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- CA10: SW for gun three weeks after road rage incident wasn’t stale
- OH10: Parole search of cell phone can occur even when it’s taken from the property room at jail
- TX14: No REP in location information on bondsman’s GPS monitor
- W.D.N.Y.: No IAC for not challenging search without standing
- CAAF: Victim’s 4A rights were at issue, too
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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) -
“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: June 2017
Grits for Breakfast Blog: Pretext stops subvert public trust, undermine rule of law
Grits for Breakfast Blog: Pretext stops subvert public trust, undermine rule of law A law that everyone routinely violates because of its arbitrariness and impracticality becomes a path for the government to bypass 4th Amendment protections. Police can simply follow … Continue reading
ABAJ: Federal prosecutor admits she listened to recordings of attorney-client conversations, filing says
ABAJ: Federal prosecutor admits she listened to recordings of attorney-client conversations, filing says by Debra Cassens Weiss:
ZDNet: Facebook gives moderators “full access” to user accounts suspected of terror links
ZDNet: Facebook gives moderators “full access” to user accounts suspected of terror links by Zack Whittaker: Facebook has a fleet of low-paid contractors who are tasked with investigating possible connections with terrorism on its site. The key takeaway: Moderators are … Continue reading
KSFY: ACLU files suit over forced catheterization process
KSFY: ACLU files suit over force catheterization process:
OH10: Flight from a Terry stop was PC for search incident
“Because appellant committed an arrestable offense when he fled from the lawful Terry stop, the search of appellant’s person following his apprehension was constitutionally reasonable as a search incident to arrest.” State v. Johnson, 2017-Ohio-5527, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2583 … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Photos of defs didn’t match the description of officers where that was part of RS calculus; search suppressed
The USMJ credited the defendants on the reasonable suspicion for continuing the stop based on the photographs of the defendants after their arrest that didn’t match what the officer was relying on for their dress and jewelry. No reasonable suspicion, … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: Spy Tool’s Renewal Sparks Tense Senate Hearing
Courthouse News Service: Spy Tool’s Renewal Sparks Tense Senate Hearing by Brandi Buchman: WASHINGTON (CN) – Stoking the Senate Judiciary Committee’s frustrations on Tuesday, intelligence experts had few answers to direct questions on reauthorizing a surveillance tool. Set to expire … Continue reading
OH3: Oral testimony for SW doesn’t have to be transcribed before SW served
Oral testimony in support of issuance of a search warrant did not have to be transcribed and made part of the record before the warrant was served. State v. Wilson, 2017-Ohio-5484, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2544 (3d Dist. June 26, … Continue reading
CA7: Plaintiff’s 4A claim was too generalized to state a claim
In a bankruptcy appeal, the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment claim was too generalized to state a claim. Home Care Providers v. Hemmelgarn, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 11412 (7th Cir. June 27, 2017):
S.D.Cal.: Google’s email search scanning for CP was a private search; DHS’s separate search was “not a significant expansion”
Google’s scanning of email for child pornography is a private search. The DHS review of defendant’s emails wasn’t a significant expansion of the private search. United States v. Wilson, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98432 (S.D. Cal. June 26, 2017):
N.D.Fla.: Entry onto 3-4 acre plot for knock-and-talk lawfully entered curtilage
Defendant lived on a 3-4 acre plot, and police lawfully entered through an open gate to conduct a knock-and-talk at defendant’s door. Exactly where the curtilage ends isn’t clear, but it certainly was close to the house where they were. … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Google not a state actor when it scans email for CP and reports it
Google scans all its email for child porn hash values, examines those that are suspect, and reports it to NCMEC. Neither Google nor NCMEC are government actors. United States v. Miller, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97383 (E.D. Ky. May 19, … Continue reading
NYTimes: Why We Shouldn’t Drug Test Poor People
NYTimes: Why We Shouldn’t Drug Test Poor People by Jamila Michener and Julilly Kohler-Hausmann President Trump with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin this month. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The Senate Republicans’ stalled effort to repeal the Affordable Care … Continue reading
GA: A field sobriety test is not a “search”
A field sobriety test is not a “search,” recognizing authorities to the contrary. Mitchell v. State, 2017 Ga. LEXIS 545 (June 26, 2017):
Forbes: The DOJ Wants To Take Away Online Privacy. And A Court Says Okay
Forbes: The DOJ Wants To Take Away Online Privacy. And A Court Says Okay by Frank Miniter:
D.Kan.: Email and computer SWs were necessarily broad, but not unreasonably broad
“These were not warrants to search for ‘any and all information’ or ‘all computer information’ in defendant’s house. See Christie, 717 F.3d at 1165. Rather, the attachments effectively limited the scope of the searches to material relevant to specific federal … Continue reading
NYTimes: Jurors Find Video Isn’t Providing 20/20 Vision in Police Shootings
NYTimes: Jurors Find Video Isn’t Providing 20/20 Vision in Police Shootings by Julie Bosman, Mitch Smith, and Michael Wines: Since the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. – a shooting that was not … Continue reading