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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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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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"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: October 2014
Politico: Magazine: The police are still out of control by Frank Serpico
Politico: Magazine: The police are still out of control by Frank Serpico: Forty-odd years on, my story probably seems like ancient history to most people, layered over with Hollywood legend. For me it’s not, since at the age of 78 … Continue reading
DC: Withheld information about a viable search issue was a Brady violation
Withheld information about a search issue that would likely have been successful is Brady information. Here, the issue developed during trial. Biles v. United States, 2014 D.C. App. LEXIS 439 (October 23, 2014): Turning to the merits, the government, again, … Continue reading
HuffPo: CHP Officer Allegedly Steals Nude Photos From DUI Suspect’s Phone
HuffPo: Officer Sean Harrington Allegedly Steals Nude Photos From DUI Suspect’s Phone by Andres Jauregui: A California Highway Patrol officer is under investigation after he allegedly forwarded nude photos of a female suspect to his phone. Officer Sean Harrington, 35, … Continue reading
OR: Order for resting nystagmus test in front of jury was a search
During defendant’s DUI trial, the question of whether defendant was tested for resting nystagmus was raised because it wasn’t in the field notes. Then the state asked for and got a test for resting nystagmus of the defendant in front … Continue reading
United Nations: Growing use of drones in law enforcement may violate human rights, warns UN expert
United Nations: Growing use of drones in law enforcement may violate human rights, warns UN expert The increasing use of armed drones within domestic law enforcement risks depersonalizing the use of force and infringing upon the rights of individual citizens, … Continue reading
NPR: Should Police Be Able To Keep Their Devices Secret?
NPR: Should Police Be Able To Keep Their Devices Secret? by Martin Kaste: Officers use ‘StingRays’ to mimic a cell phone tower and intercept information from phones in a whole neighborhood. Versions of the devices have been around for years, … Continue reading
NJLJ: AG Test Case Seeks Phone Records Without a Warrant
NJLJ: AG Test Case Seeks Phone Records Without a Warrant by Mary Pat Gallagher: The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, which in a memo leaked to the Law Journal in June said it was looking for a test case it … Continue reading
WaPo: Federal judge rules that the Fourth Amendment might be worth the parchment on which it’s written
WaPo: Federal judge rules that the Fourth Amendment might be worth the parchment on which it’s written by Radley Balko: So it seems that a federal judge has issued an injunction to prevent California authorities from conducting marijuana searches without … Continue reading
Cal.1st: Davis good faith exception applied to a pre-McNeely DUI warrantless blood draw
Davis good faith exception applied to a pre-McNeely DUI warrantless blood draw. People v. Rossetti, 2014 Cal. App. LEXIS 950 (1st Dist. October 22, 2014). 911 call from a name eyewitness to shots fired did not need corroboration. “In general, … Continue reading
OH9: Flyover gave PC for marijuana grow in backyard, but police needed a warrant to enter
After a marijuana eradication flyover, officers entered defendant’s fenced back yard without a warrant to seize plants. The warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment. They had probable cause, but the state was seeking to have defendant disprove exigency when it … Continue reading
Think Progress: Seattle Cops Bring Lawsuit Claiming They Have A Constitutional Right To Use Excessive Force
Think Progress: Seattle Cops Bring Lawsuit Claiming They Have A Constitutional Right To Use Excessive Force by Nicole Flatow: Over the past year, the Seattle police department has revised its policies on when police can use force, as part of … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh: A lot can happen in a ‘de minimis’ extension of a traffic stop
WaPo: Volokh: A lot can happen in a ‘de minimis’ extension of a traffic stop by Orin Kerr: A two-minute video of a traffic stop in Iowa shows how a police officer might try to obtain consent to search a … Continue reading
WaPo: Federal judge: Prosecutors’ attempt to secretly seize $13 million was ‘constitutionally abhorrent’
WaPo: Federal judge: Prosecutors’ attempt to secretly seize $13 million was ‘constitutionally abhorrent’ by Radley Balko: For your “I can’t believe this stuff happens in America” files: Calling their conduct “constitutionally abhorrent,” a federal judge recently chided government prosecutors for … Continue reading
IN: Injured dog not exigency for warrantless entry into home
Police and animal control officers responded to dogs fighting on the street, and one was bloody and apparently injured and ran into a house through an open sliding glass door. The animal control officer corralled three dogs and requested the … Continue reading
Wired: Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records
Wired: Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records by G.W. Shultz: The database, which affects unknown numbers of people, contains phone records that at least five police agencies in southeast Virginia have been collecting since 2012 and sharing … Continue reading