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- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
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- 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)
--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: May 2015
TX2: Suppression hearing judge not free to draw conflicting inferences if PC shows in four corners of affidavit
On the question of probable cause, the fact that conflicting inferences could be drawn does not give the suppression hearing judge the power to determine that those other inferences control. Deference has to be given to the finding of probable … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Police Brutality and ‘The Role That Whiteness Plays’
The Atlantic: Police Brutality and ‘The Role That Whiteness Plays’ by Robin DeAngelo: A scholar’s analysis of American culture presumes too much.
The Hill: Senate barrels toward crucial NSA votes
The Hill: Senate barrels toward crucial NSA votes by Julian Hattem: Pressure is mounting on the GOP to back a reform bill, but its fate is far from certain.
WaPo: Model legislation for police body cameras
WaPo: Model legislation for police body cameras by Radley Balko The ACLU’s ideal bill strikes the right balance between privacy and transparency.
Forbes: A Young Woman’s Stunning Encounter With Drug Warriors Disguised As Immigration Agents
Forbes: A Young Woman’s Stunning Encounter With Drug Warriors Disguised As Immigration Agents by Jacob Sullum: If you want to know how Jessica Cooke ended up on her back, screaming in pain as the barbs from a stun gun delivered … Continue reading
OR concludes that pulling a package out of sorting line violates possessory interest
The recipient of a package has, under U.S. Mail regulations, a limited right to control the package even when in transit because it can be redirected. Here, the package was pulled out for a dog sniff. (Decided under Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
WaPo: Sixth Circuit creates circuit split on private search doctrine for computers
WaPo: Sixth Circuit creates circuit split on private search doctrine for computers by Orin Kerr: The Sixth Circuit handed down a new decision on computer search and seizure that may be the next computer search issue to make it to … Continue reading
The Hill: Paul begins Patriot Act filibuster
The Hill: Paul begins Patriot Act filibuster by Jordain Carney: Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul took to the Senate floor Wednesday, in what the Kentucky Republican’s staff is calling a filibuster of extending the Patriot Act. “I will not let … Continue reading
MA: SW for CP on video camera, cell phone, and computer permitted plain view seizure of separate memory cards later searched with a warrant
The police executing a search warrant for nude images of defendant’s 13-year-old stepdaughter on a video camera, cell phone, and computer properly seized three memory cards from digital cameras under the plain view doctrine because his stepdaughter stated he used … Continue reading
NJ: Reasonable for officer to follow arrested person back to room for ID; reasonable suspicion he was armed
The officer had reasonable suspicion to believe that defendant had been smoking marijuana, and he asked for ID. Defendant said it was in his room, so the officer said he’d have to follow defendant to get it. The officer noticed … Continue reading
NJ: private search doctrine doesn’t give the police the opportunity to do a search of the home without a warrant
The private search doctrine doesn’t give the police the opportunity to do a search of the home without a warrant. State v. Wright, 2015 N.J. LEXIS 549 (May 19, 2015). Syllabus by the court: The third-party intervention or private search … Continue reading
The Atlantic: How the DEA Harasses Amtrak Passengers
The Atlantic: How the DEA Harasses Amtrak Passengers by Conor Friedersdorf: A mathematician describes how his rights were apparently violated during a trip to Washington, D.C. Earlier this year, Aaron Heuser of Eugene, Oregon, had to travel to Washington, D.C. … Continue reading
D.P.R.: Drug dealers usually keep drugs and money at home, so that’s nexus
Drug dealers usually keep the drugs and money at home. So, when probable cause is shown, defendant can be expected to have drugs and money at home. United States v. Gomez-Encarnacion, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 64131 (D.P.R. May 15, 2015). … Continue reading
D.Utah: Defendant doctor who sold 95% of practice had no standing in the records of the clinic
The search warrant here was for medical records of a clinic and in storage. The defendant doctor who filed the motion to suppress sold the clinic and kept a 5% share. Records were in storage, too. The court concludes that … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Officers get qualified immunity in shooting a mentally ill person who came at them with a knife
Officers called to a disturbance where a mentally ill person threatened her social worker get qualified immunity for shooting her for coming at them with a knife. The law was not clearly established that they had to make any special … Continue reading
KY: Defendant who refused consent for blood test and got no breath test has no Fourth Amendment claim that he wasn’t breath tested
Defendant was stopped for traffic offenses and smelled of alcohol. He refused consent to search his blood for his BAC, and the officer did not offer him a breath test. Thus, he had no “standing” because of no injury in … Continue reading
WaPo: How the IRS seized a man’s life savings without ever charging him with a crime
WaPo: How the IRS seized a man’s life savings without ever charging him with a crime by Christopher Ingraham: The United States of America, Plaintiff, v. $107,702.66 in United States Currency, Defendant. That’s the Kafkaesque title of a civil asset … Continue reading
W.D.Tex. credits motorist and passenger over officer and finds no reasonable suspicion
In a rare occurrence, the Western District of Texas at El Paso believed the motorist and passenger over the officer about the reasonable suspicion for the stop. The defendant had been stopped four times in a short period of time, … Continue reading