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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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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)
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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
Recorder: Prosecutors Skeptical of Bill to Require Warrants for Data Searches
Recorder: Prosecutors Skeptical of Bill to Require Warrants for Data Searches by Cheryl Miller: SB 178, which seeks to extend the U.S. Supreme Court’s logic on cellphone searches, has backing from Big Tech, but law enforcement will push back.
GA: Generalized, boilerplate statements about drug dealers for a no-knock SW don’t satisfy the Fourth Amendment
Generalized, boilerplate statements about drug dealers for a no-knock search warrant don’t satisfy the Fourth Amendment, and the trial court did not err in suppressing the search for lack of announcement. In addition, the product of a search doesn’t justify … Continue reading
Police One: How cops are catching grow ops with AM radios
Police One: How cops are catching grow ops with AM radios by Keith Graves Many ham operators can locate a grow simply by taking a radio and portable antennae out into their neighborhood and using the radio to triangulate the … Continue reading
D.Ore.: Second cell phone search warrant 29 mo after first was not unreasonable
The first search warrant for defendant’s phones was valid, and the government could have still used the phones as evidence. But, 29 months later, the government sought a second search warrant to look at the phone again, and found more … Continue reading
S.D.Ill.: 9 day delay in getting SW for phone seized on exigent circumstances not unreasonable
A nine day wait to get a search warrant for a cell phone admittedly seized on exigent circumstances was not unreasonable, particularly where the defendant didn’t ask for it back. United States v. Winn, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15240 (S.D. … Continue reading
S.D.Ill.: Arrest warrant for one person and consent entry didn’t authorize entry into separate apartment in house [excellent discussion of arrest v. search warrants]
Officers had an arrest warrant for Herman Smith at a particular address in Madison, Illinois. They obtained entry by consent. Once inside, they learned that what they thought was a single family residence was really three. They entered defendant’s separate … Continue reading
NYTimes: Ferguson One of 2 Missouri Suburbs Sued Over Gantlet of Traffic Fines and Jail
NYTimes: Ferguson One of 2 Missouri Suburbs Sued Over Gantlet of Traffic Fines and Jail by Monica Davey: Mr. Nelson, who paints buildings but is out of work, is among 15 residents of the St. Louis region who filed two … Continue reading
OH6: DNA at crime scene matched to def via CODIS, and that justified SW for more to confirm
A cigarette butt at the crime scene had defendant’s DNA on it according to CODIS, and that supported a search warrant for defendant for confirmatory DNA. State v. Williams, 2015-Ohio-405, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 375 (6th Dist. January 30, 2015). … Continue reading
OH6: When the contents of a storage unit are sold at auction for nonpayment of rent, the defendant loses standing
When the contents of a storage unit are sold at auction for nonpayment of rent, the defendant loses his reasonable expectation of privacy in the unit. State v. Coopman, 2015-Ohio-457, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 414 (6th Dist. February 6, 2015):
IN: The facts of a neighborhood feud that ended in murder suggested nexus to def’s house for the murder weapon
In a neighborhood feud murder case, the known, albeit limited, facts strongly suggested that defendant was the shooter and thus the murder weapon would be found at his house. This was sufficient nexus. Also, citizen informants don’t have to be … Continue reading
VA: Stop for parking pass hanging on mirror was objectively reasonable; subjective intent irrelevant
It was objectively reasonable for the officer here to stop the defendant for a parking pass hanging from the mirror which could have obstructed the driver’s view. Here, the driver was subjected to a consensual patdown for weapons that led … Continue reading
WaPo: Police accountability measures flood state legislatures after Ferguson, Staten Island
WaPo: Police accountability measures flood state legislatures after Ferguson, Staten Island by Reid Wilson: More than a dozen states are considering new legislation aimed at increasing police accountability in the wake of incidents in Ferguson, Mo.; Staten Island, N.Y.; and … Continue reading
Slate: Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? A provocative new theory
Slate: Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? A provocative new theory by Leon Neyfakh: Criminal justice reform is a contentious political issue, but there’s one point on which pretty much everyone agrees: America’s prison population is way too high. … Continue reading
OH6: 25 minute detention waiting for drug dog unreasonable; def had a right to refuse consent and was nervous, and that’s not enough
Defendant was validly stopped for a license plate sticker violation, but his detention for 25 minutes for a drug dog to arrive was without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. He refused to consent to a search of his car and he … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Orin Kerr, The Fourth Amendment and the Global Internet
Orin Kerr, The Fourth Amendment and the Global Internet, 67 Stan. L. Rev. 285 (2015). Abstract:
NYTimes: Arizona: Maricopa Deputies Will Get Body Cameras
NYTimes: Arizona: Maricopa Deputies Will Get Body Cameras (Reuters): Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County is spending $1 million to buy 700 body cameras for deputies as part of a court ruling that found his office had racially profiled Latino … Continue reading
MO: Even if ping order was unlawful, defendant’s flight from police was an intervening act
Defendant was wanted in a double murder, and police got a court approved ping order to locate his phone, and he was in Oklahoma. Defendant saw that he was being followed and led the police on a high speed chase … Continue reading