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Recent Posts
- 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
- TX14: No REP in location information on bondsman’s GPS monitor
- 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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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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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, 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
CA7: Witness ID’s enough for arrest thus barring § 1983 case
Four witnesses ID’d defendant for a crime. The fact that the charges were later dropped didn’t form a basis for a § 1983 case. There was probable cause and no reasonable jury would conclude otherwise and that’s qualified immunity. Hart … Continue reading
techdirt: Hey NSA: Even If AT&T Was Collecting The Info For You, The Fourth Amendment Still Applies
techdirt: Hey NSA: Even If AT&T Was Collecting The Info For You, The Fourth Amendment Still Applies by Mike Masnick: We’ve already written a few articles about the confirmation that AT&T is going above and beyond what’s required by the … Continue reading
MA: A license plate reader is not treated as an anonymous informant with little or no credibility
A license plate reader is not treated as an anonymous informant with little or no credibility. It is based on a database that is sufficiently reliable to based a stop on. Commonwealth v. Ramos, 2015 Mass. App. LEXIS 116 (August … Continue reading
Brennan Center For Justice: The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras
Brennan Center For Justice: The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras by Rachel Levinson-Waldman: Police-worn body cameras are the newest darling of criminal justice reform. They are touted as a way to collect evidence for criminal investigations, oversee and expose … Continue reading
AZ: Dog sniff in hotel hallway and knock-and-talk thereafter not unreasonable
About midnight, officers did a dog sniff in the hallway of defendant’s hotel, and the dog alerted on defendant’s door. There was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the hotel hallway, and hotel management permitted the dog to come in. … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Whether an apt building stairwell is a “public place” is unsettled law in NYS, so def’s stop not unreasonable under Heien
Whether an open container in an apartment building stairwell was done in a “public place” is not clear and is unsettled under New York law, so the officer’s detention of defendant on this ground was not objectively unreasonable under Heien … Continue reading
D.Kan.: LPN being unassigned was justification for a stop and then the use of a drug dog wasn’t unreasonable
Defendant’s stop was based on the LPN coming back “not assigned,” and then the officer smelled alcohol on him. The use of the drug dog during all this did not extend the stop and was not unreasonable. United States v. … Continue reading
CA10: Extended border search of truck that had been flagged was with RS
Defendant’s vehicle was subjected to a border search in February 2013 and an empty hidden compartment was found after a dog alert. That information was entered in the computer. In September, defendant came through the border twice, and a border … Continue reading
The Hill: The quiet battle for privacy in the cloud
The Hill: The quiet battle for privacy in the cloud by Dan Horowitz: Why is the Second Circuit being forced to defend our electronic privacy and preserve an international agreement from the Obama administration? Recently, a Federal Judge in New … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: To get a hearing on a motion to suppress, defendant has to allege facts sufficient to provide relief
To get a hearing on a motion to suppress, defendant has to allege facts sufficient to provide relief, if they can be proved. United States v. Ochoa, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105925 (N.D.Ga. July 8, 2015). Officers had reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
CA8: No REP in public areas of a store; telephonic warrant relied on in good faith; tribal judge not shown to not be neutral and detached because she had spoken out on def’s store
Defendant’s convenience store was arguably open, and he didn’t show that it was closed, for an officer to come in and observe synthetic marijuana for sale. He thus did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The officer obtained a … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Where def’s laptop and cell phone immediately revealed child porn in a border search, the Ninth Circuit’s Cotterman case is inapplicable
The border search of defendant’s laptop and phones was manual and quickly found child pornography, so the court does not have to follow United States v. Cotterman, 709 F.3d 952 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc) which required reasonable suspicion for … Continue reading
NYTimes: AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet Traffic, Files Reveal
NYTimes: AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet Traffic, Files Reveal by Julia Angwin, Charlie Savage, Jeff Larson, Henrik Moltke, Laura Poitras and James Risen: Newly disclosed documents show that the National Security Agency gained access to billions of emails through … Continue reading
CO: Providing alcohol to a lot of minors justified warrantless entry into house
Police received neighborhood reports of “hundreds” of teenagers at a house party with plenty of underage drinking. Several officers responded and they saw the alcohol through windows and encountered really drunk teenagers coming out. Once the police were discovered, there … Continue reading
CA9: Drug arrestee was handcuffed face down; search incident of backpack next to him was valid under Gant
Defendant was arrested for drug offenses, and he was face down and handcuffed behind his back with his backpack next to him. The quick search incident of the backpack for weapons stopped once it was apparent there were none was … Continue reading
MD: Once DNA was lawfully seized, it can be compared to other samples at will
Defendant’s DNA was lawfully seized in the first place, and it could be compared thereafter to other samples for a match without it being an unreasonable search. The expectation of privacy ceased with the lawful seizure. Varriale v. State, 2015 … Continue reading
CA9: Arrest of public defender summoned to court had no qualified immunity
A court security officer’s arrest of plaintiff public defender who was sent to get her to court had no qualified immunity for arresting her just because she sarcastically said “[i]f you want me to come right now, you’ll have to … Continue reading
The Hill: Feds share info on subpoenas against media outlets
The Hill: Feds share info on subpoenas against media outlets by Julian Hattem: The federal government authorized searches against news organizations 10 different times in 2014, the Justice Department said Friday.