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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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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
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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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: January 2015
AP: Sheriffs want popular police-tracking app disabled
AP: Sheriffs want popular police-tracking app disabled by Eileen Sullivan: Sheriffs are campaigning to pressure Google Inc. to turn off a feature on its Waze traffic software that warns drivers when police are nearby. They say one of the technology … Continue reading
Wall Street Journal: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
Wall Street Journal (subscription/registration required): U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars by Devlin Barrett: The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program … Continue reading
NYTimes: Documents Show N.S.A.’s Moves on Surveillance Before Congress’s Approval
NYTimes: Documents Show N.S.A.’s Moves on Surveillance Before Congress’s Approval by Charlie Savage: WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled in 2007 that the U.S.A. Patriot Act empowered the National Security Agency to collect foreigners’ emails and phone calls from domestic … Continue reading
CA8: Stop of the wrong person on reasonable but mistaken belief not suppressed
Based on an informant’s story, the police were looking for Barefield in a particular car. They happened upon defendant Patrick at the appointed time and place near the informant in a car matching the description. A reasonable but mistaken belief … Continue reading
MS: Throwing down car keys and running away from a car is abandonment
Throwing down car keys and running away from a car is abandonment. Green v. State, 2015 Miss. App. LEXIS 29 (January 20, 2015). In executing a search warrant for stolen goods on the premises of a convicted felon, the finding … Continue reading
The Marshall Project: Does tear gas belong in schools? Do police?
The Marshall Project: Does tear gas belong in schools? Do police? by Dana Goldstein: On Jan. 20, a federal court in Birmingham began hearing arguments in a class-action lawsuit alleging that school-based police officers used excessive force in spraying disabling … Continue reading
WaPo: New role for District police body cameras
Washington Post: New role for District police body cameras by Keith Alexander: When D.C. police began outfitting some officers’ shirts and glasses with miniature cameras in the fall, the objectives were obvious: to protect residents from overly zealous officers during … Continue reading
NYTimes: Verizon’s Mobile ‘Supercookies’ Seen as Threat to Privacy
NYTimes: Verizon’s Mobile ‘Supercookies’ Seen as Threat to Privacy by Natasha Singer and Brian X. Chenjan: For the last several months, cybersecurity experts have been warning Verizon Wireless that it was putting the privacy of its customers at risk. The … Continue reading
FL: Litigation of 2000 search issue in Wisconsin finding GFE applied was collateral estoppel on later case in Florida on same search
Conflict of laws: Defendant was the target of a search in 2000 in Wisconsin, and, after conviction, the warrant was found issued without probable cause but the good faith exception applied. Some of the DNA evidence from that case linked … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Return of property denied; although this case dismissed, codefendant’s case still alive
Return of property denied despite the fact defendant’s case was dismissed. Defendant’s wife was his codefendant, and she was convicted, but she’s litigating a 2255, so the evidence may still be needed by the government. United States v. Neighbors, 2015 … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: SW not required for cell site location information; the third party doctrine hasn’t changed
A search warrant is not required for cell site location information. Jones is inapplicable, and the third party doctrine hasn’t changed. United States v. Lang, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7553 (N.D. Ill. January 23, 2015):
D.Ore.: Florence does not foreclose strip search claim of inmate workers already detained
Class certification granted to litigate strip searches of incarcerated kitchen worker inmates in the county jail for lack of a penological purpose. Florence does not foreclose this action because that deals with admittees into jails. Cunningham v. Multnomah County, 2015 … Continue reading
D.V.I.: Ordering defendant out of his house with guns drawn constitutes a constructive arrest in the home
Ordering defendant out of his house with guns drawn constitutes a constructive arrest in the home. His later consent to search it, however, was found attenuated. United States v. Bailey, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7851 (D.V.I. January 23, 2015): Further, … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: In complex financial crimes, particularity standard must be flexible
This financial search warrant may appear to be overbroad, but it alleged a seven year scheme and sought many types of financial records. “This is the sort of ‘complex scheme[] spanning many years’ for which our Court of Appeals prescribed … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Davis good faith is objective, so the gov’t doesn’t really have a burden of proof
The court previously held that use of defendant’s garage door opener to locate his place did not violate the Fourth Amendment. After Riley, the defendants moved for reconsideration, and the court first found Riley inapplicable and, even if it was, … Continue reading
MS: Lifting def’s shirt during a Terry stop was reasonable; drugs revealed
Lifting defendant’s baggy shirt during a virtual felony stop, but characterized as a Terry stop, was not unreasonable because a weapon could have been there [although the court admits that there was no belief there was a gun]. Instead, drugs … Continue reading
E.D.Mo.: [Without waiting for Rodriguez,] littering stop can justify use of a drug dog
Littering stop validly led to a dog sniff without reasonable suspicion being required [and couldn’t wait for Rodriguez?]. United States v. Woods, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180639 (E.D. Mo. December 16, 2014). An off-duty officer observed defendant involved in a … Continue reading
CA5: Prison inmate stated claim for unreasonable strip searches conducted without “any penological justification”
Plaintiff prison inmate pled enough to overcome dismissal of his complaint for failure to state a claim for unreasonable strip searches conducted without “any penological justification.” Ponce v. Lucas, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 941 (5th Cir. January 22, 2015):
EFF.org: The Many Problems with the DEA’s Bulk Phone Records Collection Program
EFF.org: The Many Problems with the DEA’s Bulk Phone Records Collection Program by Hanni Farkhoury: Think mass surveillance is just the wheelhouse of agencies like the NSA? Think again. One of the biggest concerns to come from the revelations about … Continue reading
The Hill: Lawmakers push to require a warrant for GPS tracking by police
The Hill: Lawmakers push to require a warrant for GPS tracking by police by Julian Hattem: Lawmakers in both parties are pushing to require that police have a warrant before tracking people’s locations via their cellphones and other GPS devices. … Continue reading