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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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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)
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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: September 2015
The Hill: Bill to limit reach of US warrants faces uphill battle in Congress
The Hill: Bill to limit reach of US warrants faces uphill battle in Congress by Mario Trujillo: Congress faces a tough slog to update the email privacy law at the center of Microsoft’s fight against a U.S. warrant mandating that … Continue reading
KY declines to suppress parole search where violation of some procedural rule but not the Fourth Amendment
Defendant was subject to a parole search condition, and the search violated some internal policy of the Department of Corrections. It did not, however, violate the Fourth Amendment, and the court holds that the policy violation did not require that … Continue reading
CA6: Social media selfie created RS for parole search
Defendant was on supervision for a prior child pornography offense. Police looked to his social media page and found him taking a naked selfie wearing a Santa hat with a camera phone, a violation of the terms of his release. … Continue reading
AL: 76 year old with prior felonies sentenced to LWOP for 2.2 lbs marijuana
The 76 year old defendant, a prior habitual offender for violent crimes, was sentenced to life without parole for possession of 2.2 pounds of marijuana, the trial court thinking it had no discretion on the sentence. Defense counsel raised a … Continue reading
OH3: A court order issued with PC and otherwise complying with the Fourth Amendment doesn’t have to be called a “search warrant” to be effective
A court ordered GPS device was placed on defendant’s vehicle. His movements watched online and facts the police had learned added up to reasonable suspicion for a stop. [If they had PC for a tracking warrant, why not for the … Continue reading
CA6: During a long standoff, police sent for coffee and granola bars but no warrant before a sniper killed the suicidal defendant before he could kill himself
Police engaged in a long standoff with a suicidal subject whose only alleged crime was to fire a gun into the woods which he thought were unoccupied. Every window in the house was broken by tear gas canisters, and he … Continue reading
NJ: “Our view of this testimony is that it represents a profound misunderstanding of the ‘narrow scope of the exigent-circumstance exception’ to the warrant requirement.”
“Our view of this testimony is that it represents a profound misunderstanding of the ‘narrow scope of the exigent-circumstance exception’ to the warrant requirement.” Brown v. State, 2015 N.J. Super. LEXIS 154 (September 11, 2015):
IA: Dispute as to facts doesn’t matter where def’s version supports RS
Even believing the defendant’s version of the facts, there was reasonable suspicion. Therefore, the credibility question doesn’t have to be decided. State v. Gallardo, 2015 Iowa App. LEXIS 803 (September 10, 2015). The only issue on the search here is … Continue reading
ID: Def was arrested twice without a complaint or probable cause for contempt; reversed
Defendant was arrested twice, both times without probable cause or a complaint being filed. For that and other reasons, defendant’s finding of contempt is reversed. State v. Juarez, 2015 Ida. LEXIS 235 (September 9, 2015):
CA2: Ordering a person to leave a courthouse is likely not a seizure, but grabbing his collar and forcing him to move is a seizure
Ordering a person to leave a courthouse is likely not a seizure. Grabbing his collar and forcing him to move is a seizure. It is subject to the reasonableness requirement. Salmon v. Blesser, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 16070 (2d Cir. … Continue reading
NJ: Stashing drugs in another person’s drainpipe shows no REP
Defendant who hid drugs in the drainpipe of a neighbor’s house had no standing to challenge a search of the drainpipe. While evidence at the trial differed, this did not give the defendant the right to reopen the suppression hearing. … Continue reading
EFF Urges Appeals Court To Toughen Privacy Protections for Devices at the Border Warrants Should Be Required to Search Cell Phones, Computers
EFF Urges Appeals Court To Toughen Privacy Protections for Devices at the Border Warrants Should Be Required to Search Cell Phones, Computers:
The Hill: Overnight Tech: House to explore drone safety, privacy
The Hill: Overnight Tech: House to explore drone safety, privacy by Mario Trujillo and David McCabe: House lawmakers on Thursday are slated to explore the safety and privacy implications of drones, as the technology becomes increasingly popular in the United … Continue reading
The Recorder: Defense Lawyers Lose Fight Over Facebook, Instagram Posts
The Recorder: Defense Lawyers Lose Fight Over Facebook, Instagram Posts by Marisa Kendall: In a decision fleshing out the rights of accused criminals in the social media age, a California appeals court ruled Tuesday that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram don’t … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: IAC claim has to say what def counsel didn’t try to suppress
An ineffective assistance claim that says defense counsel was ineffective for failing to move to suppress without saying what should have been suppressed states no claim at all. [It would also have to say that it would have been granted … Continue reading
NJLJ: Marijuana Smoke Still Means Probable Cause, Court Says
NJLJ: Marijuana Smoke Still Means Probable Cause, Court Says by Michael Booth: New Jersey’s decision to allow the use of medical marijuana does not mean that the smell of marijuana smoke no longer creates probable cause for police to make … Continue reading
WSJ: Video Helps Track Police Misconduct; Grievances Decline
WSJ: Video Helps Track Police Misconduct; Grievances Decline by Mark Morales: Footage of incidents in New York City both verified citizen complaints and, in other instances, exonerated officers.
TN: A court order for GPS with PC doesn’t have to be a “search warrant” to be valid
The court order for a tracking device (GPS) was based on probable cause. There is no requirement that it be a “search warrant” as long is it is based on probable cause and is issued by a neutral and detached … Continue reading
D.Mass.: A paying passenger in a cab has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the passenger compartment
“While the question is close,” the court concludes that a paying passenger in a livery car has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the passenger area of the cab from the police, relying on United States v. Woodrum, 202 F.3d … Continue reading