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Recent Posts
- CA11: Service of SW without attachments isn’t 4A violation
- KS: Running warrants on a passed out person is reasonable
- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
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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)
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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: May 2017
N.D.Ala.: Entry with CPS worker to retrieve diaper bag was reasonable
A couple was arrested, and their infant was going with child protective services. An entry into the house with the CPS worker to recover the infant’s diaper bag was reasonable.United States v. Wright, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72738 (N.D. Ala. … Continue reading
PA: A def’s “admission transmitted through an informant is only as reliable as its conduit is trustworthy”
“[A]n admission per se is inherently reliable evidence” sufficient to establish probable cause to arrest, but holding that “an admission transmitted through an informant is only as reliable as its conduit is trustworthy.” Commonwealth v. Stokes, 480 Pa. 38, 389 … Continue reading
CA6: Officer arresting on warrant for failure to perform community service that was mistakenly issued had QI
The officer executing a warrant that should not have been issued by the court in the first place for plaintiff’s failure to perform his community service had qualified immunity. Beckham v. City of Euclid, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 8453 (6th … Continue reading
AR: Officer’s three week old knowledge of def’s suspended DL was RS for a stop
Reasonable suspicion doesn’t require certainty of facts. Here, the factual belief was that defendant’s DL had been suspended weeks earlier. Williams v. State, 2017 Ark. App. 291, 2017 Ark. App. LEXIS 301 (May 10, 2017). There was enough probable cause … Continue reading
OH: School protocol to search unattended book bags made this search reasonable
“Based on the facts of this case, we hold that the school’s protocol requiring searches of unattended book bags—to determine ownership and whether the contents are dangerous—furthers the compelling governmental interest in protecting public-school students from physical harm. We further … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: The Franks doctrine applies only to factual misstatements, not legal conclusions
Following United States v. Barnes, 126 F. Supp. 3d 735, 740 (E.D. La. 2015), the Franks doctrine applies only to factual misstatements, not legal conclusions. United States v. Tabares, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186540 (N.D.Ga. June 3, 2016), adopted, 2017 … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Police had discretion to return car to rental company after inventory search
Police had the discretion under the inventory policy to conduct the inventory and then allow the car to go back to Enterprise car rental rather than the police impound lot. Also, a disturbed panel in the car permitted the inventory … Continue reading
FL: Photographs of house interior taken during search for bank card could be used at trial
Defendant was a suspect in a murder, and the police had probable cause for a search warrant for his house to look for the victim’s bank card. They did not find the bank card, but they took 150 photographs of … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Officer came to def’s house on a domestic call and had no RS def was armed; frisk invalid
Responding to a domestic call, the officer met defendant at the door and he was compliant and holding a bag. There was no reason to believe that defendant was armed, but a stop and frisk was done, actually finding a … Continue reading
IN: Officers lacked RS to take gun off an otherwise law abiding citizen based on a citizen informant tip def had a gun
A cab driver called the police because defendant dropped a gun. The cab driver feared he was to be robbed (but he wasn’t). The police showed up and claimed defendant acted nervous. (Only a little.) The frisk and removal of … Continue reading
GA: Smell of MJ on def’s person and not in his truck justified search of person
During a traffic stop, the officer noticed that defendant’s eyes were bloodshot and glassy, and his taste buds were white and risen. The officer smelled raw marijuana when he approached defendant’s truck; noticed that the odor dissipated during the search … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: In a rare departure from the norm, court finds there was no RS for def’s stop near the border
Based on the totality of circumstances (“(1) characteristics of the area; (2) proximity to the border; (3) usual patterns of traffic and time of day; (4) previous alien or drug smuggling in the area; (5) behavior of the driver, including … Continue reading
Constitution Center: A Twenty-First Century Framework for Digital Privacy
Constitution Center: A Twenty-First Century Framework for Digital Privacy: Balancing Privacy and Security in the Digital Age by Jeffrey Rosen: Introduction: A Twenty-First Century Framework for Digital Privacy At the beginning of the twenty-first century, breathtaking changes in technology pose … Continue reading
Motherboard: This Is the Secret Court Order That Forced the NSA to Delete the Data It Collected About You
Motherboard: This Is the Secret Court Order That Forced the NSA to Delete the Data It Collected About You The court found an “institutional lack of candor on NSA’s part and emphasized that this is a very serious Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
ABAJ: ABA expresses concern about border searches of lawyer laptops and other electronic devices
ABAJ: ABA expresses concern about border searches of lawyer laptops and other electronic devices by Debra Cassens Weiss: ABA President Linda Klein is expressing serious concern about standards that permit searches of lawyer laptops and other electronic devices at the … Continue reading
CA6: Tossing gun to avoid police is abandonment
Defendant voluntarily answered questions, but he tossed his gun, and that’s an abandonment. United States v. Matthews, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 8292 (6th Cir. May 8, 2017). Two lane changes were reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop that led to finding … Continue reading
BNA: Can You Hear Them Now? Robbers Ask SCOTUS for Phone Privacy
BNA: Can You Hear Them Now? Robbers Ask SCOTUS for Phone Privacy by Jordan S. Rubin: From Criminal Law Reporter
We were hacked (again). Nobody is safe
You probably noticed that the site didn’t work for a good part of yesterday. It’s been hacked before, and the server owner we contract it to took their sweet time undoing this one. The password has been changed twice, but … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Trailer on blocks with no means around to pull it not subject to automobile exception
An RV trailer elevated on a block with nothing to pull it around is not subject to the automobile exception. United States v. Maley, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69797 (D.Ariz. May 5, 2017). A detailed tip about defendant on supervised … Continue reading