Archives
-
Recent Posts
- 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
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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)
-
“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: August 2014
S.D.N.Y.: Brady, a snitch’s new information, and suppression motions
In this case, a codefendant decided to roll, and he finally provided information to the government. He was not a government investigator, and what he subsequently told the government in its debriefing about how the searches went down didn’t really … Continue reading
CA8: 20 mo. sentence for officer committing false arrest, beating, and perjury at state trial was unreasonably low
A 20 month sentence to a police officer for false arrest, pepper spraying, repeatedly and unjustifiably beating an arrestee into unconsciousness, writing a false police report about it, and then perjuring himself at the citizen’s trial which resulted in the … Continue reading
When did this …
(Frankly, all I can think about is what Freud would say about these things.)
New law review article on drones as “searches”
Joel Celso, Comment: Droning on about the Fourth Amendment: Adopting a Reasonable Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence to Prevent Unreasonable Searches by Unmanned Aircraft Systems, 43 U. Balt. L. Rev. 461 (2014). Introduction:
TX4: Anonymous tip of a minor city code violation didn’t support stop, so consent invalid
An anonymous tip that defendant was selling stuff from her car allegedly without a proper city permit didn’t justify defendant’s stop. Her subsequent consent was invalid. Pineda v. State, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 8824 (Tex. App. – San Antonio August … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Home surveillance system recordings were target of SW, and staleness wasn’t a valid objection
Age alone doesn’t determine staleness; it’s the totality. Here, defendant provided an alibi to a murder and the police learned he had a surveillance system at home. It was reasonable to conclude that evidence would still be found by the … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Navarette doesn’t save this anonymous tip; seemingly even undermines it
The anonymous tip here that there would be a gun in the car defendant was in was not supported by objective facts of any sort. This was not a 911 call report, either, as in Navarette, and the court just … Continue reading
TX13: Fleeing from the police and crashing is not a “stop”
Defendant challenged his stop as unlawful, but he slowed for a second and then fled at high speed until he crashed and then he was arrested. There was no stop–he fled. Gonzalez v. State, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 8934 (Tex. … Continue reading
NYTimes: The Scary, the Sad, and the Just Plain Bizarre
NYTimes: The Scary, the Sad, and the Just Plain Bizarre by Serge Schmenmann. Re: Ferguson, MO: A psychiatrist once told me that people tend to focus more on bad news because human beings are genetically wired to identify dangers they … Continue reading
CA7: A defendant violating parole doesn’t lack all standing just because he crosses a state line violating his parole
A defendant violating parole doesn’t lack all standing just because he crosses a state line violating his parole. United States v. Walton, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 15570 (7th Cir. August 13, 2014):
D.D.C.: IAC claim fails on pretrial issue defendant agreed to
Defendant fully participated in the decision not to pursue a Fourth Amendment claim (that wouldn’t win anyway) with a full explanation, so he can’t complain now in a 2255. United States v. Wright, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110991 (D. D.C. … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: 2012 download of cell phone two hours after arrest not search incident; Davis inapplicable
Two defendants, two cell phones searched in March 2012. One on parole, one not. The parole search of the cell phone is valid. The other, however, wasn’t a search incident of the cell phone; it was downloaded two hours after … Continue reading
TX10: Implied consent law not unconstitutional; doesn’t mandate 4A violation
The Texas implied consent statute mandating blood samples in certain types of cases is not facially unconstitutional because it does not mandate violating the Fourth Amendment. McGruder v. State, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 9022 (Tex. App. – Waco August 14, … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Standing shown in a borrowed rental car
Standing found under the totality of the circumstances in a borrowed rented car, but then the defendant looses on the merits because there was probable cause. United States v. Warren, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111690 (E.D. Mich. August 13, 2014): … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Not cooperating with an illegal detention under Terry doesn’t add to reasonable suspicion
On night patrol, a Rochester officer and a probation officer decided to stop defendant because he had a paper bag in his hand that conceivably could have had an open container in it. The stop was without reasonable suspicion because … Continue reading
D.Md.: Franks challenge successful but so limited it won’t help the defense much
The defense satisfied the court of a reckless omission of information about living arrangements in the house searched under the warrant, but the omission only leads to suppression of evidence from one room because that’s all the omission related to. … Continue reading
NYTimes: First Justice Department Memo on Killing Anwar Al-Awlaki
NYTimes: First Justice Department Memo on Killing Anwar Al-Awlaki by Charlie Savage: Following the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound plane on Dec. 25, 2009, the Obama administration considered whether it would be legal to target for killing Anwar Al-Awlaki, a … Continue reading