Archives
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Recent Posts
- VA: 12 second question about drugs didn’t unreasonably prolong the stop that was going to take a while anyway
- E.D.Tenn.: Application for SW was considered in detention ruling
- TN: RS didn’t develop to continue stop; second stop based on first suppressed
- CA4: Traffic stop immediately became firearms investigation; suppressed
- CA10: Disagreement over spelling of street name didn’t make warrant fail particularity; GFE at least would apply
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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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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)
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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
AK: Inventory void when conducted as pretext for search incident of driving on suspended DL
On defendant’s arrest for driving on a suspended DL, the officer decided to tow the vehicle and conducted an inventory on the street that started with the area around which he would “lunge, reach, or grasp.” On finding cocaine, the … Continue reading
CO: No REP in a jail call, particularly where there is a recorded warning on the call
Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his jail calls because he knew that they were recorded. The calls at issue were to “to coerce the victim not to testify” showing consciousness of guilt. People v. Degreat, 2015 COA … Continue reading
CA4: Objectively reasonable reliance on NCIC readout supported arrest on an outdated warrant still in system; NCIC’s errors ignored
NCIC showed a warrant was outstanding, and defendant told the officer it was quashed. Yet, it still was in the system. The officer checked various databases from his car computer, and he found nothing that showed that the warrant wasn’t … Continue reading
AK: Emergency exception applied to state trooper’s entry several hours after being called because of the remoteness of the location
This case was a domestic shooting in rural Alaska. Tribal officers were called, and they called for the State Troopers who were far better trained in crime scene preservation and homicide investigation. Their later entry was still under the emergency … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Alabama case fills out the police brutality bingo card
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: Alabama case fills out the police brutality bingo card: This story out of Huntsville, Ala., reads like a checklist of police brutality cases. Excessive force? Check. … Coverup by fellow officers? Check. … Fears … Continue reading
MD: Oral motion to suppress cell phone was waived: neither timely nor specific
Defendant’s oral motion to suppress the contents of his cell phone the morning of trial was neither timely nor specific as to what was to be suppressed, so it’s treated as waived. Sinclair v. State, 2015 Md. LEXIS 496 (July … Continue reading
VA: Officer’s admissions showed inventory was pretext; CA8: inventory not pretext
The evidence showed the inventory search was pretextual by the officer’s admissions at the suppression hearing. The rest of what happened was instructive, but it didn’t show pretext per se. Cantrell v. Commonwealth, 2015 Va. App. LEXIS 228 (July 28, … Continue reading
TN: Fleeing, crashing, and abandoning car, taking another, and fleeing to another state is abandonment of the first car
“By leaving his crashed vehicle in a position that was blocking the roadway and fleeing in another vehicle [to another state], the defendant manifested through his own actions an intent to abandon the truck and its contents. As a result, … Continue reading
ars technica: Warrantless mobile phone location tracking heads to Supreme Court
ars technica: Warrantless mobile phone location tracking heads to Supreme Court by David Kravets: [SCOTUS case no. 15-146, docketed July 31]
Wired: Should Body-Cam Footage Always Go Public? It’s Complicated
Wired: Should Body-Cam Footage Always Go Public? It’s Complicated by Davey Alba: But the wide implementation of body cameras is complex, fraught with privacy concerns and questions over whether or not the content is a matter of public record, not … Continue reading
WSJ: NYPD Urged to Use Body Cameras More Often
WSJ: NYPD Urged to Use Body Cameras More Often by Mark Morales: Department inspector general’s review recommends officers turn on cameras more frequently. NYTimes: New York Police Should Revise Body Camera Rules, Report Says: Fifty-four police officers wear body cameras … Continue reading