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- NE: LEO’s statutory jurisdictional authority is not an unreasonable search and seizure question
- MA: Cell phone call logs don’t require a search warrant
- D.Kan.: Drug dog touching car door handle with nose isn’t unreasonable search
- D.N.M.: DEA’s failure to make a detailed inventory in violation of policy doesn’t require exclusion of evidence
- WaPo: These cities bar facial recognition tech. Police still found ways to access it.
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
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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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
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Monthly Archives: November 2014
WaPo: Phone tracking: From your address to, now, your altitude
WaPo: Phone tracking: From your address to, now, your altitude by Craig Timberg: Cellphone tracking is about to go vertical as the location-services industry, prodded by the U.S. government, solves the riddle of what experts call ‘the z vector.’ Soon … Continue reading
NYTimes: Mail Monitoring Rarely Denied, Postal Service Says
NYTimes: Mail Monitoring Rarely Denied, Postal Service Says by Ron Nixon: The United States Postal Service granted almost all of the nearly 6,700 requests from law enforcement agencies last year to monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal … Continue reading
NYTimes: N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires
NYTimes: N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires by Charlie Savage: WASHINGTON — A little-known provision of the Patriot Act, overlooked by lawmakers and administration officials alike, appears to give President Obama a possible way … Continue reading
Salon: This is America? Secret courts, no 4th amendment and… magic pixie dust
Salon: This is America? Secret courts, no 4th amendment and… magic pixie dust by Marcy Wheeler The claims judges are making in secret hearings about your privacy would be funny — if they weren’t so alarming
NC: When nobody answers door and apparently nobody home, going to back door because of barking dog violated curtilage
When officers doing a knock-and-talk get no answer at the front door and there’s no car in the driveway and no signs anybody’s home, they can’t go to the back door to see if the barking dog they heard belonged … Continue reading
DE: No RS for this probation search based on unverified tip
Delaware requires that there be reasonable suspicion for a probation search. Here, a police officer passed on an unverified tip from an informant that defendant was selling drugs, and that was used for a home visit. Defendant had a couple … Continue reading
On adoption of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001
WND: Swat Team Tasers, Pepper-Sprays Homeschoolers
WND: SWAT Team Tasers, Pepper-Sprays Homeschoolers by Bob Unruh: A Missouri homeschooling family is suing a sheriff and another officer who forcibly entered their home without a warrant, Tasered the father, pepper-sprayed the mother and put their children in the … Continue reading
New book: Cell Phone Investigations
Cell Phone Investigations by Thomas Manson via Police Technical, shipping about Dec. 1.
arstechnica: AT&T demands clarity: Are warrants needed for customer cell-site data?
arstechnica: AT&T demands clarity: Are warrants needed for customer cell-site data? by David Kravets Legal uncertainty surrounds a law compelling disclosure of location information. AT&T has entered the legal fracas over whether court warrants are required for the government to … Continue reading
D.Conn.: No reasonable expectation of privacy in the back of a police car when defs alone talk to each other
Two defendants were arrested and left alone in the back of a police car, and, as hoped, they talked about the crime they were arrested for, and it was surreptitiously recorded. They may have had a subjective expectation of privacy … Continue reading
NYTimes: Bill to Restrict N.S.A. Data Collection Blocked in Vote by Senate Republicans
NYTimes: Bill to Restrict N.S.A. Data Collection Blocked in Vote by Senate Republicans by Charlie Savage and Jeremy W. Peters: WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records … Continue reading
EFF Fights Government’s Effort to Get Cell Location Records Without a Warrant
EFF Fights Government’s Effort to Get Cell Location Records Without a Warrant by Hanni Fakhoury and Jennifer Lynch: Once again, a federal court will decide whether police can track your movements over an extended period of time without a search … Continue reading
CNN: Can cell phones stop police brutality?
CNN: Can cell phones stop police brutality? by Laura Ly: Millions of people have now seen the video. Eric Garner, standing on a sidewalk, asks the NYPD officers surrounding him, “What did I do? What did I do?” Garner, 43, … Continue reading
Baltimore Sun: Judge threatens detective with contempt for declining to reveal cellphone tracking methods
Baltimore Sun: Judge threatens detective with contempt for declining to reveal cellphone tracking methods by Justin Fenton: Baltimore prosecutors withdrew key evidence in a robbery case Monday rather than reveal details of the cellphone tracking technology police used to gather … Continue reading
Washington Times: D.C. rethinks rules that let police seize, keep suspects’ cash, property
Washington Times: D.C. rethinks rules that let police seize, keep suspects’ cash, property by Andrea Noble: Civil asset forfeiture policies facing increasing scrutiny nationwide D.C. lawmakers are pushing forward with legislation to reform policies allowing police to seize property from … Continue reading
NYTimes Editorial: A Crucial Vote on the Surveillance Bill
NYTimes Editorial: A Crucial Vote on the Surveillance Bill: The Republican Party is so badly fractured that it is impossible to tell what steps it will take on domestic surveillance once it assumes control of Congress in January. Its rising … Continue reading
D.Minn.: There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in goods in a box opened for sale in a store
In a counterfeit sports jersey case, the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a box he opened and put on the counter of a store to sell. United States v. Gore, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160497 (D. Minn. … Continue reading
GA: With rental car stops, looking at rental agreement is permitted
When a rental car is stopped for a traffic offense, the officer is permitted to inquire into whether the person driving is an authorized driver. In this case, from stop to finding cocaine with a drug dog because of vague … Continue reading