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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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"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) -
“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: December 2016
Law.com: Privacy and Data Security Top List of Questions for Legal Experts About Drones
Law.com: Privacy and Data Security Top List of Questions for Legal Experts About Drones by Gabrielle Orum Hernández, Legaltech News: Uncertainty continues for legal experts and policymakers around issues of privacy and data security raised by the influx of drones … Continue reading
Miami New Times: Miami Gardens Cop Says He Was Fired for Reporting Illegal Stop-and-Frisks
Miami New Times: Miami Gardens Cop Says He Was Fired for Reporting Illegal Stop-and-Frisks by Brittany Shammas: Between 2008 and 2013, Miami Gardens Police ran what one public defender called ‘New York City stop-and-frisk on steroids.’…Now a former Miami Gardens … Continue reading
USA Today: Column: Predictive policing violates more than it protects
USA Today: Column: Predictive policing violates more than it protects by William Isaac & Kristian Lum: System meant to alleviate police resources disproportionately targets minority communities, raises Fourth Amendment concerns.
WaPo: Companies may be willing to pay for data from Fitbits, other wearable sensors
WaPo: Companies may be willing to pay for data from Fitbits, other wearable sensors by Des Bieler: Naturally, privacy concerns abound here, and Olshansky emphasized that he was ‘acutely sensitive to those issues.’ He added: ‘We think that personal health … Continue reading
D.Colo.: Def couldn’t claim blanket suppression where hundreds of items were seized but he challenged only three
Restating the Tenth Circuit’s rule permitting blanket suppression for serious overseizure contrary to the warrant, the court finds that this one doesn’t measure up. The inventory went on for 50 pages, but defendant only challenged three items of artwork that … Continue reading
MD: Strip search incident to arrest was valid on balance on this record
On this record with a wealth of reasonable suspicion and then probable cause, a strip search incident to arrest was justified at the police station in the breathalyser room. Defendant stripped and bent over but refused to spread his cheeks. … Continue reading
CA5: 45 minute empty-handed search after dog alert didn’t dissipate the probable cause
Defendant was stopped for a traffic offense, but the officers had been briefed on defendant by the DEA. (The pre-Jones GPS monitoring of defendant’s car for 73 days is valid under Davis.) He wouldn’t make eye contact, his hands were … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Even a closed email account adds nothing to a child porn staleness argument
Officers in the U.S. received information from Queensland, Australia that an Australian using a hotmail account had been emailing child pornography. One of those was in this district. By the time the search warrant was sought nine months later, the … Continue reading
OR: Any exigency of def’s expressed suicidal thoughts had passed by the time officers searched her room
The trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress because the search of defendant’s bedroom did not fall within the emergency aid exception to warrant requirement in the state constitution. First, defendant was sitting outside the house when officers … Continue reading
NBC News: Police Body Cams Spark Concerns About Privacy, Mass Surveillance
NBC News: Police Body Cams Spark Concerns About Privacy, Mass Surveillance by Catherine Chapman: Body-worn cameras are increasingly being adopted by law enforcement across the country, offering a potential antidote to police brutality but also raising fears about mass surveillance … Continue reading
MN clarifies the appellate standard of review of RS and PC; here there was RS for continued detention for dog sniff
There is no deference to the trial court’s findings of probable cause and reasonable suspicion. They are ultimate questions which can be appealed. Here, the officers had reasonable suspicion to continue defendant’s detention for a dog sniff. State v. Lugo, … Continue reading
CA11: Prior drug sale from house was nexus for SW of house
Nexus was shown for the search of defendant’s house by the prior drug transactions that occurred inside the house. This was a seven year long conspiracy. United States v. Woodard, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 21382 (11th Cir. Nov. 30, 2016). … Continue reading
MD: Trial court erred in suppressing virtual replay of Wardlow
Officers approached a group of men on the street in a high crime area telling them to stay put and not run. Defendant, however, sprinted away. Two officers were on bikes and caught up to him, and he admitted he … Continue reading
D.Minn.: The officer doesn’t need to cite the specific inventory policy section at the suppression hearing to make the inventory lawful
Defendant’s stop for speeding was justified. “Officer Petterson testified that he decided to impound the Acura because the Acura was not registered to Reilly; the owner was not present; both occupants of the vehicle were being taken into custody; the … Continue reading
D.Me.: PC for trafficking drugs is PC for a SW for a cell phone found near the drugs
Defendant’s arrest for drugs in his car as a suspected drug dealer was probable cause for a search warrant for his cell phones found in the car. It was not stale when the warrant issued weeks later. United States v. … Continue reading
CA6: Domestic violence call with potentially disturbed person inside justified warrantless entry
Officers responding to a domestic disturbance call were told by the victim outside that the person inside was belligerent and potentially violent and clearly disturbed. The entry into the home to arrest was reasonable, balancing the sanctity of the home … Continue reading
techdirt: ACLU Suggests Jury Instructions Might Be A Fix For ‘Missing’ Police Body Camera Recordings
techdirt: ACLU Suggests Jury Instructions Might Be A Fix For ‘Missing’ Police Body Camera Recordings by Tim Cushing: We’ve written plenty of posts about police body cameras — how useful they can be and how useless they often are. What … Continue reading
CA2: Child prostitution exigency for warrantless cell phone ping
Defendant’s phone was pinged at the request of law enforcement to find him after they developed strong reason to believe he took a 16 year old girl from Maryland to NYC to work her as a prostitute. This type of … Continue reading