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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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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: April 2015
NYTimes: Report Seeks Overhaul of Postal Service Surveillance Program
NYTimes: Report Seeks Overhaul of Postal Service Surveillance Program by Ron Nixon: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement WASHINGTON — A Postal Service surveillance program that records the information on the outside of letters and packages delivered … Continue reading
Police Technical: Acquiring Android Data Using JTAG (whitepaper)
Police Technical: Acquiring Android Data Using JTAG (whitepaper) Detective Robert Craig covers how to retreive data from an Android device using the Joint Test Access Group (JTAG).
The Bill of Rights is not multiple choice
New Americcan: Paul Calls on GOP to Defend the “Whole Bill of Rights” by Jack Kenny: Rand Paul called on his fellow Republicans Saturday to defend the “whole Bill of Rights,” not just the Second Amendment right “to keep and … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Racial profiling as a reason for a knock-and-talk rejected here, but not foreclosed in egregious cases
Racial profiling as a reason for a knock-and-talk was rejected on the facts, but the court concedes that it could happen in some case with egregious facts. United States v. Horne, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50981 (M.D. Fla. April 17, … Continue reading
Miscellany
Defendant’s stop for having an invalid temporary tag led to his window being rolled down and the officer smelling marijuana. The fact it was in a small plastic bag wasn’t proof that the officer didn’t smell it. A gun was … Continue reading
NYTimes: Police Unions, Facing Public Anger, Rethink How to Address Shootings
NYTimes: Police Unions, Facing Public Anger, Rethink How to Address Shootings by Al Baker: Amid nationwide outrage over a police officer’s shooting eight bullets at the back of an unarmed, fleeing suspect in South Carolina, the statement by the local … Continue reading
American Thinker: Liberty receding in the wake of non-judicial government search and seizure
American Thinker: Liberty receding in the wake of non-judicial government search and seizure by Mark J. Fitzgibbons:
CA6: PC for a cell phone SW shown because it was used in a fraud case; computer search standards applied and satisfied
In a fraud case, probable cause was shown to search a cell phone for both evidence of the fraud and text messages where the co-conspirators were communicating with each other. Nexus was shown because defendant was using his cell phone … Continue reading
CA3: Officers confronted with an unknown call of a screaming woman were not unreasonable in waiting to sort it out, even though it resulted in a delay of getting a woman to the hospital where she died
In a “tragic” case of a young woman dying from lock of oxygen to the brain from an asthma attack, police responded to a 911 call of a “woman screaming” and didn’t know what they had. When they arrived, the … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: Protective sweep was justified just after door opened on knock-and-talk, but court doesn’t even tell us why
Thirteen police came to defendant’s house, and four came on the porch for a knock-and-talk. His wife answered and opened the door three feet. She stepped back and officers entered to conduct a protective sweep. After explaining the reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
Alabama appellate decisions now free; link changed
Because an Alabama search and seizure case came through today, and they are so seldom seen, I went to their website to see if anything had changed, and it has: opinions are now free, and the link on the state … Continue reading
WaPo: State seizes 11-year-old, arrests his mother after he defends medical marijuana during a school presentation
WaPo: State seizes 11-year-old, arrests his mother after he defends medical marijuana during a school presentation, Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: The boy was defending his mother’s use of a drug that helps her deal with an awful condition.
WaPo: As police body cameras catch on, a debate surfaces: Who gets to watch?
WaPo: As police body cameras catch on, a debate surfaces: Who gets to watch? by Peter Hermann and Aaron C. Davis:
MA: While PC for a no-knock warrant wasn’t shown, GFE otherwise applies to no-knock
The affidavit for the search warrant included a no-knock request, but the fact that powder cocaine was sought wasn’t shown to be enough to justify a no-knock. Probable cause of a likelihood of destruction is required under Massachusetts law. Defendant … Continue reading
NJ: No cause shown to order passenger out of car under state law
Under New Jersey law, the driver can per se be ordered out of the car under Mimms, but not so with the passenger. Here, the trial court’s initial findings didn’t resolve this, and it was previously remanded. After the remand, … Continue reading
NPR: Boston Marathon Surveillance Raises Privacy Concerns Long After Bombing
NPR: Boston Marathon Surveillance Raises Privacy Concerns Long After Bombing: Nearly a million people will line the streets to watch the Boston Marathon on Monday, and someone else will be watching them. Bill Ridge with the Boston Police says video … Continue reading
E.D.La.: A power co. had standing to challenge overbroad subpoenas at a gov’t audit
A power company stated an injury-in-fact for standing to contest the agency’s action on, inter alia, Fourth Amendment grounds that its request for production of records in an audit constituted a likely Fourth Amendment violation for an overbroad or oppressive … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: When a SW expires before execution, a new affidavit is not required if timeliness can still be met
The first search warrant in defendant’s child pornography case expired when it wasn’t timely served, so another was sought on the same affidavit. While staleness is always a potential issue, there is no mandatory requirement that a new affidavit be … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: There is standing in a borrowed cell phone; no justification here for search
Defendant’s denial of ownership of a cell phone in his car was not determinative of his standing to challenge its search. Actually, he was loaned the phone because his was broken, and he was legitimately in possession. The question posed … Continue reading