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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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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)
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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: July 2014
E.D.Tenn.: Protective sweep invalid
Defendant was arrested outside and asked to go inside to get warm. They all sat in the kitchen. There was no reason for one officer to decide to walk through the rest of the house because there was no proffered … Continue reading
N.D.Ga., S.D.Tex. & DE: Waiving a motion to suppress for strategic reasons was valid
Not filing a suppression motion was a valid strategic choice discussed on the record at the time it was waived with the USMJ. United States v. Latimore, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91777 (N.D. Ga. May 29, 2014); United States v. … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: The Legality of the National Security Agency’s Bulk Data Surveillance Programs
The Legality of the National Security Agency’s Bulk Data Surveillance Programs, John Yoo, 37 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 901 (2014). Abstract:
New Law Review Article: Watching Me: The War on Crime, Privacy, and the State
Watching Me: The War on Crime, Privacy, and the State, Kimberly D. Bailey, 47 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1539 (2014). Abstract:
OR: Smell of MJ around three men was RS as to all
Smell of marijuana around three men was reasonable suspicion as to all. “Defendant argues that, because Ploghoft only detected the odor of marijuana in the vicinity of the men, and could not trace it to defendant in particular, that was … Continue reading
KC Star: Question of electronic privacy on Missouri’s August ballot
KC Star: Question of electronic privacy on Missouri’s August ballot by Caroline Baumanthe: Many Missouri lawmakers think an amendment on the Aug. 5 ballot will bring privacy protection in the state into the 21st Century. Amendment 9 would change the … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: No reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of a telephone call with an informant who’s recording it
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of a telephone call with an informant who’s recording it. United States v. Deleon, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90856 (E.D. Tenn. May 23, 2014):
FL: Color discrepancy in DMV record not enough for a stop
A color discrepancy from DMV on a vehicle alone is not a basis for a stop. Here, the car was bright green and DMV showed it to be blue. That’s not enough. State v. Van Teamer, 151 So. 3d 421 … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Question is PC for a stop, not whether the defendant actually violated the law
The stop was valid. “Whether Flores actually violated the law is immaterial. The question is only whether Deputy Broce had probable cause to suspect that Flores was committing a traffic violation.” The officer could ask defendant to produce what created … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Considering suppression being tried, not attacking just one officer’s credibility wasn’t IAC
Defense counsel was reasonable in not impeaching officer at suppression hearing with his disciplinary history considering the issue being tried. The issue for the suppression hearing was whether it was reasonable for the officers to believe defendant was where he … Continue reading
The New American: So Much Warrantless Surveillance, Feds Can’t Keep Track
The New American: So Much Warrantless Surveillance, Feds Can’t Keep Track by Joe Wolverton, II: The National Security Agency (NSA) conducts warrantless surveillance of millions of people around the world and very little of it has anything to do with … Continue reading
CA5: When qualified immunity is the issue, whether the 4A was violated isn’t even the “ultimate question”
Police received a 911 call that plaintiff’s son was a schizophrenic threatening death or certain injury. They came to her house, and she denied that he was there, but pleaded for help for him because he refused to take his … Continue reading
CA9: Exigent circumstances justified warrantless entry into Navajo’s hogan
Defendant was arrested for sexual assault on an Indian reservation. The warrantless entry into his hogan was justified by exigent circumstances. United States v. McCabe, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 12549 (9th Cir. July 2, 2014)*:
Latin Post: Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Smartphones Can Still Be Searched by Border Cops
Latin Post: Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Smartphones Can Still Be Searched by Border Cops by Robert Schoon: But don’t expect the Supreme Court’s limitations to impact all law enforcement, because, as Aaron Sankin detailed on the Daily Dot, the United … Continue reading
19 ways to finally take your patriotism to the next level
19 ways to finally take your patriotism to the next level 10. Be a conscientious citizen and study up on which civil liberties you still have. Don’t worry, it won’t take long. Left out: The freedom to call your GOP … Continue reading
NPR: Top NYPD Cop: Stop-And-Frisk Is Not ‘The Problem Or The Solution’
NPR: Top NYPD Cop: Stop-And-Frisk Is Not ‘The Problem Or The Solution’: It’s been nearly a year since a court ruling curtailed the New York Police Department’s controversial practice known as stop-and-frisk, but NYPD Commissioner William Bratton says the city … Continue reading
WaPo: A July 4 quiz: How much do you know about the Declaration of Independence?
WaPo: A July 4 quiz: How much do you know about the Declaration of Independence? by Valerie Strauss: Take our July 4 quiz and test your knowledge of the history of the Declaration of Independence. History here: What you know … Continue reading