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- CAAF: Information on computer stored in evidence room wasn’t stale
- CAAF: SW’s incorporated affidavit satisfied particularity, reliance on CA10 case not CAAF case was error
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- WaPo: They confided in ChatGPT. Their secrets ended up in court.
- CA6: No interlocutory appeal of denial of motion to suppress
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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)
--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)
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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: April 2016
OR relies on Restatement of Agency to determine whether a private search occurred
Oregon adopts the objective test of the Restatement of Agency in determining whether a private party is acting as an agent of the police in seizing evidence. Here it was a housekeeper suspecting her employer of sexually abusing a 9 … Continue reading
CA11: Officers’ reasonable explanation for shooting ptf’s decedent in back was unrebutted and supports qualified immunity
Plaintiff’s decedent was shot in the back six times, and the officers’ version was that they told him to get on the ground, and he quickly turned into his house and they thought he was going for a weapon. On … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Collective knowledge doctrine applies to RS under Rodriguez
The collective knowledge doctrine supports the extension of defendant’s stop beyond the normal part of a traffic stop incident to its purpose under Rodriguez. The DEA had additional information that added up to reasonable suspicion, almost probable cause. United States … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: There was RS a package contained drugs to pull it out of the flow of mail for more inspection
The facts on this package in the mail gave reasonable suspicion to pull it out of the stream of mail for a further inspection. “The affidavit sworn to by Springer contains many of the same indices giving rise to reasonable … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: A cursory search of a cell phone of a person arrested for importation of drugs was permissible under the border search exception
A cursory search of a cell phone of a person arrested for importation of drugs was permissible under the border search exception. This was no deep forensic evaluation. Defendant also showed standing in the cell phone in his possession. “Specifically, … Continue reading
CA8: Entry was justified by the community caretaking function because of possibility person inside was in danger
The police entry was here was justified because of the possibility that the person inside was unable to communicate and potentially held against her will or otherwise in danger. United States v. Smith, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 6749 (8th Cir. … Continue reading
D.Conn.: Def’s failure to testify at the suppression hearing doesn’t make process inadequate
“There is no evidence to suggest that the State of Connecticut did not afford the petitioner a full and fair opportunity to litigate his Fourth Amendment claims. The fact that the petitioner chose not to testify at the hearings before … Continue reading
Two § 1983 Fourth Amendment claims dismissed for failing to identify a real issue
“Smith denominates this claim as a § 1983 claim based on ‘impermissible interference in family relationships’ in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The substance of her argument makes clear, however, that the Fourth Amendment is irrelevant to the … Continue reading
MO: Driver had standing because passenger was owner of car
Defendant was driving his girlfriend’s car, and she was the passenger. Stopped for a traffic offense, the officer found a warrant from another town, but advised that they didn’t want him arrested on it. The paperwork on the car was … Continue reading
The Atlantic: An App That Tracks the Police to Keep Them in Check
The Atlantic: An App That Tracks the Police to Keep Them in Check by Kevah Waddell: New software will help low-income people and communities of color to record their experiences with law enforcement—in order to create a crowdsourced map of … Continue reading
NYTimes: In New Filing, Apple Resists F.B.I.’s Call to Open iPhone in Drug Case
NYTimes: In New Filing, Apple Resists F.B.I.’s Call to Open iPhone in Drug Case by Eric Lichtblau: Apple told a federal court on Friday that it should not have to help the F.B.I. unlock an iPhone used by a Brooklyn … Continue reading
TX1: Frequenting bar known for drug sales, going in and out repeatedly, and furtive gestures when stopped was PC
Officers had probable cause under the automobile exception to search defendant’s truck, or at least the trial court had a basis for finding it. Defendant had entered a bar known for drug sales that the police were surveilling. He’d been … Continue reading
Windows IT Pro: Microsoft to DOJ: The cloud isn’t an automatic Fourth Amendment exemption; challenging the third-party doctrine in the Cloud
Windows IT Pro: Microsoft to DOJ: The cloud isn’t an automatic Fourth Amendment exemption by Michael Morisy: Company fights government demands for secret searches of cloud customers
PA: Trial court abused discretion in reopening twice reversed suppression order for third hearing; no change in law
“Therefore, because the Jones decision did not present an intervening change in the law, we conclude the trial court abused its discretion in re-opening Sodomsky’s suppression hearing for the second time after its two prior suppression orders were reversed by … Continue reading
WBAL: Baltimore police sued over cellphone tracking
WBAL: Baltimore police sued over cellphone tracking by David Collins Lawsuit: Police secretly used powerful phone surveillance tool
W.D.Ky.: Affidavit truly was “bare bones” on nexus, so no GFE
“It generalizes that ‘an individual’ may have information on his or her phone that connects him or her to a crime, co-defendants or victims, rather than specifically connecting Ramirez, the crime with which he was charged, or any known information … Continue reading