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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: February 2015
NY1: Search incident of a jacket on the trunk of police car when def handcuffed and inside car was unreasonable
“In this appeal, we are asked to determine whether the police lawfully searched defendant’s jacket, which was lying on the trunk of a police car, while defendant was sitting handcuffed in the vehicle and numerous police officers were present at … Continue reading
OR: No REP in a homeless person’s shelter blocking part of the sidewalk
A homeless person’s temporary structure, a tarp over a crate and a shopping cart, was encroaching on the sideway, the right-of-way. Therefore, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in it under the state constitution or the Fourth Amendment, and … Continue reading
CA11: Summers applies to arrest warrant execution, too
Summers, on detaining persons near the scene of search warrants, is applied, in an unreported decision, to arrest warrants, too. Gomez v. United States, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 2118 (11th Cir. February 11, 2015):
The Drug War in action: Slate: Eight Foods That Cops Have Mistaken for Drugs
Slate: Eight Foods That Cops Have Mistaken for Drugs by Leon Neyfakh Is that crystal meth—or a Jolly Rancher?
MN: The search incident doctrine permits a breathalyzer test in a DUI case, so a refusal charge doesn’t violate a fundamental right
The search incident doctrine permits a breathalyzer test in a DUI case. Thus, a refusal charge doesn’t violate a fundamental right. State v. Bernard, 2015 Minn. LEXIS 46 (February 11, 2015) (5-2):
BBC: Jeffrey Sterling’s trial by metadata
BBC: Jeffrey Sterling’s trial by metadata: When a Washington, DC, area jury convicted Jeffrey Sterling of multiple counts of espionage, the smoking gun wasn’t a key bit of classified information found in the former CIA officer’s possession; it was a … Continue reading
Marshall Project: Our Body-Cams, Ourselves
Marshall Project: Our Body-Cams, Ourselves by Clare Sestanovich: Now that police are always on, who gets to watch? In the wake of the Michael Brown shooting last summer, broad (and rare) consensus emerged in support of a tangible reform to … Continue reading
Just Security: Surveillance and the Vanishing Right to Know
Just Security: Surveillance and the Vanishing Right to Know by Brett Max Kaufman & Patrick C. Toomey: Despite the continuing torrent of disclosures concerning previously secret and wide-ranging government surveillance efforts, many criminal defendants are not getting notice of the … Continue reading
Texas Lawyer: Lawyers Score Win in Recorded Jail Calls Lawsuit
Texas Lawyer: Lawyers Score Win in Recorded Jail Calls Lawsuit by Angela Morris: Four Austin criminal defense lawyers and two advocacy groups scored a win in their lawsuit that alleged that lawyers’ confidential phone calls with incarcerated clients are being … Continue reading
Slate: The Chief Justice Has Never Been Pulled Over in His Life
Slate: The Chief Justice Has Never Been Pulled Over in His Life by Cristian Farias Why John Roberts’ naiveté matters to anyone who cares about policing. And judging from how oral arguments in Rodriguez played out, you have reason to … Continue reading
MO: Disturbing the peace arrest supports a search incident of shopping bag[!]
Officers had probable cause to arrest defendant for disturbing the police for shouting profanities at the police within earshot of children, and the observers were appalled and startled by it all. The search incident of his plastic shopping bag was … Continue reading
Ripon Advance: Electronic Communications Privacy bill gains new ally
Ripon Advance: Electronic Communications Privacy bill gains new ally: U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) said on Monday that he has joined the effort to pass House Bill 699, also known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Amendments Act, which aims to … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: PC and scope of search are matters usually decided on the papers without a hearing
If the question is probable cause for and scope of the warrant, a hearing is not really required. Here, the subject matter was contraband untaxed cigarettes moved interstate, and there was a substantial basis for issuing the search warrant. The … Continue reading
New Samsung TVs eavesdrop via microphone in remote
It’s for voice recognition for controlling the TV set, but Samsung admits that third-parties can intercept. And some have facial recognition. TechCrunch: Today In Creepy Privacy Policies, Samsung’s Eavesdropping TV Daily Mail (UK): Samsung warns viewers: Our smart TVs could … Continue reading
WaPo: Undercover Facebook investigations and the federal/state divide
WaPo: Undercover Facebook investigations and the federal/state divide — a response to David Post by Orin Kerr: In an earlier post, co-blogger David Post pointed to a state trial court ruling in Montana, for which he was an expert for … Continue reading
National Journal: Judge Upholds Legality of NSA Internet Surveillance
National Journal: Judge Upholds Legality of NSA Internet Surveillance by Dustin Volz: A California district judge found that “the Plaintiffs’ version of the significant operational details of the Upstream collection process is substantially inaccurate.” TechDirt: Court Rejects EFF’s Arguments Over … Continue reading
Washington Examiner: 2015 can be the year of criminal justice reform
Washington Examiner: 2015 can be the year of criminal justice reform by Timothy Lynch: Criminal justice reform appears to be one of the hot topics this year. Unlike most other policy areas, where President Obama and Republicans remain at loggerheads, … Continue reading
Connecticut Law Tribune: Detective Who Didn’t Want to Provide DNA Sample Settles Lawsuit
Connecticut Law Tribune: Detective Who Didn’t Want to Provide DNA Sample Settles Lawsuit by AP: Detective Christopher Burns accused his superiors of telling him and other detectives in January 2009 that they had to give DNA samples or they may … Continue reading