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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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General (many free):
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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)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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)
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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: February 2016
E.D.Mich.: “I know what you’re looking for, and all I have is a little weed” is reasonable suspicion
Officers in a “semi-marked vehicle” saw defendant on a street corner, and pulled up and stopped and asked him in a conversational tone what he was doing. “Defendant responded that he had just left the liquor store, that he already … Continue reading
CA3: Throwing three bags over a fence and walking away was an abandonment
Police wanted to talk to defendant in a child pornography investigation, and they learned he was at a storage unit he rented. When defendant saw the police, he threw three bags (“tote bag, a zippered duffel bag, and a wheeled … Continue reading
W.D.Wash.: The govt didn’t violate the 4A by hacking into a child porn server and running it for two weeks, forwarding all user info to another govt computer
The government took over a child pornography website in Washington state and ran it for two weeks via a Title III warrant from a USMJ in the Eastern District of Virginia. They sent all information of visitors to that website … Continue reading
Juris.org: Why Police May Still Have Free Reign to Search an Arrestee’s Cell Phone Despite a Warrant
Juris.org: Why Police May Still Have Free Reign to Search an Arrestee’s Cell Phone Despite a Warrant by Veronica Reyes of St. John’s University School of Law, Class of 2016:
NPR: Encryption May Hurt Surveillance, But Internet Of Things Could Open New Doors
NPR: Encryption May Hurt Surveillance, But Internet Of Things Could Open New Doors by Alina Selyukh: The report concluded that information from some apps and devices like smartphones may be harder for government investigators to intercept because of stronger encryption. … Continue reading
IN: Having a person with the same name as person of interest is RS in itself to at least find out whether he’s the same guy
Willie Moore was on a trespass list at an apartment complex. The officer had a Willie Moore in front of him. That was reasonable suspicion to at least talk with him without knowing it was the same Willie Moore to … Continue reading
PA: Entry up 200′ driveway to inspect hit-and-run vehicle did not violate curtilage
Defendant was suspected of being involved in a hit-and-run accident with a motorized wheelchair. Police got to his house, 200′ off the road, about an hour after the incident. Their entry up the driveway to inspect the damage on his … Continue reading
KS: Statute on parole searches governs over the parole conditions where statute requires RS
Statute says that parolees are subject to search on reasonable suspicion but the parole conditions have no such restriction. While Samson authorizes parole searches without reasonable suspicion, the legislature made that determination, and the parole condition violates the statute. Reasonable … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Arrest on warrant in car timed to facilitate pretextual inventory; suppressed
Officers had an arrest warrant for defendant, so they waited until he left his house, stopped him a half mile away and conducted an inventory of his car and had it towed. The court finds the inventory pretextual because it … Continue reading
WaPo: UC-Berkeley students sue Google, alleging their emails were illegally scanned
WaPo: UC-Berkeley students sue Google, alleging their emails were illegally scanned by Emma Brown: Four students and alumni from the University of California-Berkeley have sued Google in federal court, alleging that the company — which runs the university’s email accounts … Continue reading
CA7: No REP from being videoed by CI one lets in for a drug deal
A video-wired CI came into defendant’s apartment to record him doing a drug deal, and a SW issued based on the recording. Defendant challenged the entry and the recording but not the SW. “Thompson has never challenged the search warrant … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Since possession of neither shotgun nor hypodermic needle are crimes, stop invalid
Police received a call about a man passed out in a Lexus in a parking lot with a hypodermic needle sticking in his arm and a shotgun next to him. When they got there, defendant was out of the car, … Continue reading
CA4: Feres doctrine barred Army NG officer’s § 1983 email search claim when he was deployed
Plaintiff was a Colonel in the North Carolina Army National Guard stationed in Kuwait, and he claimed that his email was unlawfully searched by another officer and forwarded around in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The Feres doctrine, requiring … Continue reading
NY Times: New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to Track Suspects, Study Finds
NY Times: New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to Track Suspects, Study Finds by David E. Sanger: Now, a study in which current and former intelligence officials participated concludes that the warning is wildly overblown, and that a raft of … Continue reading
techdirt: DHS Official Thinks People Should Have To Give Up Their Anonymity To Use The Internet
techdirt: DHS Official Thinks People Should Have To Give Up Their Anonymity To Use The Internet by Tim Cushing: Apparently, the only way to stop terrorists from hating us for our freedom is to strip away those offensive freedoms. Erik … Continue reading