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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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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: January 2015
E.D.Wis.: Affidavit for SW didn’t create standing by identifying residence as being defendant’s when he wasn’t found there; he still had to show something
The affiant officer’s merely identifying the premises as the residence of the defendant didn’t create standing. Defendant still had to show it. When the search warrant was executed, defendant wasn’t found there, but the codefendants were. United States v. Morris, … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: Hospital owners and doctors had no standing in its bank or patient records
The operator of a small hospital corporation with at most 25 employees had no standing in the bank records of the corporation. Because they might have standing in their own offices doesn’t translate into standing over bank records. As to … Continue reading
NYLJ: Challenge to State’s Retention of Seized Computers Dismissed
NYLJ: Challenge to State’s Retention of Seized Computers Dismissed by Andrew Keshner: The state’s seizure and two-year retention of computers during a criminal case did not amount to unlawful taking, a Fourth Department panel ruled, reversing a Court of Claims … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Third-party doctrine well entrenched and SCA shows Congress isn’t changing it, yet
All things considered, the third party doctrine is well established in SCOTUS precedent, and the court declines to depart from it. In addition, the Stored Communications Act, remaining unchanged, is evidence that Congress intends it to remain that way. Cell … Continue reading
WaPo: Still waiting for justice after SWAT team member kills innocent grandfather
WaPo: Still waiting for justice after SWAT team member kills innocent grandfather by Radley Balko: When drug raids turn tragic, everyone is sorry. But no one is held accountable, and few are made whole.
NYTimes: Editorial: No Justice, No Police
NYTimes: Editorial: No Justice, No Police: Mayor Bill de Blasio has been in office barely a year, and already forces of entropy are roaming the streets, turning their backs on the law, defying civil authority and trying to unravel the … Continue reading
City AM: Uber has five out of six bases in New York City suspended after failing to hand over trip records
City AM: Uber has five out of six bases in New York City suspended after failing to hand over trip records by Guy Bentley: New York City has suspended the majority of Uber bases after the taxi app company refused … Continue reading
CA7: No reasonable expectation of privacy in a conversation in the back of a police car
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a conversation in the back of a police car. Just because the defendant was quiet when the officer was around doesn’t make it objectively reasonable. Williams and the squadrol (paddy wagon) distinguished. … Continue reading
NC: Parking lot of a multi-unit apartment building is not curtilage
The parking lot of a multi-unit apartment building is not curtilage. Police seizure and testing of a discarded cigarette butt tossed there did not require a warrant. State v. Williford, 2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 1 (January 6, 2015). Defendant was … Continue reading
TechDirt: Court Asked Why There’s No Expectation Of Privacy In Cell Location Data, But An Expectation Of Privacy In The Cellphone Itself
TechDirt: Court Asked Why There’s No Expectation Of Privacy In Cell Location Data, But An Expectation Of Privacy In The Cellphone Itself by Tim Cushing: from the warrants-warranted dept
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Los Angeles v. Patel and the constitutional structure of judicial review
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: Los Angeles v. Patel and the constitutional structure of judicial review by Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz: On March 3, at 10 a.m., the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Los Angeles v. Patel, a fascinating case about the … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Counterterrorism Roadblocks: Constitutional Under the Fourth Amendment?
Matt Saldaña, Counterterrorism Roadblocks: Constitutional Under the Fourth Amendment?, 40 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 585 (2014). Abstract: In the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, this Article considers the constitutionality of a counterterrorism roadblock “set up to thwart an imminent … Continue reading
Cal.2: Continued combativeness of DUI suspect was exigency for no BAC warrant
Defendant was driving a semi that had a head-on collision with another vehicle where defendant was driving on the wrong side of the road. He stopped nearly ½ mile from the accident. When police arrived he was combative and profane … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Use of a drug dog during a house search here wasn’t objectively unreasonable; interesting case on changes Jardines might have wrought on dogs and houses
Officers searched defendant’s house with a search warrant, and, after it started, a drug dog was brought in and didn’t find anything. Noting that blanket suppression is a drastic remedy, and Jardines changed the landscape of use of dogs in … Continue reading
OH2: Inconsistency between video and officer’s testimony didn’t alter fact heroin was in plain view
There was an inconsistency between the video and the testimony of the stop and defendant’s handcuffing and the officer’s seeing heroin in plain view, but it’s not material. The officer could order defendant out of the vehicle on a stop. … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Germany’s search of defs’ apartment there was independent of U.S. investigation
German investigators were independently investigating defendants for money laundering, and the FBI was informed because they were Americans. The German authorities coordinated with the U.S. authorities, and a search of the defendants’ German property was conducted as they were being … Continue reading
EFF: State Courts Strike Blows to Criminal DNA Collection Laws in 2014—What to Look for in 2015
EFF: State Courts Strike Blows to Criminal DNA Collection Laws in 2014—What to Look for in 2015: DNA can reveal an extraordinary amount of private information about you, including familial relationships, medical history, predisposition for disease, and possibly even behavioral … Continue reading
WaPo: Meth seizures at U.S.-Mexico border soar in 2014
WaPo: Meth seizures at U.S.-Mexico border soar in 2014 by AP: SAN DIEGO — Seizures of methamphetamine soared at the U.S.-Mexico border during fiscal 2014, accelerating a trend that began several years ago as new laws that limited access to … Continue reading
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See this link.
CA7: SW for computers with CP on premises permitted search of hard drive found hidden in def’s mother’s car
Officers had a search warrant for child pornography on computer devices on the premises, and the search warrant named the premises and one vehicle. At the time of execution of the warrant, defendant’s mother was there with her car, and … Continue reading