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- CA10: SW for gun three weeks after road rage incident wasn’t stale
- OH10: Parole search of cell phone can occur even when it’s taken from the property room at jail
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- W.D.N.Y.: No IAC for not challenging search without standing
- CAAF: Victim’s 4A rights were at issue, too
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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)
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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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"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, 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: August 2015
Ars Technica: License plate reader led police to man who killed reporter, cameraman
Ars Technica: License plate reader led police to man who killed reporter, cameraman by David Kravets (“As soon as it was entered, it came up with a positive hit.’”): The man who authorities said infamously killed two Virginia television journalists … Continue reading
Daily Business Review: Employers Need Policies on Searching Worker Smartphones
Daily Business Review: Employers Need Policies on Searching Worker Smartphones by Suhaill Morales: In the wake of NFL quarterback Tom Brady destroying his cell phone in the midst of the NFL Deflategate investigation, the incident took a turn from sports … Continue reading
ACLU blog: ACLU Suit Shows the DOJ Gathered Location Data Without Probable Cause
ACLU blog: ACLU Suit Shows the DOJ Gathered Location Data Without Probable Cause by Linda Lye: After three years of litigation, we’ve finally settled a portion of one of our long-running Freedom of Information Act suits against the federal government … Continue reading
CA11: Wife having computer password showed her apparent authority over it
It was reasonable for police to believe that defendant’s wife had apparent authority to consent to providing the password to them to search his laptop. He argued that he gave it for the limited purpose of fixing a printer problem, … Continue reading
The Guardian: Digital surveillance ‘worse than Orwell’, says new UN privacy chief
The Guardian: Digital surveillance ‘worse than Orwell’, says new UN privacy chief by Adam Alexander Joseph Cannataci describes British oversight as ‘a joke’ and says a Geneva convention for the internet is needed.
HuffPo: Roadside Strip Searches and Other Police State Indignities
HuffPo: Roadside Strip Searches and Other Police State Indignities by John W. Whitehead. (The URL says “the raping of america roa”)
M.D.La.: Search incident couldn’t be used to justify search here days after the controlled buy that gave cause
The search incident doctrine can’t be used to justify a search incident to a warrantless arrest days after the event that gave the probable cause. The arrest can’t be manipulated like that. An arrest warrant could certainly have issued, but … Continue reading
UT: While bank records are constitutionally private, once properly disclosed in an investigation, privacy is gone
Bank records of a nonprofit allegedly funneling money to candidates for office were subpoenaed by the state, but no prosecution was brought. Then a public records request was filed for the bank records. There was no overriding privacy interest in … Continue reading
VICE News: Baltimore PD used stringray in 837 cases citing USA Today
VICE News: US Cops Aren’t Getting Warrants to Spy on People’s Cellphones for Petty Crimes: Law enforcement’s secretive and often-times warrantless use of the cellphone tracking device known as StingRay is receiving fresh scrutiny this week following an investigation into … Continue reading
OH5: Citizen informant’s DUI tip line call wasn’t specific enough about DUI to support a stop
Defendant’s wife called a DUI tip line that he was driving having consumed alcohol. An officer stopped him without waiting for a traffic offense, which he would usually do. While she was an identified citizen informant, the tip was not … Continue reading
MN: Davis good faith exception applies to police conduct prior to McNeely in DUI warrants
Davis good faith exception applies to police conduct prior to McNeely in DUI warrants. State v. Lindquist, 2015 Minn. LEXIS 469 (August 19, 2015):
KS: Stipulating issue then arguing against it is like invited error
The state complained the defense motion to suppress was too general, and defense counsel stipulated to narrowing it to something substantive. The state was arguing that it did not have to argue every conceivable exception to the warrant requirement for … Continue reading
CADC: Def’s argument about privacy interest fails where SW ultimately issued for search of boxes of records; should have argued possessory interest lost
22 boxes of records were placed in a Ford Explorer to take them away from a business when the USSS arrived and took them without searching right away, waiting to get a search warrant. Defendant’s argument was premised solely on … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Payton-Steagald violation in entry of def’s home looking for another suppressed
Officers entered a defendant’s home without a search warrant looking for another person. The entry violated Payton and Steagald and it is suppressed. United States v. Harris, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110292 (M.D.La. August 19, 2015):
TN: Officer outside jurisdiction can still make arrest as a citizen’s arrest
Defendant’s arrest outside the officer’s jurisdiction is still justified by state law permitting citizen’s arrest. State v. Wilburn, 2015 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 672 (August 21, 2015): As a private citizen, Officer Croce was authorized to stop and arrest Defendant … Continue reading
techdirt: Courts Aren’t Buying Dispensary-Raiding Cops’ ‘Expectation Of Privacy’ Arguments
techdirt: Courts Aren’t Buying Dispensary-Raiding Cops’ ‘Expectation Of Privacy’ Arguments by Tim Cushing: We recently covered the complete absurdity that is the Santa Ana police union’s legal battle to clear cops caught misbehaving (to put it lightly…) during a raid … Continue reading