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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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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)
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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: November 2015
USA Today: Justice officials fear nation’s biggest wiretap operation may not be legal
USA Today: Justice officials fear nation’s biggest wiretap operation may not be legal by Brad Heath and Brett Kelman: Federal drug agents have built a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs, secretly intercepting tens of thousands of Americans’ … Continue reading
The Hill: Prison phone company denies it recorded private calls
The Hill: Prison phone company denies it recorded private calls by Katie Bo Williams: Prison phone system vendor Securus is denying that it improperly recorded inmates’ calls to their attorneys. According to a bombshell report published Wednesday by The Intercept, … Continue reading
WSJ: U.S. Urges Bodycams for Local Police, but Nixes Them on Federal Teams
WSJ: U.S. Urges Bodycams for Local Police, but Nixes Them on Federal Teams by Devlin Barrett: The discrepancy is a headache for U.S. Marshals, who now aren’t allowed to have officers wearing body cameras on their task forces.
WV: SI for fleeing in a car is unreasonable
Defendant was arrested for fleeing in a car and handcuffed. The search incident of the car was unreasonable because defendant was restrained and away from the car, and there was not reason to believe there was anything in the car … Continue reading
CA10: Seizure of def’s unlabeled bag from Amtrak baggage car to carry it through train was a Fourth Amendment seizure
Defendant was riding Amtrak from Los Angeles which stops in Albuquerque. As usual, the DEA boarded the train. After a walk through they seized defendant’s unlabeled bag from the baggage car and carried it through the train looking for its … Continue reading
CA7: Fire scene consent search exceeded scope of consent to find “origin and cause” of fire
After a fire destroyed defendant’s café and lounge with apartments above, his consent to search for the origin and cause of the fire did not give investigators the authority to search his basement after it was excluded as the source … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Pretextual administrative search of liquor permitted premises still valid, and SW had plenty of PC despite that
Defendant’s store in Brooklyn was a front for a cocaine operation. The store also had a liquor license. The government developed substantial probable cause, yet first entered the store to conduct an administrative inspection of the permitted premises. A subsequent … Continue reading
CA7: GPS installation 2 yrs before Jones was in good faith no matter how you cut it
Here the GPS was put on defendant’s vehicle two years before Jones and stayed 55 days. It was replaced repeatedly because of dead batteries or because it fell off. Defendant tried to get around Davis good faith by arguing that … Continue reading
NY2: Def was accosted on the street without reasonable suspicion, and def’s flight and abandonment was precipitated by unlawful police action
Defendant fled from the police and dropped a gun. His being accosted was without reasonable suspicion and his flight was not reason to arrest. Dropping the gun while being chased is suppressed. “Detective Lunt’s experience with gang activity, his awareness … Continue reading
OR: Anal cavity search could not be justified by search incident doctrine
Anal cavity search for drugs at the stationhouse, rather than on the street, could not be justified as a search incident. It was so intrusive that a warrant was required under the state constitution. State v. Scruggs, 274 Ore. App. … Continue reading
mondaq.com: United States: California Gives The Fourth Amendment A 21st Century Makeover
mondaq.com: United States: California Gives The Fourth Amendment A 21st Century Makeover by Adam Waks: The average American today generates more media than they did at any other point in history, and the ease with which our communications, photos, and … Continue reading
mic.com: The Constitution Can’t Defend You From Predictive Policing — Here’s Why
mic.com: The Constitution Can’t Defend You From Predictive Policing — Here’s Why by Jack Smith IV:
The Hill: NSA’s new surveillance system is nearly operational
The Hill: NSA’s new surveillance system is nearly operational by Julian Hattem: That system will replace the government’s sweeping collection of phone call records with a process in which NSA officials obtain court orders to access a narrower set of … Continue reading
Poliitco: Magazine: Barack Obama, Lawyer-in-Chief
Poliitco: Magazine: Barack Obama, Lawyer-in-Chief by Charlie Savage: Why did a liberal professor embrace the Bush surveillance state? Look to the law.
Natl.L.Rev.: NLRB Hands Employers a Win (Seriously!): GPS Tracking of Employee Upheld
Natl.L.Rev.: NLRB Hands Employers a Win (Seriously!): GPS Tracking of Employee Upheld: It is no surprise that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been busy this summer establishing several principles that are frightening to employers. But in an unexpected … Continue reading
CA6: RS for def’s stop for transporting a firearm in commerce with the intent that it be used unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder, not the traffic offense asserted by the govt
“Defendant Darren Wesley Huff was convicted in federal district court of transporting a firearm in commerce with the intent that it be used unlawfully in furtherance of a civil disorder, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 231(a)(2).” He was a … Continue reading
KS: Judge was former ADA who prosecuted def 15 years earlier for fraud; he was “neutral and detached” and could issue SW in murder case unrelated to prior prosecution
(1) The judge issuing the search warrants in this murder case was a former Chief Deputy District Attorney who had prosecuted defendant for financial crimes more than 15 years earlier. That connection was insufficient to show that he was not … Continue reading
WaPo: Chief justice favors some when assigning court’s major decisions
WaPo: Chief justice favors some when assigning court’s major decisions by Robert Barnes: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is a stickler for evenly distributing the workload of the Supreme Court, but he plays favorites among his eight colleagues when … Continue reading
D.D.C.: NSA’s Bulk Telephony Metadata Program enjoined
The NSA’s Bulk Telephony Metadata Program is enjoined. Plaintiffs have shown likelihood of showing standing with a new party who is a Verizon customer (“Given the strong presumption that the NSA collected, and warehoused, the Little plaintiff’s data within the … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Not clearly established deadly force could not be used on suspect fleeing at high speed who threatened to shoot officers; Sotomayor: “By sanctioning a ‘shoot first, think later’ approach to policing, the Court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow.”
It was not clearly established at the time (2010) that deadly force could not be used on a suspect fleeing in a car at 85-100 mph who threatened to shoot police officers. Thus, the separate Fourth Amendment question doesn’t matter … Continue reading