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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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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)
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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
D.D.C.: SEC subpoena for company emails was narrow and complied with Fourth Amendment
An SEC subpoena was narrow and directed at company emails. It complied with the Fourth Amendment. The third party doctrine is not involved. United States SEC v. Karroum, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 164718 (D.D.C. Dec. 9, 2015). Petitioner raised a … Continue reading
AR: DUI checkpoint on an interstate highway without a plan or supervision was unconstitutional
A DUI checkpoint on I-540 through Fort Smith, Arkansas was set up and executed without a plan, and it was unconstitutional. There was no supervisor there and nothing to limit discretion. Every car was stopped, except until a traffic jam … Continue reading
MI sustains a 4 am knock-and-talk; a depressing must read for practitioners there
This 4 a.m. knock-and-talk was reasonable. Seven police officers with vests and guns showed up to get a consent and got it. Defendant was dealing marijuana butter in a MMJ state. People v. Frederick, 2015 Mich. App. LEXIS 2289 (Dec. … Continue reading
IL: When a stop is based on an “investigative alert,” the basis has to be shown to be reasonable; here, the state couldn’t
Defendant was stopped on an “investigative alert,” which would have been sufficient if there was reasonable suspicion under the collective knowledge doctrine. There was no showing of the basis for the alert, and the stop was thus without reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
Houston Chronicle: Miller: Texas fails to protect property owners from civil forfeiture
Houston Chronicle: Texas fails to protect property owners from civil forfeiture by Matt Miller: Texas law enforcement agencies have taken in over half a billion dollars in forfeiture revenue an average of $41.5 million per year. Civil forfeiture is a … Continue reading
NYTimes: Police Chiefs Say Scrutiny Over Videos Has Radically Changed Their Work
NYTimes: Police Chiefs Say Scrutiny Over Videos Has Radically Changed Their Work by Timothy Williams: The tenure of the average urban police chief has never been long or been noted for its serenity, but in an age of widely disseminated … Continue reading
AutoBlog: Car turns in its own driver for hit-and-run
AutoBlog: Car turns in its own driver for hit-and-run by Erin Marquis: A woman in Florida may have escaped prosecution for the accidents she caused last week if only her Ford hadn’t called the cops on her. See related story … Continue reading
CA8: Linn State Tech College’s student drug testing policy constitutional; special needs proven [Update: rev’d en banc 12/22/16]
Missouri’s Linn State Technical College’s student drug testing policy is constitutional under the Fourth Amendment. After the prior appeal, Barrett v. Claycomb, 705 F.3d 315 (8th Cir. 2013), the district court erred in conducting a program-by-program analysis of where the … Continue reading
Texas Observer: Homeland Insecurity
Texas Observer: Homeland Insecurity by Melissa del Bosque: Want to run drugs, smuggle migrants and get away with it? Join America’s biggest law enforcement agency.
WaPo: ‘Volokh Conspiracy’ Blog: Cert petition: Is DNA testing blood on seized clothing a Fourth Amendment ‘search’?
WaPo: ‘Volokh Conspiracy’ Blog: Cert petition: Is DNA testing blood on seized clothing a Fourth Amendment ‘search’? by Orin Kerr: Blog readers are probably more interested in the underlying merits: Why is blood removal and testing a Fourth Amendment search? … Continue reading
NYLJ: Monitor Wants ‘Controlled’ Study of Police Body Cameras
NYLJ: Monitor Wants ‘Controlled’ Study of Police Body Cameras by Mark Hamblett: The court-appointed monitor overseeing the remedial process in New York City’s stop-and-frisk litigation has proposed altering a pilot program that would have police officers wear body cameras.
OH3: Impoundment of car for SW did not prohibit inventory before SW issued
The impoundment of defendant’s car was reasonable under the circumstances because officers intended to and did get a search warrant for it. The inventory before the search warrant wasn’t prejudicial because nothing from the inventory was even mentioned in the … Continue reading
CA5: Shooting a dog is a seizure; if reasonable, QI applies
Killing a dog is a Fourth Amendment seizure. Here, the owner testified that the dog was not aggressive, although it did come at the officer. The officer had a split second to respond and shot the dog when it was … Continue reading
New use for USPS mail covers: sharing it with you
I’ve already mentioned the fact the USPS has stored images of all our first class mail (here, here, here). Now this: Fortune: The U.S. Postal Service Will Start Emailing You Your Mail Each Morning by Michal Addady:
DE: Being an alleged heroin dealer is nexus to search the alleged dealer’s cell phone
When the state shows probable cause for a search warrant for defendant’s house because he was a suspected heroin dealer, there is also probable cause for a search of defendant’s cell phone because cell phones are used to arrange drug … Continue reading
Police News: How SCOTUS impacted policing in 2015
Police News: How SCOTUS impacted policing in 2015 by Terrence P. Dwyer: The Court has said reasonableness does not require perfection, but it does require a plausible satisfaction of Fourth Amendment criteria.
D.Minn.: Computer could be seized and searched as a condition of supervised release
Defendant was indicted and convicted in federal court in Georgia, but he was on bond pending appeal in Minnesota. As a condition of his supervised release, his computers were subject to inspection. Based on certain admissions, USPO seized his computer … Continue reading