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- D.Kan.: Preliminary hearing moots claim of lack of PC for arrest
- Conflict of laws: CA parole search waiver effective in AR
- CA9: Compliance or not with inventory procedure is a part of totality of circumstances; here they were investigating
- MD: Geofence warrant for rural property was with PC and particular
- MO: Initial bail setting under Gerstein not adversarial
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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,
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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
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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) -
“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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Monthly Archives: July 2015
N.D.Cal.: Gov’t cell site location information collection and analysis requires SW
Cell site location information today is so specific that collection and analysis requires a search warrant. It is as specific as GPS, and it can now pinpoint locations in a house. GPS was on a car; cell phones are on … Continue reading
ProPublica: The FBI Built a Database That Can Catch Rapists — Almost Nobody Uses It
ProPublica: The FBI Built a Database That Can Catch Rapists — Almost Nobody Uses It by T. Christian Miller: For roughly 30 years the FBI has virtually ignored a system meant to help cops track the behavioral patterns of violent … Continue reading
WaPo: Is credit card skimming a Fourth Amendment search?
WaPo: Is credit card skimming a Fourth Amendment search? by Orin Kerr: In United States v. Bah, [posted here] decided July 24th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit handed down the first circuit ruling on whether skimming … Continue reading
AP: All New Jersey Troopers to Get Body Cameras Within a Year
AP: All New Jersey Troopers to Get Body Cameras Within a Year by Geoff Milvhill: New Jersey plans to put body cameras on all state troopers who work in the field and is issuing guidelines on how local police forces … Continue reading
WaPo: Opinion: The complexities of traffic stops, from a police officer’s perspective
WaPo: Opinion: The complexities of traffic stops, from a police officer’s perspective by Peter Moskos: Little about policing is ideal. But that’s why we have police officers, to handle non-ideal situations. These often involve people who are lost, mentally ill, … Continue reading
NACDL: A Surveillance Bill by Any Other Name: The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act
NACDL: A Surveillance Bill by Any Other Name: The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act by Jumana Musa: With every news story of a database breached comes a steady drum beat of demands for more cybersecurity. This demand has taken shape in … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Target of a SW has no right to see the warrant before execution
Target of a SW has no right to see the warrant before execution [probably to prevent interference with it]. Even so, that’s not a ground to suppress. The inventory has to be prepared with a witness. It can be the … Continue reading
CA8: Quantity of alleged excessive force against an arrestee based on extent of injury a jury question
A jail altercation in Ferguson, MO led to the arrestee getting injured and he sued. The district court dismissed on the narrow ground the injuries were “de minimus.” The Eighth Circuit says, no, that’s a jury question here. Davis v. … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Lessons from the drug raid that burned a Georgia toddler
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Lessons from the drug raid that burned a Georgia toddler: Last week, federal prosecutors announced that former Georgia deputy Nikki Autry would be indicted on charges of making false statements to a judge in … Continue reading
NY Times: N.S.A. Will Not Be Allowed to Keep Old Phone Records
NY Times: N.S.A. Will Not Be Allowed to Keep Old Phone Records by Charlie Savage: Analysts at the National Security Agency will no longer be permitted to search a database holding five years of Americans’ domestic calling records after Nov. … Continue reading
MD: Davis good faith saves a search incident of a cell phone 3 years before Riley was decided, even though no state case ever said so
Search incident of defendant’s cell phone two and three years before Riley was decided was in Davis good faith based on Robinson [even though no state or Fourth Circuit case had said so]. Demby v. State, 2015 Md. LEXIS 490 … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Police daily briefing provided PO with RS of a probation violation
Defendant’s PO received a daily brief from the police that mentioned that defendant was in a car stopped and identified as a gang member. One of his conditions of parole was to avoid gang activity. That was justification for a … Continue reading
Slate: The Fourth Amendment and Driverless Cars
Slate: The Fourth Amendment and Driverless Cars by John Frank Weaver Should cops need a warrant to access data from your self-driving vehicle? They already need a warrant for black-boxes, GPS devices, cell phones, and computers, so I’d say yes?
New law review article: The Post-Riley Search Warrant: Search Protocols and Particularity in Cell Phone Searches
Adam M. Gershowitz, The Post-Riley Search Warrant: Search Protocols and Particularity in Cell Phone Searches, William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-313. Abstract: Last year, in Riley v. California, the Supreme Court required police to procure a warrant … Continue reading
CA6: No REP in magnetic strips on back of credit and gift cards lawfully seized
Defendant was found with over 70 credit and gift cards. The court finds no reasonable expectation of privacy in the magnetic strips on the back. They are intended to be read when used, and they are not a constitutionally protected … Continue reading
Two on emergency: DV call and multiple erratic 911 calls threatening to use a gun
A domestic violence call from an hysterical woman at a hotel room justified a warrantless entry into the room when the police could finally locate her room. Commonwealth v. Caple, 2015 PA Super 159, 2015 Pa. Super. LEXIS 425 (July … Continue reading
DE: Search warrant for some things and “other items that may be stolen” wasn’t overbroad where officers used a list
A Franks challenge in Delaware requires an affidavit from the defendant, and there isn’t one. The Franks claim is, at best, only a conclusory statement that the officer had an ends-justifies-the-means mentality, but, as a whole, probable cause is shown. … Continue reading
FL5: With PC, a vehicle search can occur with or without a warrant
The officer here had probable cause the vehicle contained contraband and he could have searched under the automobile exception. Instead he got a warrant. “See Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 52, 90 S. Ct. 1975, 26 L. Ed. 2d … Continue reading
E.D.La.: Exigency had dissipated by the time this stop occurred, and it’s suppressed
Officers heard a threat to kill defendant and they went looking for him to warn him. But, the court finds no sense of urgency, and they stopped defendant’s car, claiming the emergency exception. There was an emergency if they acted … Continue reading
ME: Sufficient evidence supported searching passengers, too
Based on information that defendants’ car had drugs heading into Maine, the car was stopped and the occupants searched. It was all with probable cause, and Pringle controls the search of the passengers because it was reasonable to believe they … Continue reading