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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)
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
Al Jazeera America: Trickle down surveillance
Al Jazeera America: Trickle down surveillance How the NSA’s covert surveillance tactics are being employed by local law enforcement.
AP: US pushing local police departments to keep quiet on cell-phone surveillance technology
AP: US pushing local police departments to keep quiet on cell-phone surveillance technology by Jack Gillum and Eileen Sullivan: The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep … Continue reading
New law review article: Katz Has Only One Step: The Irrelevance of Subjective Expectations
Katz Has Only One Step: The Irrelevance of Subjective Expectations, Orin S. Kerr, University of Chicago Law Review, Forthcoming. Abstract: This Article argues that the “subjective expectation of privacy” test is a phantom doctrine. The test exists on paper but … Continue reading
TX: There is standing in a borrowed vehicle
One who legitimately borrows a vehicle has standing to challenge its stop and search. Here, however, defendant fled from the van thereby abandoning it. The stop was reasonable, and flight added to the reasonable suspicion. Matthews v. State, 2014 Tex. … Continue reading
WI: Search of a backpack for sawed-off shotgun was based on exigency
Search of a backpack for a sawed-off shotgun was justified by exigent circumstances. The officer was already investigating when the report was received that there likely was such a weapon involved. Requiring a search warrant at that point was completely … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Corroboration of publicly known facts provided by CI here was enough
“The only facts that were independently corroborated by Detective Duquette were: (1) that Dixon lived at the Home, and (2) that he had previously been incarcerated in federal prison for selling illegal drugs and had been released in 2010.” “Here, … Continue reading
CA3: Use of MoocherHunter to isolate unauthorized wifi signal usage did not violate privacy
Using MoocherHunter software to see who was using another person’s wifi internet connection to download child pornography was not a search. After officers established that the signal was strongest from defendant’s apartment, they got a search warrant for his apartment … Continue reading
NJLJ: N.J. Wants Warrantless Access to Phone Customers’ Billing Records
NJLJ: N.J. Wants Warrantless Access to Phone Customers’ Billing Records by Mary Pat Gallagher: The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office is asking county prosecutors statewide for their help in overturning a 32-year-old state Supreme Court precedent that requires a warrant … Continue reading
In Waco, asking for a public defender could bring a sheriff’s investigator to your house
Waco Tribune: Investigator making dent in county’s indigent defense costs by Stephanie Butts: The presence of a new McLennan County indigent defense investigator has substantially reduced the number of requests for court-appointed, county-funded attorneys. McLennan County Indigent Defense Coordinator Cathy … Continue reading
ABAJ: Mistakenly arrested again, at court hearing in earlier mistaken-arrest case, woman plans to sue
ABAJ: Mistakenly arrested again, at court hearing in earlier mistaken-arrest case, woman plans to sue by Martha Neil: Twice arrested within six months by a single Florida law enforcement agency, for crimes in which another individual with the same name … Continue reading
CA6: Def fit description of wanted bank robber and made furtive movement leading to frisk
After a bank robbery with shots fired, officers had a line on a suspect. With the picture from the surveillance video, they went to an apartment complex and encountered a man outside who fit the description of the robber including … Continue reading
D.Utah: Domestic disturbance call of man with gun justified entry
The officer’s entry into the home on a domestic disturbance call where defendant was allegedly armed and wouldn’t come out was based on exigency and his wife’s consent. United States v. Avalos, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78886 (D. Utah June … Continue reading
OH5: Inventory was valid [even though it was a criminal search]
The officer had an outstanding arrest warrant for defendant for domestic violence. Defendant wasn’t at home, but he was found with the car parked elsewhere. After defendant’s arrest, even though the car was legally parked, the officer directed the car … Continue reading
CA11: In a case of first impression, “cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy.”
In an interesting and thorough analysis, the Eleventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Sentelle of the D.C. Circuit sitting by designation, “hold[s] that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy.” The court also discussed, … Continue reading
WaPo: Aggressive police raids for thee, but not for me
WaPo: Aggressive police raids for thee, but not for me by Radley Balko: Former Utah AG Mark Shurtleff decries aggressive police tactics — but only after they were used on him.
NYT: Microsoft Protests Order to Disclose Email Stored Abroad
NYT: Microsoft Protests Order to Disclose Email Stored Abroad by Steven Lohr: Microsoft is challenging the authority of federal prosecutors to force the giant technology company to hand over a customer’s email stored in a data center in Ireland.
NM: Stop for waving a gun permits search of trunk
Officers received a call of a person pointing a long gun from a car, and they found the car and stopped it. The stop permitted a search of the trunk as well under the automobile exception. State v. Leticia T., … Continue reading