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- WaPo: They confided in ChatGPT. Their secrets ended up in court.
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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)
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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: August 2016
CA9: Dist.Ct. erred in finding apparent authority over a briefcase that the consenter had no interest in when owner was objecting
The district court erred in granting summary judgment to defendants on a third party consent issue. There was no reason to believe that the person they sought consent from had an equal or superior control over the briefcase at issue, … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: The automobile exception is based on inherent mobility, and the fact the defendant is handcuffed and the police have the keys is “inconsequential”
The automobile exception is based on inherent mobility, and the fact the defendant is handcuffed and the police have the keys is “inconsequential.” United States v. Collins, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101003 (M.D.Fla. May 31, 2016), adopted, 2016 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Information about the amorphous “they” wasn’t probable cause here
“For all these reasons, the Court is persuaded that probable cause requires more than what the agents in this case knew at the time of arrest. Here, the strongest evidence the agents had was that the broker reported ‘they’ were … Continue reading
FoxNews: Border Patrol’s website offers advice on eluding … Border Patrol
FoxNews: Border Patrol’s website offers advice on eluding … Border Patrol:
S.D.N.Y.: Buying a vehicle and loaning it for a drug run is a loss of the REP; denial of knowledge of a secret compartment is a waiver of the REP
Defendant who bought a vehicle and then loaned it to another to do a drug run lacked standing in the vehicle. “Having provided the Yukon to Sandy for purposes of making the trip to New Orleans, Jorge Gomez thereby relinquished … Continue reading
ABAJ: Chemerinsky: Has the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Fourth Amendment?
ABA Journal: Chemerinsky: Has the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Fourth Amendment? by Erwin Chemerinsky: In the recently completed Supreme Court term, Utah v. Strieff was the only major decision where the conservatives prevailed in an ideologically divided … Continue reading
NJ requires court order to get telephone records, but PC not required
New Jersey requires a court order, albeit on less than probable cause, to get telephone records. To enable criminal investigations to proceed, probable cause isn’t required. State v. Lunsford, 2016 N.J. LEXIS 717 (Aug. 1, 2016) (syllabus):
MI dismisses grant of discretionary review on application of Jardines to a knock-and-talk
Michigan granted discretionary review to determine the application of Jardines to a knock-and-talk, but dismissed it after considering the briefs. Three justices dissented from declining to decide the case. People v. Radandt, 2016 Mich. LEXIS 1591 (July 29, 2016)*:
W.D.Tex.: Exigencies of crack deal going down in hotel room excused warrant
There was more than probable cause, and inference on inference here showed it on the totality. A crack cocaine deal going down in a hotel room proved to be exigent circumstances. It would take two hours to get a search … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: PC doesn’t have to be shown, just objective reliance on the showing for the issuance of the warrant
The affidavit for the search warrant was a close enough showing of probable cause to make reliance on the affidavit objectively reasonable under the good faith exception. United States v. Melendez, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98940 (S.D.N.Y. July 28, 2016):
NH: Hot pursuit of a suspected murderer with a tracking dog permitted entry onto curtilage
Officers were in hot pursuit after a murder with a tracking dog when they entered defendant’s curtilage. The entry was reasonable under the circumstances. A house can be entered in hot pursuit; this entry onto the curtilage was minimal by … Continue reading
KS: Search incident does require actual proof of threat to officer safety, just a reasonable belief it’s a risk
To invoke the search incident doctrine, “the State need not prove that the officer’s safety was actually in jeopardy or that the officer believed his or her safety was in jeopardy before the officer has authority to seize personal property … Continue reading
The Recorder: Breyer: Courthouse Bugs Violate Fourth Amendment
The Recorder: Breyer: Courthouse Bugs Violate Fourth Amendment by Ross Todd: SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has barred prosecutors from introducing evidence picked up by recording devices planted outside the San Mateo County courthouse without a warrant. In a … Continue reading
CA2: Govt proved exigency for warrantless pinging of cell phone to locate def after a murder
The government proved a legitimate good faith belief that defendant was dangerous and needed to be apprehended immediately after he was linked to a body found in Vermont. Therefore, warrantless pinging of his cell phone to locate him was reasonable. … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Another NIT Playpen case before same judge; suppression not a proper remedy
“The exact issues raised by the instant motions to suppress were also raised by the defendant in United States v. Gerald Andrew Darby, 2:16cr36. another case pending before the undersigned. The Court denied both Motions to Suppress in Darby and … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Prior drug arrest, nervousness and driving from CA to MN not reasonable suspicion
“The government argues that three articulable factors support a finding that Detective Schaffner had reasonable suspicion to prolong the stop. First, the government points to the fact that Garcia’s records check revealed two narcotics-related arrests in the past year. Second, … Continue reading
CIO Dive: What happens when tech innovation moves faster than Congress?
CIO Dive: What happens when tech innovation moves faster than Congress? by Justine Brown: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) has a provision that requires electronic communications more than 180 days old be treated as abandoned and thus obtainable with … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Bank robbers in borrowed car had no standing to challenge search where owner gave no specific permission
Officers had reasonable suspicion to stop a gray Ford Taurus that was suspected of being involved in a bank robbery. Four men in a pick up truck saw the suspected robbers in gray hooded sweatshirts run from the bank and … Continue reading
ID: Without an attempt to get a blood draw SW at night, state can’t claim exigency for not
Defendant was subjected to a warrantless blood draw that should have been suppressed. The officer testified it would have taken 90 minutes to get a warrant then, but he never even attempted to. To claim that as exigency, there essentially … Continue reading