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Recent Posts
- W.D.Ark.: Parole search waiver moots lack of PC argument
- AR: RS shown for boating while intoxicated stop
- W.D.Mo.: Wrong address in SW wasn’t fatal where right house was searched
- NY: Failure to show independent source for officer’s observation of def required reversal
- VA: Outline of a gun in def’s pocket was RS
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
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Daily Archives: April 9, 2015
AR: Mere color discrepancy between the DMV record and what the car looks like is not reasonable suspicion
Mere color discrepancy between the DMV record and what the car looks like is not reasonable suspicion, following FL3 and CA7. Schneider v. State, 2015 Ark. 152 (April 9, 2015), rev’g 2014 Ark. App. 711, 492 S.W.3d 601:
Wired: [Erie Co.] NY Cops Used ‘Stingray’ Spy Tool 46 Times Without Warrant
Wired: NY Cops Used ‘Stingray’ Spy Tool 46 Times Without Warrant by Kin Zetter: The police department in Erie County, New York fought hard to prevent the New York Civil Liberties Union from obtaining records about its use of a … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Seattle’s Radical Approach to Drug Crimes Is Working
The Atlantic: Seattle’s Radical Approach to Drug Crimes Is Working: New research shows the city’s experimental Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, or LEAD, has helped dramatically reduce recidivism among participants.
WaPo: North Charleston police to wear body cameras
WaPo: North Charleston police to wear body cameras by Wesley Lowery and Mark Berman: City officials here promised to outfit the entire police department with body cameras Wednesday, seeking to defuse tension over a graphic video showing a white officer … Continue reading
CA10: Roadblock to capture bank robber that stopped 20 cars and resulted in 17 people being handcuffed was reasonable under all the circumstances
Defendant robbed a Denver bank on a Saturday wearing a beekeeper’s gear and mask, so nobody got a look at him. In the stolen money was a GPS tracker effective to a 60′ radius. Police tracked it to an intersection, … Continue reading
NY adopts “objectively reasonable mistake of law” for stops
“In this appeal, we are asked to decide whether there is probable cause to make a traffic stop for a suspected violation of law in accordance with article I, § 12 of the New York State Constitution and the Fourth … Continue reading
S.D.Ga.: Defendant not entitled to new counsel where appointed counsel wouldn’t file a frivolous motion to suppress
Defendant’s motion for appointment of new counsel because defense counsel refused to file a motion to suppress is denied. The motion was patently frivolous. Defendant was detained by Home Depot employees for shoplifting, and they removed a gun from him. … Continue reading
CA7 combines three cases to explain in detail supervised release conditions, including search conditions on reasonable suspicion
CA7 combines three cases to explain in detail supervised release conditions, including search conditions on reasonable suspicion. One defendant posited a 3 am home check for child pornography on his computer or a Javert-like obsessive PO. United States v. Kappes, … Continue reading
CT: CSLI was harmless error, even if unreasonably obtained
Even if the cell site location data for defendant’s phone was unreasonably obtained, it showed only that his phone was in the area of the crime not him, and he attempted to rebut it by claiming that his truck was … Continue reading
MS: Search warrant to seize cell phone fairly includes ability to search it
The search warrant to seize defendant’s cell phone, fairly read, permitted a search of the phone for photographs of defendant’s sexual battery of the victim. Moore v. State, 2015 Miss. App. LEXIS 182 (April 7, 2015). The invalidity of the … Continue reading