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- 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
- CAAF: Information on computer stored in evidence room wasn’t stale
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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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: January 2016
Grits for Breakfast: Blood draw vote casts light on CCA Fourth Amendment divisions
Grits for Breakfast: Blood draw vote casts light on CCA Fourth Amendment divisions:
OH: “The arrest of a recent occupant of a legally parked vehicle does not, by itself, establish reasonableness to justify a warrantless search of the vehicle the arrestee had been riding in.”
The Ohio Supreme Court today reversed a case where I criticized the court of appeals decision back in June 2014 as wrong. The Supreme Court today held that the arrest of a recent occupant of a car does not ipso … Continue reading
AR: Passenger puking out the car door was not shown to be a medical emergency
Passenger puking out the door on a parking lot was not reasonable suspicion for a stop, and the community caretaking function does not apply because there was no medical emergency. Meeks v. State, 2016 Ark. App. 9 (Jan. 13, 2016):
D.Minn.: RS and PC as to a car doesn’t require knowing the name of driver
Reasonable suspicion that a vehicle was involved in a crime didn’t require that officers have knowledge of who the driver was. Here, the RS ripened to PC so the length of the stop didn’t matter. The car search was justified … Continue reading
CA11: You can’t sue over a public official trying to copy a document you claim gives you authority to enter the building
Plaintiff came into a Florida Town Hall with a videographer in tow with a purported “court order” from Atlantic City NJ allegedly authorizing copying of records. When an official tried to copy the order, plaintiff grabbed it from the copier, … Continue reading
Philadelphia Inquirer: Editorial: A public right to police video
Philadelphia Inquirer: Editorial: A public right to police video: Body cameras provide a valuable means of getting clear answers to questions about police interactions with suspects. Ultimately, they promise to check bad policing and protect officers who behave appropriately, making … Continue reading
SCOTUS grants cert on whether the Fourth Amendment supports a malicious prosecution claim
Manuel v. City of Joliet, 14-9496, cert. granted Jan. 15, 2016. Issue: Whether an individual’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure continues beyond legal process so as to allow a malicious prosecution claim based upon the Fourth … Continue reading
AFCCA: “The constable blundered” so the court bails him out; 200,000 CP images come into evidence despite lack of search authorization
The Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals finds inevitable discovery by essentially doing the investigator’s work for him by saying, essentially, “if he asked for a proper search authorization, he would have got it.” Nothing, mind you, supports that it … Continue reading
FL1: No standing in a package shipped from and to a fictitious person
Defendant lacked standing in a seizure and search of a package shipped with drugs, and his name was not on the package either as the sender or recipient or in a fictitious business name associated with him. State v. Williams, … Continue reading
OH5: Trespassers on an open field had no reasonable expectation of privacy there
The officer on patrol saw a campfire and stopped because it was not an area known for camping. He asked the five people who came in one car if they had permission to be there, and they did not. Two … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Hysterical wife harmed by def could abandon backpack on street that he left with her before flight
Probation officers first responded to a shots fired call ½ block from the Las Vegas jail and they encountered a couple in an alley, and defendant was holding a pink backpack. He handed it to the woman and fled. Police … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Judgment of acquittal by court for spinal injury of elderly Indian taken down during arrest
A Madison AL police officer convicted of violating the civil rights in February 2015 of an elderly Asian Indian national out for a walk gets a judgment of acquittal. The officer was convicted by a jury of using excessive force … Continue reading
KY: Seizure of def’s gun from console to run serial number when def doing nothing wrong was unreasonable detention, here leading to arrest for disorderly conduct
Defendant was stopped at a traffic safety checkpoint with his wife and two year old son in the car. His paperwork was in order and the officer handed it back, but then the officer noticed defendant’s handgun on the console. … Continue reading
Right on Crime: Civil Asset Forfeiture Summit Dallas, Feb. 9
Right on Crime: Civil Asset Forfeiture Summit Irving, TX Tuesday, February 9, 2016 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM (CST)
New book: The Fourth Amendment in Flux: The Roberts Court, Crime Control, and Digital Privacy
New book: The Fourth Amendment in Flux: The Roberts Court, Crime Control, and Digital Privacy by Michael C. Gizzi & R. Craig Curtis (available May 24, 2016)
ND: Suspicionless probation search of an unsupervised probationer is unreasonable
A suspicionless probation search of an unsupervised probationer is unreasonable. SCOTUS’s probation and parolee search rationale does not apply. State v. Ballard, 2016 ND 8, 2016 N.D. LEXIS 15 (Jan. 14, 2016):
N.D.Ga.: Two people in a knife fight, but only one with knife, didn’t mean both couldn’t be handcuffed to sort it out
Officers responding to a knife fight outside an apartment in the rain at night could handcuff both men. Just because one had a knife didn’t mean he was the only aggressor. The officers could handcuff both to just maintain the … Continue reading
WI: Apt building parking garage not curtilage to prevent a DUI stop there
A parking garage beneath an apartment building is not curtilage, and defendant could be stopped there for DUI. State v. Dumstrey, 2016 WI 3, 2016 Wisc. LEXIS 2 (Jan. 15, 2016). A commonsense reading of the affidavit for search warrant … Continue reading
CA4: Repeatedly tasering mentally ill man for refusing to release a pole was excessive force, but officers get QI
Decedent suffered from bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, and his sister convinced him to go to a hospital. However, he ended up in the street dodging traffic and behaving bizarrely, eating grass and putting his cigarette out on his tongue. … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Virtual presumption of common authority between spouses
Defendant’s wife was alleged by the government to have consented to a search of two safes defendant had. There is a virtual presumption of common authority over marital property, and there is no evidence in the record after the hearing … Continue reading