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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
- CA10: Def’s BO suggesting heroin abuse added to RS
- 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)
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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: October 2016
NYT: Not One New York Police Officer Has a Body Camera
NYT: Not One New York Police Officer Has a Body Camera by Joseph Goldstein:
techdirt: After Appeals Court Flip-Flop, Aaron Graham Asks Supreme Court To Examine Warrantless Access To Cell Location Info
techdirt: After Appeals Court Flip-Flop, Aaron Graham Asks Supreme Court To Examine Warrantless Access To Cell Location Info by Tim Cushing:
Cal.1st: Juvenile’s search condition is amended on appeal to relate to drug usage
The juvenile’s search condition is modified to related to drug use on affirmance of the conviction. In re Jonathan R., 2016 Cal. App. LEXIS 817 (1st Dist. Sept. 30, 2016):
WaPo: Why Apple can be forced to turn logs of your iMessage contacts over to police
WaPo: Why Apple can be forced to turn logs of your iMessage contacts over to police by Andrea Peterson: When a user sends someone a message through Apple’s iMessage feature, Apple encrypts that message between Apple devices so that only … Continue reading
FISCR: There is a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement going back to the 1970’s
There is a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement going back to the 1970’s. Moreover, the trap and trace here only gathers numbers not content, and that’s reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In re Certified Question of Law, 2016 … Continue reading
CA2: Even if individual violations of probation conditions weren’t RS, on totality they were
Even if any one of the violations of conditions of release wasn’t reasonable suspicion, collectively they were. A cell phone picture showed him with a handgun in hand saying “I need bullets,” and he was convicted of being a felon … Continue reading
VI: Despite MJ decrim, smell of MJ in a car is still a factor in RS
VI decriminalization doesn’t mean the smell of marijuana can’t still be reasonable suspicion of possession of a larger amount or potentially driving under the influence. People v. Cannergeiter, 2016 V.I. LEXIS 148 (Sept. 28, 2016):
WaPo: The Watch: ‘Do Not Resist’: A chilling look at the normalization of warrior cops
WaPo: The Watch: ‘Do Not Resist’: A chilling look at the normalization of warrior cops by Radley Balko: The haunting thing about the new policing documentary “Do Not Resist” is what it doesn’t show. There are no images of cops … Continue reading
DC: Gant search incident may precede arrest
Search incident under Gant may precede the arrest, but the product of the search cannot justify it. There must be preexisting cause. “[T]he legality of a Gant evidence search does not depend on whether the officers intended to arrest the … Continue reading
OH9: Nine air fresheners on mirror and one on each air vent was RS
Defendant had nine air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror and one over every air vent. That was reasonable suspicion to utilize a drug dog during the computer checks and then another officer running a dog around the car while … Continue reading
OH7: Obstructing officers from going behind house in alleged violation of curtilage affirmed
Defendant was convicted for obstruction by seeking to prevent officers from going behind his house in alleged violation of his curtilage. The officers, however, could articulate valid reasons for going there because of flight of somebody else behind the house, … Continue reading
IA: Strip search incident shown justified in drug arrest
Strip search as a search incident to arrest was shown justified on this record. The smell of marijuana came from his person but nothing was on him. State v. Evans, 2016 Iowa App. LEXIS 1004 (Sept. 28, 2016):
MS: A case seizure after a consent search leads to no forfeiture; no evidence of wrongdoing
Claimant was stopped, and he consented to a search producing money. The order of forfeiture is reversed. The facts, when taken as a whole, did not show by more than just suspicion that the money discovered in a driver’s vehicle … Continue reading
MA: SW for a cell phone requires facts for nexus to crime, not just “experience shows”
Nexus between a cell phone’s contents and a crime has to be shown by evidence, not just the officer’s experience in similar cases. Also, the phone was seized without a warrant to protect the contents from tampering, and it was … Continue reading
FL1: Passenger’s detention may be extended because of RS as to driver
A passenger is stopped with the vehicle he or she was in. The length of that stop depends upon what happens with the driver and passenger, and it can be extended lawfully as to the passenger because of reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Even if def counsel filed and won suppression motion, would outcome of case be different?
On a search and seizure IAC claim, too, only the Strickland prejudice prong needs to be considered. Even if the evidence were suppressed, would the jury have still convicted? If yes, then no prejudice. Pittman v. United States, 2016 U.S. … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Body Cameras Are Betraying Their Promise
The Atlantic: Body Cameras Are Betraying Their Promise by Robinson Meyer: They’re not transparent. They’re not independent. They’re not even turned on when they should be.