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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)
--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: June 2015
CBS New York: N.Y. State Senator Proposes Using GPS Implants To Track Violent Convicts
CBS New York: N.Y. State Senator Proposes Using GPS Implants To Track Violent Convicts NYCLU Calls Saratoga Lawmaker’s Suggestion An Overreaction To Upstate Prison Break.
The Hill: Senators push warrants for spying in the skies
The Hill: Senators push warrants for spying in the skies by Julian Hattem: “Americans’ privacy rights shouldn’t stop at the treetops,” said Sen. Ron Wyden.
CA4 notes conflict in circuits in applying “egregious Fourth Amendment violation” for immigration removal cases
The Fourth Circuit wrestles with the appropriate standard for an “egregious Fourth Amendment violation” for immigration removal cases, and confirms and analyzes a conflict in the circuits and how to interpret SCOTUS’s Lopez-Mendoza. Here, the Fourth Amendment violations were not … Continue reading
CA7: Parking on the sidewalk is RS for a stop
Officers had reasonable suspicion for a stop when they saw defendant’s car parked on the sidewalk. When they got out of their car, defendant walked toward the back of his car then fled. In the process he tossed a gun. … Continue reading
CA8: Objectively reasonable to stop for speeding; dissent doesn’t buy it
It was objectively reasonable for the officer to stop the defendant for speeding. The officer estimated 50-55 in a 35, and the majority goes along with that under Heien. The defense investigator used the video to conclude it was 35.8 … Continue reading
ID: Defendant’s stop was reasonably extended because defendant handed the officer an expired driver’s license
Defendant’s stop was reasonably extended because defendant handed the officer an expired driver’s license. The totality of circumstances justified a frisk of defendant’s jacket. State v. Smith, 41661, 2015 Ida. App. LEXIS __ (June 15, 2015)*:
The Hill: Facial recognition talks break down as privacy advocates withdraw
The Hill: Facial recognition talks break down as privacy advocates withdraw by David McCabe: A group of privacy advocates have walked away from administration-backed talks to develop a privacy code of conduct for facial recognition software. The nine advocates — … Continue reading
C.A.A.F.: Protective sweep of base house believed to be empty was unjustified under Buie
In a controlled delivery of a box of marijuana to an address on Fort Campbell, Kentucky, officers got a verbal search authorization from the on duty base magistrate. The box was left on the porch because no one was home. … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: Incorporation of affidavit saves a general warrant for computers and a Facebook account
Defendant’s Facebook post “involved in to kill public officials and destroy government buildings,” including the obligatory disclaimer of exercising free speech rights, led to three search warrants. The warrant was for computers and electronics but it didn’t specify what the … Continue reading
techdirt: CA Legislators Pass Warrant Requirement For Phone Searches, Gut Transparency Stipulations To Appease Law Enforcement
techdirt: CA Legislators Pass Warrant Requirement For Phone Searches, Gut Transparency Stipulations To Appease Law Enforcement by Tim Cushing: The California Senate has passed a bill that creates a warrant requirement for searches of cellphones, tablets and electronic devices. This … Continue reading
The Hill: Surveillance reform wars continue
The Hill: Surveillance reform wars continue by Patrick G. Eddington: The annual Intelligence Authorization bill has become the latest battleground in the ongoing Surveillance Reform War. The bill’s inclusion of language that would bar the relatively independent Privacy and Civil … Continue reading
IN: Prior arrest for meth could be considered as RS in overbuying pseudo
Defendant’s prior arrest for methamphetamine was a factor that could be considered when the officer approached defendant for over purchasing pseudoephedrine at a drug store found on a records check. There was no reason for the officer to doubt the … Continue reading
D.Colo.: Admission during stop defendant was in U.S. illegally justified further detention
During defendant’s arrest, he admitted he was in the U.S. unlawfully, so he could be detained for ICE officers. United States v. Arrazola-Vanega, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76006 (D.Colo. May 21, 2015).* Defendant was seen riding a bicycle and the … Continue reading
MA: No reasonable expectation of privacy in sneakers defendant allowed to keep in jail
Defendant was allowed to keep his sneakers when he was checked into the jail, but there was no right to keep them. The police showed up with a search warrant for his clothing in jail property. That included the sneakers. … Continue reading
IA: Officer’s even reasonable mistake of fact makes stop unreasonable
A mistake of fact about the existence of a stop sign (down because of construction) denies reasonable suspicion for the stop. This is not a mistake of law under Heien, a question reserved for another day. State v. Schueman, 2015 … Continue reading
WaPo: Drug war thuggery
WaPo: Drug war thuggery by Radley Balko: A SWAT team goes to a medical marijuana dispensary and acts the fool and eats the pot candy. From the OC Weekly:
NJLJ: Justices to Mull Warrantless Access to Phone Records
NJLJ: Justices to Mull Warrantless Access to Phone Records by Michael Booth: The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments over whether prosecutors should be allowed to obtain criminal suspects’ telephone records without first obtaining a warrant.
NC: SW can’t issue merely because order of protection issued; showing of PC something will be found required
A search warrant cannot issue for defendant’s house merely because the court issues a domestic violence order of protection. There must be a showing of probable cause and for what to enter the house. “Special needs” doctrine does not apply. … Continue reading
MA: Hot pursuit into garage permissible for a jailable misdemeanor
Defendant was fleeing from the police after an attempted traffic stop, and he drove into his garage. The officers could enter his garage in hot pursuit from a jailable misdemeanor. The court declines to adopt a different standard under the … Continue reading