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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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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: December 2015
Two on private search: a police dispatcher and an ER nurse
Defendant’s girlfriend was a Louisiana State Police dispatcher. She suspected he was cheating on her, and she looked at his iPhone to see. She found a nude picture of her 12 year old daughter. At the time of the search, … Continue reading
OR: Consent to search a car didn’t include a fannypack
Consent to search a car did not include containers. “A reasonable person would not have understood the scope of the deputies’ interest in the car to extend to the contents of the zipped fanny pack found under the passenger’s seat … Continue reading
D.Md.: Ptf waived REP in bank records
The Right to Financial Privacy Act was passed in response to Miller, but bank customers can waive privacy in their account records during an investigation, aside from process being applied. Bond v. United States Postal Serv. Fed. Credit Union, 2015 … Continue reading
MA: Police responding to a shooting call saw def hiding in a closed park with a ‘hoodie’ pulled tightly around face; that was a factor in reasonable suspicion
“At issue is whether there was reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk the defendant, who did not match the particularized aspects of the descriptions provided by eyewitnesses who called 911 to report that there had been a shoot-out on a … Continue reading
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Prosecutors want to collect DNA at arrest, not after conviction
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Prosecutors want to collect DNA at arrest, not after conviction by Rhonda Cook: Many Georgia prosecutors, like Wright, can point to examples of crimes that might not have happened if Georgia allowed the collection of DNA upon arrest….Civil … Continue reading
NYT: Decline in Stop-and-Frisk Tactic Drives Drop in Police Actions in New York, Study Says
NYT: Decline in Stop-and-Frisk Tactic Drives Drop in Police Actions in New York, Study Says by Ashley Southall: The overall number of arrests, stops, moving violations and criminal summonses issued in New York City has fallen substantially over the past … Continue reading
Cal.5th: Schmerber applies pre-McNeely and def’s statement he was withdrawing from meth was exigency for a blood draw
Schmerber not McNeely was the law at the time of the blood draw here, and Davis means that Schmerber applies. Here, defendant said to a nurse he was withdrawing from methamphetamine and that reasonably was exigency. People v. Jimenez, 2015 … Continue reading
TX6: “[U]nder Rodriguez, Fourth Amendment considerations are both qualitative and temporal”
The smell of marijuana on defendant’s clothing noticed during the traffic stop and his heavily sweating during the stop although the temperature was in the high 20’s to low 30’s and travel plans that were suspicious all added up to … Continue reading
WaPo Police Shootings Database
WaPo: Police Shootings Database (921 this year at the time of this post).
SCOTUS cert. grant: “Whether, in the absence of a warrant, a state may make it a crime for a person to refuse to take a chemical test to detect the presence of alcohol in the person’s blood.”
SCOTUS granted cert today on the question of whether, in the absence of a warrant, a state may make it a crime for a person to refuse to take a chemical test to detect the presence of alcohol in the … Continue reading
USA Today: After illegal wiretap, suspects go free and want a refund
USA Today: After illegal wiretap, suspects go free and want a refund by Brad Heath and Brett Kelman: Prosecutors determined that wiretaps the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration used as the core of its investigation were illegal and couldn’t be used … Continue reading
Bloomberg Business: Surveillance Society Reshapes U.S. Justice as Profits Soar
Bloomberg Business: Surveillance Society Reshapes U.S. Justice as Profits Soar by Tim Jones and Elizabeth Campbell: Images of violence are reshaping perceptions of justice — and propelling an industry.
Denver Post: Editorial: Why SWAT needs body cams, too
Denver Post: Editorial: Why SWAT needs body cams, too: Video from body-worn cameras can both exonerate and implicate. It will be an important tool to justify police action in the face of unwarranted criticism as well as to hold officers … Continue reading
Law.com/Daily Business Review: Is Privacy a Thing of the Past?
Law.com/Daily Business Review: Is Privacy a Thing of the Past? by Mark A. Romance: Attorney Mark A. Romance writes about an Eleventh Circuit ruling that if you use a free mobile application that does not require you to register, your … Continue reading
NY Times: California: Trial Run Starts for Biometric Scans at Border
NY Times: California: Trial Run Starts for Biometric Scans at Border (AP): The federal government on Thursday began collecting facial and eye scans of foreigners entering at a busy border crossing with Mexico, a first step in an ambitious effort … Continue reading
The Hill: White House will soon refine its encryption stance
The Hill: White House will soon refine its encryption stance by Gary Bennett: The Obama administration will soon refine its stance on encryption, the White House confirmed on Friday.
Conn.L.Trib.: Conn. Judge Criticizes Police Use of Cellphone Data
Conn.L.Trib.: Conn. Judge Criticizes Police Use of Cellphone Data via AP: A Connecticut judge says police have been improperly using data from cellphones to track the location of suspects.
LA2: It isn’t required that occurrence of a crime actually happened, but it is really important to PC
“Although certainty of knowledge of the commission of a particular crime is frequently an important factor in the determination of probable cause, probable cause may exist when the commission of a crime has not been definitely established, but is reasonably … Continue reading
IN: Failure to follow the inventory procedures and stopping the inventory when contraband was found still didn’t make the inventory pretextual
The officer’s failure to follow the inventory procedures and stopping the inventory when contraband was found still didn’t make the inventory pretextual. Whitley v. State, 2015 Ind. App. LEXIS 739 (Dec. 7, 2015):
CA2: Inadequate findings made to support obstruction USSG enhancement for suppression hearing testimony
The District Court enhanced defendant’s sentence by two levels under the U.S.S.G. for perjury at the suppression hearing. The District Court merely adopted the PSR’s statement without making sufficient findings of false testimony. It could have been misremembering. Merely crediting … Continue reading