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Recent Posts
- LA4: Merely having a concealed firearm isn’t RS for a frisk
- OR: Merely driving off the road wasn’t RS, but adding the driver’s demeanor at the time was
- OH6: Trial court’s failure to explain RS under Rodriguez required remand
- CA6: Asking def before a patdown during arrest what he had on him wasn’t barred by Miranda
- NY Queens: PC shown for SW blood drawn at hospital after car wreck
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
Website design by Wally Waller, Little Rock 
Monthly Archives: June 2017
NYTimes: Mishandle a Fraud Search, and All That Fine Evidence Could Be for Nothing
NYTimes: Mishandle a Fraud Search, and All That Fine Evidence Could Be for Nothing by Peter J. Henning:
SCOTUS avoids deciding El Paso cross border shooting case and remands to CA5
The El Paso-Ciudad Juarez cross border shooting case remanded by SCOTUS to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration in light of a decision from the Court on June 19th on whether Bivens applies. Hernández v. Mesa, 2017 U.S. LEXIS 4059 (June … Continue reading
CA9: Intervenors show no standing to challenge admin. SDT to Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program
Intervenors showed no Art. III standing to challenge the DEA’s administrative subpoenas to the Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. Art. III standing requires that they show independent standing to sue. Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program v. United States Drug Enforcement … Continue reading
Daily Mail (UK): TSA to start going through books and magazines under new security measures – but critics claim procedure could be used to target people with foreign or religious reading material
Daily Mail (UK): TSA to start going through books and magazines under new security measures – but critics claim procedure could be used to target people with foreign or religious reading material by Hannah Parry:
E.D.Wis.: Def’s stop was without RS, and body cam video showed it
Milwaukee bike patrol officers heard a gun drop on the street and approached the people around the sound. Only another one walked away as shown in the officer’s body cam. The officers approached defendant, but there was no reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
CA7: State court following Davis GFE for pre-Jones GPS hardly unreasonable application of federal law under § 2254(d)
District Court [inexplicably] granted CoA for appeal of Wisconsin planting a GPS device a year before Jones which the state court of appeals held was saved by Davis good faith exception. State v. Oberst, 2014 WI App 58, 354 Wis. … Continue reading
AZ: Hot pursuit justified for minor offenses
Police attempted to stop defendant for a vehicle registration violation, but he didn’t stop and gave probable cause to believe he was fleeing the stop. He drove into his private driveway with a police car right behind him and went … Continue reading
RI: No apparent authority to consent shown; police merely assumed consenter lived there, but she didn’t
The person asked for consent didn’t live there, and the officers made no attempt to find out whether she did. They just assumed she did. The state’s alternative argument of exigency is rejected because the officers never testified to any … Continue reading
D.C.Cir.: Omission of robbery victim’s failure to ID def didn’t cut either way in Franks analysis; PC still existed
Omission of a non-identification of defendant as a robber was not material for Franks. “Even viewing the omitted non-identification as a material omission, probable cause for the search did not rise or fall on the identification of Dorman as the … Continue reading
KS: CI’s tip insufficient; motion to suppress should have been granted
The alleged reasonable suspicion for extending defendant’s traffic stop was the CI’s information which is found insufficient. The state’s alternative basis of defendant’s alleged “jumpiness” was never presented to the trial court. There are no findings on that, it is … Continue reading
IA: Unnecessary to seek out somebody else not at scene to retrieve car when driver and only passenger arrested
The state showed the impoundment policy was standardized and complied with. It wasn’t necessary at the time to seek out somebody else to retrieve the car from the roadside when both the driver and passenger were arrested. State v. Tronca, … Continue reading
MT: Admission at a game checkpoint wasn’t “in custody”
Defendant was stopped at a game checkpoint and admitted to placing his daughter’s tag on a deer he shot. He was not “in custody” when he confessed. State v. Maile, 2017 MT 154, 2017 Mont. LEXIS 350 (June 23, 2017). … Continue reading
S.D.Ill.: Officer’s intentional delay in ticketing process made stop violate Rodriguez
Officer’s intentionally delaying the ticket writing process until the drug dog was on its way was intentional delay without reasonable suspicion under Rodriguez. United States v. Rodriguez-Escalera, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95848 (S.D. Ill. June 21, 2017):
IA: Consent valid based on testimony despite bodycam not picking up voices
The bodycam didn’t pick up the officer’s voice, which is “troubling,” but the trial court credited the officers’ testimony defendant consented, and that’s enough to have to affirm on consent. State v. Klinger, 2017 Iowa App. LEXIS 633 (June 21, … Continue reading
D.Md.: Off-duty police officer’s in-person tip of possible DWI was RS
Off-duty police officer’s in person tip of possible drunk driver was reasonable suspicion for stop. United States v. Hernández-Ayala, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95387 (D. Md. June 21, 2017). “[T]his Court also finds under the totality of the circumstances that … Continue reading
The Marshall Project: How to Cut Down on Searches in Traffic Stops: Legalize Pot
The Marshall Project: How to Cut Down on Searches in Traffic Stops: Legalize Pot by Justin George and Eric Sarara with additional reporting by Anna Flagg: The legalization of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado had at least one unanticipated … Continue reading