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- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
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- 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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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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)
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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: October 2015
LA4: State failed to show justification for search of bookbag not on def when he was arrested
The state failed to prove an exception to justify a search of defendant’s bookbag. It was seized, but it was wasn’t on him when he was arrested. It couldn’t be a search incident or inventory. State v. Berrigan, 2015 La. … Continue reading
Washington Examiner: Administrative subpoenas: Relics of the Star Chamber
Washington Examiner: Administrative subpoenas: Relics of the Star Chamber by Mark J. Fitzgibbons: The Drug Enforcement Administration is involved in a lawsuit for targeting medical records using judge-less warrants called “administrative subpoenas.” The quantity of DEA administrative subpoenas issued unilaterally, … Continue reading
Cert. grant: Utah v. Strieff: 4A violated by outstanding warrant found during illegal stop?
Utah v. Strieff — Question Presented: “Should evidence seized incident to a lawful arrest on an outstanding warrant be suppressed because the warrant was discovered during an investigatory stop later found to be unlawful?” Prior post from January: Under the … Continue reading
Two on Davis good faith exception; one a 20 year old cold case
In a cold case rape and murder that came from retesting defendant’s DNA 20 years after the crime, a search incident that was valid in 1985 was now saved by Davis good faith. State v. Adams, 2015-Ohio-3954, 2015 Ohio LEXIS … Continue reading
Cal.1st: Probation condition to reveal all passwords to search phones and social media was overbroad
A juvenile’s probation conditions required that he and his family turn over all passwords to cell phones and social media sites. The condition is overbroad considering what probation seeks to accomplish (seeing if he has stolen iPhones), and it implicates … Continue reading
D.N.J.: Plain view supported seizure of records outside scope of search warrant
In a Medicaid fraud document search warrant, some documents found were outside of the scope of the warrant, but they satisfied the plain view doctrine that their potential incriminating nature was immediately apparent and they were found in the course … Continue reading
W.D.Ark.: Warrantless DNA sample 16 days after arrest was unreasonable
Warrantless taking a DNA sample from an arrestee under state law but 16 days after his arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. If it was at the time of booking, it would have been reasonable. Nominal damages awarded. Lewis v. Brazell, … Continue reading
Lawfare: Oral Argument Recap: United States v. Ganias
Lawfare: Oral Argument Recap: United States v. Ganias by Michael Knapp The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sat en banc Wednesday afternoon for the first time in almost two years. The occasion? An otherwise-mundane tax fraud prosecution … Continue reading
ProPublica: How Some Alabama Hospitals Quietly Drug Test New Mothers — Without Their Consent
ProPublica: How Some Alabama Hospitals Quietly Drug Test New Mothers — Without Their Consent by Nina Martin, ProPublica, and Amy Yurkanin, AL.com: As hundreds of Alabama women face child endangerment charges, hospitals are mostly mum on their testing policies – … Continue reading
NYTimes (AP): Hidden GPS Devices to Track Suspects Raise Legal Concerns
NYTimes (AP): Hidden GPS Devices to Track Suspects Raise Legal Concerns: But the tiny satellite-connected devices — embedded by the manufacturer or slipped by police into stacks of cash, pill bottles or other commonly stolen items — are raising questions … Continue reading
NYTimes: New York Police Will Document Virtually All Instances of Force
NYTimes: New York Police Will Document Virtually All Instances of Force by Al Baker and J. Dadvid Goodman: For the first time in its modern history, the New York Police Department is establishing explicit guidelines — backed by a sweeping … Continue reading
Cal.1: A probationer’s guest can challenge the scope of search provision
Defendant lived in the garage next to a probationer’s house. He could challenge the scope of search provision of the probationer when the police searched the garage, too, as a probation search because it effected him. (In contrast, parolees have … Continue reading
TN: Inconvenience in getting a blood draw warrant is not exigency
Defendant was in a single car accident that killed his passenger. When he was in the hospital getting treatment, there was a warrantless blood draw. The state couldn’t rely on the implied consent statute where it relied on exigency at … Continue reading
CO: Woman kicked out of house but still with the keys has no apparent authority, distinguishing Rodriguez
Colorado distinguishes Rodriguez and finds that a woman who was kicked out of a home but still had the keys had no actual authority. “Under Matlock, common authority comes from some combination of three components: use, access, and control.” Here, … Continue reading
Cal.1: Parole searches in CA only require any officer have knowledge defendant is on supervision, not even the conditions
For a parole search in California, it’s only required that the officer objectively reasonably know that the defendant is on post-release community supervision (PRCS) not even the conditions. People v. Douglas, 2015 Cal. App. LEXIS 840 (1st Dist. September 28, … Continue reading