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- Lawfare: How Google’s Location History Program Could Upend Digital Surveillance Law
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- D.P.R.: Indictment for possession of switches to convert handguns to machine guns justified vehicle search when defendant was stopped
- N.D.Ohio: Heroin and three guns in plain view was exigency for entry with child alone inside
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
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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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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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
Website design by Wally Waller, Little Rock 
Monthly Archives: January 2016
St. Louis Public Radio: Missouri bill would define open records access for police cameras
St. Louis Public Radio: Missouri bill would define open records access for police cameras by Camille Phillips: A Kansas City-area Republican is sponsoring a bill that would set limits on when police camera footage is public record in Missouri. The … Continue reading
CA7: WI’s lifetime GPS monitoring of released SVPs is reasonable under 4A
Plaintiff was civilly committed as a sexually violent predator and finally released with GPS monitoring for life. Such monitoring is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment compared to parole searches, and the state has shown that there is a likelihood that … Continue reading
CA5: No joint venture between DEA and Colombian police to wiretap Colombia nationals’ cell phones there so no 4A challenge here
Colombian nationals had no connection to the United States at the time the Colombia National Police wiretapped their Colombian cell phones in Colombia. This evidence came in when they were indicted in the Eastern District of Texas for conspiracy to … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Request for a Franks hearing obviated by def’s lack of standing in place searched
To get a Franks hearing, it’s necessary to make an offer of proof, and defendant failed to do so. Defendant does not get a Franks hearing here because he also didn’t show that he’d have standing to make the challenge … Continue reading
TN: Where arrest lacked PC, search incident is void
The evidence did not support defendant’s arrest for public intoxication, and the officer actually lacked probable cause. Accordingly, the search incident to the arrest was void. State v. Pippen, 2016 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 57 (Jan. 28, 2016) (dissent here). … Continue reading
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting: How An Illegal Court Ruling Helped Break This Kentucky Man
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting: How An Illegal Court Ruling Helped Break This Kentucky Man by R.G. Dunlop: Denver Stewart has no trouble reciting those injustices. They date all the way back to October 1997, when court officials in Pike … Continue reading
Atlantic: None to the Right of Samuel Alito
Atlantic: None to the Right of Samuel Alito by Tom Donnelly and Brianne Gorod: A decade into his tenure on the Court, Samuel Alito has emerged as the most solidly conservative justice on the bench.
WaPo: FBI use of hacking tool to find child-porn users affirmed
WaPo: FBI use of hacking tool to find child-porn users affirmed by Ellen Nakashima: Over the past week, two federal judges have found that the government’s use of software in a mass hacking of child-porn websites to identify users is … Continue reading
CA2: Crossing threshold to arrest without warrant violates Fourth Amendment
Officers stepping across the threshold to arrest without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Allen, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 1467 (2d Cir. Jan. 29, 2016): “[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Motion to suppress denied for lack of proffer on standing
Defendant’s motion to suppress was denied because he didn’t even suggest in his papers he had standing in the vehicle he was only a passenger in. United States v. Londonio, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8472 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 13, 2016). There … Continue reading
OH5: Not unreasonable to deny passenger permission to retrieve purse before dog sniff of car
The smell of burning marijuana was probable cause for a car search. The officer’s refusal to let the passenger retrieve her purse from the car before the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment. State v. Eiler, 2016-Ohio-224, 2016 Ohio … Continue reading
D.N.J.: No REP in a rental car where def not an authorized driver and car was way overdue
Defendant was driving a rental car that was so overdue the tags were expired. It was rented by a cousin and the rental car company didn’t know who he was. With the stop, they were called and they wanted the … Continue reading
SC: Reading a computer SN was a “search” under Hicks, but it was permitted under a valid probation search
Defendant was on probation and believed to be involved in a murder where a red widescreen Acer laptop was taken. Probation officers went to his house to talk to him with reasonable suspicion, and he was sitting there with a … Continue reading
TN: Laptop search issue first raised in MNT is way too late; issue waived
Defendant was convicted of four counts of rape of a child. A laptop was properly seized from his car with probable cause under the automobile exception. It was searched without a warrant. Defendant waived the search of the computer by … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: IAC claim over search denied for lack of factual proffer
2255 petitioner’s IAC claim denied for generality and no factual basis: “Here, the petitioner has failed to develop any factual basis or legal argument on the performance element, beyond the naked assertion that his attorneys did not advance any arguments … Continue reading
WaPo: 80 percent of Chicago PD dash-cam videos are missing audio due to ‘officer error’ or ‘intentional destruction’
WaPo: 80 percent of Chicago PD dash-cam videos are missing audio due to ‘officer error’ or ‘intentional destruction’ by Radley Balko: From DNA Info, here’s the latest piece of evidence that the corruption and abuse in the Chicago Police Department … Continue reading
TX6: Def’s clothes were properly seized with PC under SI doctrine
Defendant’s clothes were believed to be evidence of a crime, and they were properly seized incident to arrest with probable cause and in plain view. In Texas, a municipal police officer may execute a search warrant countywide. Crayton v. State, … Continue reading
SC: CoA missapplied std of review by reweighing facts; warns that “nervousness” isn’t a blank check
The court of appeals misapplied the standard of review by reweighing the facts. The court can’t help, however, in talking about nervousness as an “omnipresent” factor in reasonable suspicion. State v. Moore, 2016 S.C. LEXIS 5 (Jan. 27, 2016), rev’g … Continue reading
Cal.1: Electronic search condition of juvenile probation was overbroad; no relation to underlying offense
An electronic search condition of juvenile probation was overbroad. There was no relation between the offense and the condition that officers be allowed to search his phone and social media. In re Mark C., 2016 Cal. App. LEXIS 65 (1st … Continue reading
ars technica: Warrantless stingray case finally arrives before federal appellate judges
ars technica: Warrantless stingray case finally arrives before federal appellate judges by Cyrus Farivar: “Cell-site simulators raise especially serious questions under the Fourth Amendment.”