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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)
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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: February 2017
Miami Herald: Ex-cop convicted of stealing from drivers during traffic stops
Miami Herald: Ex-cop convicted of stealing from drivers during traffic stop by David J. Neal:
LA2: Arrest of def away from the premises where SW being served unreasonable under Bailey
Defendant was seen leaving the premises when police showed up with a search warrant. Then they went after him and stopped him a distance a way to return him to the scene of the search. The stop lacked reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
CA10: Handcuffing and jailing an inebriated man as “incapacitated” violated the 4A and no QI
Plaintiff showed up at a concert at the Xfinity Center in Boston inebriated, but not so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing. Security separated him from the incoming line into the hands of the defendant, an off-duty officer … Continue reading
MD: A stop and a frisk have separate constitutional justifications; courts must confine Terry to its 4A mooring
This Terry stop failed reasonable suspicion and all tenets of Terry. [Subtext: Police are abusing Terry, and the courts have to control them.] Ames v. State, 2017 Md. App. LEXIS 121 (Feb. 3, 2017) (Moylan, J.) (caution: The Lexis version … Continue reading
CA4: No QI for arrest w/o PC and pft held for 80 days; lack of PC was obvious
Plaintiff was held for 80 days on an arrest utterly without probable cause, and the officer has no qualified immunity. Smith v. Munday, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 1975 (4th Cir. Feb. 3, 2017):
Foundation for Economic Education: Who Was the Founding Father of the Fourth Amendment?
Foundation for Economic Education: Who Was the Founding Father of the Fourth Amendment? by Gary M. Galles:
OK: Off-duty out of jurisdiction officer could make a citizen’s arrest
An off-duty police officer was driving from Tulsa where he worked to neighboring Broken Bow in his police car when he was passed by defendant speeding. He didn’t take action until the driving got otherwise erratic, nearly hitting the concrete … Continue reading
CA4: Drugs on an occupant of a vehicle supports a search of the trunk and other compartments
Drugs on an occupant of a vehicle supports a search of the trunk and other compartments. United States v. Brown, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 1720 (4th Cir. Jan. 31, 2017). Defendant appeals a supervised release search term that does not … Continue reading
LA5: Typo as to IP source in CP case was irrelevant to existence of probable cause
A typographical error as to defendant’s internet provider did not undermine the probable cause for the search warrant for his child pornography on his computer. It has nothing to do with the probable cause. State v. Shiell, 2016 La. App. … Continue reading
CA5: Rooker/Feldman abstention doesn’t bar action by SVP against how state handled a court order
Rooker/Feldman abstention didn’t bar plaintiff’s action against state officials enforcing a court order allegedly unconstitutionally, here against SVP. Brown v. Taylor, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 1742 (5th Cir. Jan. 31, 2017) (see Treatise § 64.02):
CA5: The length of computer search didn’t make it unreasonable where def was a lawyer and taint team had to do first review
Defendant was a lawyer who took his computer in to have the data on the hard drive switched to a new computer. The service guy doing the job noticed file names suggestive of child pornography and he saw at least … Continue reading
TN: General statement of “certified question of law” requires dismissal of appeal
Defendant’s general statement of the search and seizure in his state mandated “certified question of law” was insufficient for lack of what it was and what was sought to be suppressed, and the appeal is dismissed. State v. Forest, 2017 … Continue reading
Tenth Amendment Center: Michigan Ballot Measure Would Help Protect Electronic Data from Warrantless Spying
Tenth Amendment Center: Michigan Ballot Measure Would Help Protect Electronic Data from Warrantless Spying:
GA: Def counsel wasn’t ineffective for not arguing more strenuously an issue raised and rejected
Defendant’s IAC claim here was that defense counsel didn’t argue more vigorously the motion to suppress such that he would have won it it had been better argued. How to argue is “strategy.” In light of his lack of standing, … Continue reading
Cato: Stingray: A New Frontier in Police Surveillance
Cato: Stingray: A New Frontier in Police Surveillance by Adam Bates. From the executive summary:
E.D.Pa.: Google must turn over e-mails stored offshore, disagreeing with CA2
Google has to turn over e-mails stored overseas under a search warrant received here, disagreeing with Second Circuit. The court also notes that seeing an email might not be a seizure, contrary to Rule 41 and Jones protecting “information.” In … Continue reading
Law Review: The Forgotten Residents: Defining the Fourth Amendment House to the Detriment of the Homeless
The Forgotten Residents: Defining the Fourth Amendment House to the Detriment of the Homeless by Lindsay J. Gus in University of Chicago Law Forum