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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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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Section 1983 Blog -
"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
D.D.C.: Exit border search of computer without reasonable suspicion was unreasonable
Defendant is a Korean businessman who regularly flew between Korea and California. The government suspected that shipments back to China for his business were routed to Iran, so they seized his laptop as he was leaving in 2012 to search … Continue reading
On The Media: The Police Body Cam Conundrum
On The Media: The Police Body Cam Conundrum: There is overwhelming support to outfit the nation’s cops with body cameras. Theoretically, they promote accountability and transparency, but in practice it’s much more complicated.
WaPo: Bulk records collection nearing endgame
WaPo: Bulk records collection nearing endgame By Ellen Nakashima: For months, the debate around the future of the National Security Agency’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records was framed as a stark choice between ending the program completely or … Continue reading
NY Times: Airport Security Advances Clash With Privacy Issues
NY Times: Airport Security Advances Clash With Privacy Issues by Ron Nixon: BOSTON — At a mock airport in an underground laboratory here at Northeastern University, students pretending to be passengers head through a security exit in the right direction, … Continue reading
CA8: Circuit authority authorized dog sniff at door before Jardines so good faith applies
A pre-Jardines dog sniff outside the door was valid in this circuit, and the court has already sustained on good faith such a sniff in United States v. Davis, 760 F.3d 901, 903, 905 (8th Cir. 2014). United States v. … Continue reading
OR: PC for the automobile exception is not the same argument as car wasn’t mobile, so it’s waived for appeal
Defendant’s argument that there was not probable cause for the automobile exception is different from the issue of the automobile exception does not apply because the car was not mobile. Thus, it is not preserved for appeal. State v. Brock, … Continue reading
Just Security: The Substance of the Second Circuit on 215: Four Key Takeaways
Just Security: The Substance of the Second Circuit on 215: Four Key Takeaways by Jennifer Daskal: Yesterday the Second Circuit declared the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata program unlawful. Specifically, it ruled that it was unauthorized by section 215 of the … Continue reading
MO: Trial court erred in suppressing car search incident without also considering automobile exception
The trial court erred in applying the search incident doctrine to defendant’s vehicle search and suppressing when the state also argued the automobile exception. Remanded for consideration of that issue, too. State v. Walker, 2015 Mo. App. LEXIS 501 (May … Continue reading
WaPo: Friday Rant: Bills of Frights edition
WaPo: Opinions: Friday Rant: Bills of Frights edition by Tom Toles: Would anyone seriously argue that laptops, emails, and smartphones are not the 21st equivalent of papers and effects? Of course not. But……. terrorism. We cannot bear the thought of … Continue reading
The Libertarian Republic: US Citizen Secretly Detained Without Charges Shows the Growing Effects of Counterterrorism Policies
The Libertarian Republic: US Citizen Secretly Detained Without Charges Shows the Growing Effects of Counterterrorism Policies by Alison Basley Effects of the War on Terror on U.S. citizens, such as surveillance, secret interrogations, and being detained without charges, are becoming … Continue reading
Roll Call: Paul’s Anti-NSA Push Is at Odds With McConnell’s Agenda
Roll Call: Paul’s Anti-NSA Push Is at Odds With McConnell’s Agenda (Updated) (Video) by Niels Lesniewski: Sen. Rand Paul is calling the debate on an issue that puts him at odds with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “a defining moment for … Continue reading
Cato: In Holding NSA Spying Illegal, the Second Circuit Treats Data as Property
Cato: In Holding NSA Spying Illegal, the Second Circuit Treats Data as Property by Jim Harper: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that section 215 of the USA-PATRIOT Act never authorized the National Security Agency’s … Continue reading
WaPo: Second Circuit rules, mostly symbolically, that current text of Section 215 doesn’t authorize bulk surveillance
WaPo: Second Circuit rules, mostly symbolically, that current text of Section 215 doesn’t authorize bulk surveillance by Orin Kerr: Edward Snowden’s biggest leak was that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act to authorize … Continue reading
CA2: § 215 of the Patriot Act does not authorize the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata of telephone calls
§ 215 of the Patriot Act does not authorize the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata of telephone calls, but the decision is stayed. The third party doctrine is important, but it doesn’t have to be reached. SCOTUS’s Amnesty International v. … Continue reading
TX4: Private security guards’ detention for police was based on reasonable suspicion
The Texas exclusionary rule applies to private actors. The club security guards here had at least reasonable suspicion to detain and handcuff defendant for attempting to sell cocaine in the club as a citizen’s detention, akin to a citizen’s arrest. … Continue reading
D.Vt.: “It is not necessary, however, for police to corroborate every single statement made by an informant.”
The CI’s statement to the police was generally corroborated. “It is not necessary, however, for police to corroborate every single statement made by an informant.” United States v. Pappano, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57897 (D.Vt. May 4, 2015). Tennessee is … Continue reading
CA8: Even consent to forfeiture requires the government establish nexus between the property and the crime
Even a consent to forfeiture requires the government establish nexus between the property and the crime. United States v. Beltramea, 14-1899 (8th Cir. May 6, 2015):
The Intercept: The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text
The Intercept: The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text by Brian Foomkin: Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record. But … Continue reading