU: Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them?
ACLU: Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them? The map below tracks what we know, based on press reports and publicly available documents, about the use of stingray tracking devices by state and local police departments. Following the map is a … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Probable Cause, Constitutional Reasonableness, and the Unrecognized Point of a “Pointless Indignity”
Probable Cause, Constitutional Reasonableness, and the Unrecognized Point of a “Pointless Indignity”, Josh Bowers, 66 Stan. L. Rev. 987 (2014). Abstract: A police officer needs probable cause to make an arrest. But, almost always, he needs no more. In this … Continue reading
AP: Microsoft: US seizure of cloud data threatens Fourth Amendment
AP: Microsoft: US seizure of cloud data threatens Fourth Amendment: Microsoft Corp. and four other large American technology companies are using a Manhattan court case to draw a line in the cloud, saying the US government has no right to … Continue reading
Chicagoist: Peoria Mayor Is Still Unclear On How The First Amendment Works
Chicagoist: Peoria Mayor Is Still Unclear On How The First Amendment Works: Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis, made famous briefly for overreacting over a parody Twitter account, now faces a lawsuit from the account’s creator. The Illinois ACLU is suing Ardis … Continue reading
TX4: No reasonable expectation of privacy in public official’s emails
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public office holder’s official email accounts under the state public records act. Quon is distinguished, and the email policies show no expectation of privacy. Adkisson v. Abbott, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: The Supreme Court Goes to the Dogs: Reconciling Florida v. Harris and Florida v. Jardines
The Supreme Court Goes to the Dogs: Reconciling Florida v. Harris and Florida v. Jardines, Brian L. Owsley, 77 Alb. L. Rev. 349 (2014). Abstract: In the most recent Term, the United States Supreme Court has issued rulings affecting criminal … Continue reading
CA11: Inference of firearms nearly always with drugs less likely in small scale operations
While firearms are implicitly involved in drug transactions, the smaller the dealer, the less likely the inference. The search warrant here didn’t specify firearms, and, in drug distribution cases, it’s usually likely a gun will be found. Here, officers thought … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Juries and the Criminal Constitution
Juries and the Criminal Constitution, Meghan J. Ryan, 65 Ala. L. Rev. 849 (2014). Abstract: Judges are regularly deciding criminal constitutional issues based on changing societal values. For example, they are determining whether police officer conduct has violated society’s “reasonable … Continue reading
Washington Times: States not waiting for feds on drone privacy
Washington Times: States not waiting for feds on drone privacy: The Obama administration is far behind schedule integrating drones into the national airspace and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are struggling to move legislation governing the craft, but a dozen states … Continue reading
The Atlantic: How Neuroscience Reinforces Racist Drug Policy
The Atlantic: How Neuroscience Reinforces Racist Drug Policy by Nathan Greenslit: A recent neuroscience study from Harvard Medical School claims to have discovered brain differences between people who smoke marijuana and people who do not. Such well-intentioned and seemingly objective … Continue reading
The Hill: Nadler, Conyers tout email privacy reform
The Hill: Nadler, Conyers tout email privacy reform by Kate Tummarello: Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) want to change the law that deprives emails of the Fourth Amendment protections afforded to paper documents. ‘As technology has advanced … Continue reading
WaPo: Barry Township, Mich., asks state for protection–from its own police department
WaPo: Barry Township, Mich., asks state for protection–from its own police department by Radley Balko Residents accuse local police of threats, harassment.
NYLJ: Parties Ask Judge to Resolve Stop/Frisk Motions
NYLJ: Parties Ask Judge to Resolve Stop/Frisk Motions by Mark Hemblett: The parties in the stop-and-frisk litigation have asked Southern District Judge Analisa Torres (See Profile) to resolve motions to intervene by police unions who oppose a settlement between the … Continue reading
E.D.Ark.: Use of SWAT tactics and 40-50 officers to execute document SW and corral employees stated claim
The use of a SWAT team and tactics with 40-50 officers with guns drawn surrounding property to execute a search warrant for business records of an economic crime against the Small Business Administration stated a claim for executing a search … Continue reading
OR: Judge who issued SW was former public defender who recognized def’s name was still “neutral and detached”
A former deputy public defender was now a judge. On his first day in office, he was presented with a search warrant affidavit that mentioned defendant’s name. The judge vaguely remembered the name from about five years earlier, but none … Continue reading