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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
Privacy Foundation
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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
ProPublica: Judge Orders NYPD to Release Records on X-ray Vans
ProPublica: Judge Orders NYPD to Release Records on X-ray Vans by Michael Grabell: The NYPD has a secretive program that uses unmarked vans with X-ray machines designed to detect bombs. ProPublica tried to find out more about it, but the … Continue reading
WaPo: Thermal Imaging Allows for Picturing the Invisible
WaPo: Thermal Imaging Allows for Picturing the Invisible by John Markoff: The thermal imaging systems used by the French police to find the two brothers suspected in the Charlie Hebdo massacre last week are based on a rapidly evolving technology … Continue reading
CA5: Knock-and-announce still lives: No § 1983 qualified immunity for violation of rule
After discussing at length the purposes of the knock-and-announce rule and how well established it is, the court finds that the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity for a violation of the rule for entry into plaintiffs’ home without … Continue reading
D.Utah: Rental car driver without rental agreement approval had no standing in CA10
In the Tenth Circuit, merely being the driver of a rented car without a showing of approval from the renter or the rental agreement is a lack of standing in the car. United States v. Flores, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
WY: No prejudice from this violation of nighttime search rule; GFE also applies
The state violated the nighttime search rule by executing this search warrant at 10:18 pm rather than before 10 pm, but the officers claimed not to know the exact time. There was no showing in the search warrant papers for … Continue reading
MA: State can’t use an SDT to get a cell phone turned over to a law firm for providing the owner legal advice [state law limits law office searches]
A law firm received a cell phone from a John Doe client under investigation. The state sought the cell phone by subpoena because of a state statutory prohibition against law office searches. Mass. G.L. c. 276, § 1. The phone … Continue reading
CA6: Search of suspended judge’s personal safe during judicial misconduct investigation stated a claim for relief
The plaintiff was a judge suspended by the state judiciary and a workplace search occurred in relation to that investigation. Her personal safe was searched, too. The search of the office was reasonable under O’Connor, but the search of her … Continue reading
IL: Officers investigating noise complaint at house could go to back door when nobody answered front door
Officers investigating a noise complaint could go to the back door of the subject residence when nobody answered the front door and there was apparently somebody home. People v. Cannon, 2015 IL App (3d) 130672, 2015 Ill. App. LEXIS 9 … Continue reading
techdirt: Baltimore PD Hides Its Stingray Usage Under A Pen Register Order; Argues There’s Really No Difference Between The Two
techdirt: Baltimore PD Hides Its Stingray Usage Under A Pen Register Order; Argues There’s Really No Difference Between The Two by Tim Cushing: Another case involving Stingray devices has made its way into the federal court system, prompting the ACLU … Continue reading
Rolling Stone: America’s Dirtiest Cops: Cash, Cocaine and Corruption on the Texas Border
Rolling Stone: America’s Dirtiest Cops: Cash, Cocaine and Corruption on the Texas Border by Josh Eells. How an elite anti-narcotics task force became the most brazen drug thieves on the Texas border
WaPo: Lawmakers urge end to program sharing forfeited assets with state and local police
WaPo: Lawmakers urge end to program sharing forfeited assets with state and local police by Robert O’Harrow Jr.: Leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees on Friday called on the Justice Department to end the sharing of civil seizure … Continue reading
TX2: Under the Texas exclusionary rule, good faith reliance on a statute does not prevent suppression of evidence
Defendant’s BAC test should have been with a warrant under McNeely. Under the Texas exclusionary rule, good faith reliance on a statute, here the implied consent law, does not prevent suppression of evidence. Texas doesn’t follow Davis. Burks v. State, … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Defense counsel was completely unaware of Simmons rule and didn’t pursue suppression motion to keep def off stand
Defense counsel’s being unaware that suppression hearing testimony can’t generally be used at trial (the Simmons (1968) rule) was a failure of performance under Strickland and was not strategy. Defendant, however, would have lost the motion on the merits anyway, … Continue reading
The Oregonian: Portland police traffic stops still disproportionately involve African Americans, report shows
The Oregonian: Portland police traffic stops still disproportionately involve African Americans, report shows by Maxine Bernstein: Traffic stops of African Americans in 2013 accounted for 12.8 percent of all Portland police traffic stops, a disproportionately high rate considering they make … Continue reading
NYTimes: Police Gave Boy No Aid After Shooting in Cleveland
NYTimes: Police Gave Boy No Aid After Shooting in Cleveland by Richard A. Oppel, Jr.: The two Cleveland police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was carrying a pellet gun, stood by without … Continue reading
NJLJ: Government Seizures of Cars, Cash Prompt Calls for Reform
NJLJ: Government Seizures of Cars, Cash Prompt Calls for Reform by Charles Toutant: Critics of New Jersey’s civil forfeiture law are calling for reform, contending that government seizures of cash, cars and other property lack due process protections and sometimes … Continue reading
Payson Roundup: Editorial: Background Checks For Guns
Payson Roundup: Editorial: Background Checks For Guns. This Arizona newspaper thinks that a background check is an unreasonable search. Consider this: If the third party doctrine is going anywhere, maybe the NRA can get off its ass and push this … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: CSLI under the 4A can be used to track people, not just things
The cell phone tracking order was issued by a state court judge and it complied with the Fourth Amendment. The fact it was an “order” and not a “warrant” is a meaningless argument. A warrant can be used to locate … Continue reading