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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)
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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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"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: February 2015
New American: Patriot Act’s Illegal Section 215 due to Expire June 1
New American: Patriot Act’s Illegal Section 215 due to Expire June 1 by Bob Adelmann: Section 215 of the Patriot Act is set to expire June 1, and each side in the upcoming battle to renew, reform, or let expire … Continue reading
WaPo: No cell phone warrants without search protocols, magistrate judge rules
WaPo: No cell phone warrants without search protocols, magistrate judge rules by Orin Kerr: The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for the police to search a phone. But can a judge reject a warrant application because it does not tell … Continue reading
Bloomberg: Obama Drone Policy Gives FBI Leeway to Decide What’s Private
Bloomberg: Obama Drone Policy Gives FBI Leeway to Decide What’s Private by Alan Levin: The White House’s attempt to set privacy policies for government agencies using drones doesn’t go far enough for civil-liberties advocates in the U.S….While the White House … Continue reading
NM: The “new crime” exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply to identity-related offenses; it would to violent crimes
Defendant was a passenger in a car stopped without reasonable suspicion, and he had no seatbelt on. He gave a false name and signed the ticket with the false name. That was forgery. The new crime is suppressed because it … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Trying def’s key in his girlfriend’s apartment door violated curtilage
The use of his key in the door to see if it worked violated the apartment’s curtilage under Dunn and Jardines. Defendant’s girlfriend’s apartment was the target of this search because he’d been staying there. He proved he was often … Continue reading
CA11: Automobile exception applied, so Gant argument moot
Defendant’s Gant almost hypertechnical search incident argument fails because the automobile exception applied in any event, so the search was good. United States v. Alston, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 2367 (11th Cir. February 17, 2015). Officers in Memphis were saturating … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Franks challenge to search warrant for house fails for lack of material omission
“The charges against Moran arise from an assault that occurred on May 31, 2006, and its alleged relationship to the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club, Rochester Charter (‘Hell’s Angels’), a purported enterprise within the meaning of the racketeering statute.” After an … Continue reading
MO: PC lacking and SW was stale, but GFE exception saves it anyway
The affidavit for the search warrant here failed for two reasons. First, it failed to show a substantial basis for finding probable cause from two informants’ information that was not properly corroborated [although later court says they kind of corroborate … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: No IAC where def counsel didn’t argue nonbinding authority that likely wouldn’t be followed in this circuit
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not arguing a case from out of the circuit that would likely not be followed in this circuit. “Had counsel argued under precedent from other circuits that charges of child molestation did not justify … Continue reading
NJLJ: AG Ordered to Explain Denial of Records Related to NYPD Spying
NJLJ: AG Ordered to Explain Denial of Records Related to NYPD Spying by Michael Booth: A New Jersey appeals court has ordered the state Attorney General’s Office to provide more detailed reasoning as to why it refused to comply with … Continue reading
WaPo: The Watch: The Supreme Court’s massive blind spot
WaPo: The Watch: The Supreme Court’s massive blind spot by Radley Balko: This term, the Supreme Court heard two cases involving the actions of police officers during traffic stops. How the court comes down on the two cases will likely … Continue reading
ID: A parole officer can direct a police officer to conduct a parole search
A parole officer can direct the police to conduct a parole search. Also, one cannot argue on appeal that which was not presented to the trial court, here a state constitutional argument against the search. Nevertheless, it is rejected on … Continue reading
S.D.Ala.: Failure to include the incorporated affidavit in the SW as executed was fatal to this search
The motion to reconsider is denied. The search warrant was lacking the incorporated affidavit when it was executed, and that defined the place to be searched. The government cites no supporting case law that having the affidavit in hand, at … Continue reading
NYTimes: U.S. Embedded Spyware, Report Says
NYTimes: U.S. Embedded Spyware, Report Says by Nicole Perlroth & David E. Sanger: SAN FRANCISCO — The United States has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers and networks it has targeted in Iran, Russia, … Continue reading
WaPo: FAA rules might allow thousands of business drones
WaPo: FAA rules might allow thousands of business drones by Craig Whitlock: Thousands of businesses could receive clearance to fly drones two years from now under proposed rules that the Federal Aviation Administration unveiled Sunday, a landmark step that will … Continue reading
WaPo: Opinions: James Comey’s candor on race
WaPo: Opinions: James Comey’s candor on race by E.J. Dionne: Last Thursday’s speech by FBI Director James Comey at Georgetown University was remarkable on its own terms, but revolutionary in the context of his agency’s history. You wonder if Hoover … Continue reading
NLJ: Reflections On Law and Technology | Q&A with John Facciola, retired magistrate judge
NLJ: Reflections On Law and Technology | Q&A with John Facciola, retired magistrate judge by Zoe Tillman: Judges aren’t generally known for their tech savvy. John Facciola was one of the exceptions. Facciola, 69, retired earlier this year as a … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Govt failed in burden of showing exigency in domestic call that officers took time to respond to because of caller being notoriously unreliable
The warrantless entry into defendant’s house could not be justified as a domestic violence call. When the vague call came to police, it was only that a person was “upsetting things,” and the officer en route stopped to investigate a … Continue reading
“No more half measures, Walter.”
“The moral of the story is, I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way. I’ll never make that mistake again. No more half measures, Walter.” –Mike Ehrmantraut, “Breaking Bad,” S3E13