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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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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: April 2016
R St.: Encryption: Balancing the needs of law enforcement and the Fourth Amendment
R St.: Encryption: Balancing the needs of law enforcement and the Fourth Amendment (pdf)
W.D.Mo.: Treaty request for financial information from Cayman Islands was not based on materially false information; based on employee search of computer
This case involves a Motion to Suppress Evidence Obtained Pursuant to the Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) between the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. The U.S. has to make an application to the Cayman Islands for information, including the justification, … Continue reading
The Hill: Boston judge ordered Apple to give FBI iPhone data in gang case
The Hill: Boston judge ordered Apple to give FBI iPhone data in gang case by Katie Bo Williams: A federal judge in Boston ordered Apple to help the FBI access information on a suspect’s locked iPhone earlier this year, according … Continue reading
WSJ: U.S. to Keep Pushing Apple to Unlock iPhone in New York Case
WSJ: U.S. to Keep Pushing Apple to Unlock iPhone in New York Case by Devlin Barrett: Justice Department says it will pursue a court order requiring help from Apple.
ID: Denial of ownership of a lockbox tossed onto ground by girlfriend was abandonment
Defendant’s denying ownership of a lockbox tossed onto the ground by his girlfriend saying it wasn’t his was a waiver of any reasonable expectation of privacy in it. State v. Melling, 2016 Ida. App. LEXIS 46 (April 6, 2016). The … Continue reading
NE: “Stop” of already stopped car as witness to possible DWI was reasonable on totality
Defendant was already stopped behind a car that the police suspected the driver of drunk driving because of knocked down traffic cones. The officer recognized defendant as a city employee, but he wanted to talk to him because he wanted … Continue reading
CA3: Handle of a gun satisfies “immediately apparent” requirement of plain view
Defendant was stopped because the officer already knew that defendant was driving without a license. The search of the car was justified by the handle of a gun being in plain view sticking out from under the seat, and it … Continue reading
FL5: Pre-McNeely warrantless blood draw saved by GFE
A pre-McNeely warrantless blood draw was unconstitutional now but saved by the good faith exception because it was valid at the time it happened. State v. Liles, 2016 Fla. App. LEXIS 5427 (Fla. 5th DCA April 8, 2016). Arguing over … Continue reading
FL5: Def showed standing in duffle bag in car he was a passenger in
The trial court denied the motion to suppress without a hearing, and the state concedes error. Defendant showed enough standing in at least the search of his own bag in the car to get a hearing on the legality of … Continue reading
D.Md.: Rodriguez was not a new rule of law so def was on notice of the issue through Caballes
Defendant’s search was in 2011, and he raised Rodriguez in his 2255. First, it’s denied because defendant was on notice of the issue because it said it merely applied Caballes. [Also, it was overturning the Eighth Circuit’s de minimus rule … Continue reading
NYTimes: Why Apple’s Stand Against the F.B.I. Hurts Its Own Customers
NYTimes: Why Apple’s Stand Against the F.B.I. Hurts Its Own Customers by Jamil N. Jaffer and Daniel J. Rosenthal: Two weeks ago, privacy advocates across the country celebrated as the Federal Bureau of Investigation backed off its request for Apple … Continue reading
WaPo: Video: Illegal traffic stop leads to beating and illegal medical procedures in S.C.
WaPo: Video: Illegal traffic stop leads to beating and illegal medical procedures in S.C. by Radley Balko. Clearly illegal stop; cop denied qualified immunity; promoted, case settled.
DC: Unprovoked flight when being asked about possession of a gun was RS
Plainclothes officers in the MPD Gun Recovery Unit saw defendant walk in front of their vehicle. On a here hunch, one called out to him: “Officer Katz testified that he then shined his flashlight on appellant, leaned out of his … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: Alleged police induced private search in SW affidavit mooted by fact remainder still shows PC
Defendant’s landlord conducted a private search of his apartment and brought out 2 lbs of meth to the police saying there was more inside. He argues that this information in a search warrant application should be purged because the landlord … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Historical CSLI is mere third party information, and no REP in it
“The court notes some of this information has never been protected, and this does not change simply because the phone records arise from use of a cell phone rather than a landline. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 745 (no reasonable … Continue reading
Daily Dot: From insurance to surveillance: Experts debate privacy in the age of Big Data
Daily Dot: From insurance to surveillance: Experts debate privacy in the age of Big Data by Eric Geller: Big Data is scary. That’s the one thing that four people from very different professions agreed on during a panel at a … Continue reading
MS: Denial of privacy interest in shed behind rented mobile home meant no standing there
In a knock-and-talk, defendant denied any interest in a shed behind her mobile home. While the police were outside, she’d delivered a box to her boyfriend there. She consented to a search of the mobile home. That denial denies her … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Motion to suppress only the stop didn’t include the frisk
Defendant’s description was close to that of a person suspected of a disturbance at a store, and that justified his stop. There was, however, no reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe that defendant was jaywalking when he was stopped. … Continue reading