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- MA: Cell phone call logs don’t require a search warrant
- D.Kan.: Drug dog touching car door handle with nose isn’t unreasonable search
- D.N.M.: DEA’s failure to make a detailed inventory in violation of policy doesn’t require exclusion of evidence
- WaPo: These cities bar facial recognition tech. Police still found ways to access it.
- C.D.Cal.: SW materials in case with weighty public interest ordered unsealed
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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,
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Congressional Research Service:
--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)
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Monthly Archives: June 2017
ID: “Right result-wrong theory” will not be applied to relieve the state of defaulting an argument in support of search
“Right result-wrong theory” will not be applied to relieve the state of failing to make an argument to support the search in the trial court. The state defaulted the argument it advances on appeal. State v. Garcia-Rodriguez, 2017 Ida. LEXIS … Continue reading
The Watergate break-in happened 45 years ago today
Almost certainly just before midnight the night of June 16, 1972, burglars entered the Watergate Complex to break into the Democratic National Headquarters. Shortly after midnight, June 17th, security guard Frank Wills discovered tape keeping a door from locking, and … Continue reading
CA9: SW for one CP message board user’s email account led to finding CP for defendant; no 4A violation
A search warrant was obtained for the email account of a user of the Dark Moon messaging board for users of child pornography. After searching that one, officers got permission to use the email account. That did not lead to … Continue reading
WaPo: Third party rights and the Carpenter cell-site case
WaPo: Third party rights and the Carpenter cell-site case by Orin Kerr:
S.D.N.Y.: Govt couldn’t use “all records exception” because of lack of PC support
Securities fraud warrant was way overbroad and can’t be saved by the “all records exception” to search defendant’s business and apartment and seize even personal records. The search was so intrusive it violated the Fourth Amendment because there wasn’t sufficient … Continue reading
D.Guam: CI’s tale insufficiently reliable for PC for arrest
A named CI arrested at the airport gave up defendant. The court finds the CI’s tale insufficient for probable cause for arrest, and the arrest and its fruits are suppressed. United States v. Duenas, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91480 (D. … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Mere refusal to cooperate is not RS, but headlong flight pretty much is
Mere refusal to cooperate is not reasonable suspicion, but headlong flight adds a lot to otherwise legally innocuous yet suggestive facts. United States v. Vance, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87086 (W.D. Ky. June 6, 2017):
OH3: Nine days of pole camera surveillance did not violate the 4A
Nine days of pole camera surveillance did not violate the Fourth Amendment. State v. Duvernay, 2017-Ohio-4219, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2279 (3d Dist. June 12, 2017). The officer’s briefly talking to the defendant driver and his passenger did not unlawfully … Continue reading
IL: A dog sniff on the third floor apartment doors of an unlocked building violated Jardines
A dog sniff on the third floor apartment doors of an unlocked building violated Jardines. The sniff occurred two years after Jardines. People v. Bonilla, 2017 IL App (3d) 160457, 2017 Ill. App. LEXIS 380 (June 14, 2017):
WI: Are “open fields” on private property “public places” for officers committing a trespass?
WI holds that defendant as entitled to a self-defense instruction when he encountered two game officers on his property and thought they were trespassers. The concurring opinion concentrates on the intrusion into “open fields” and whether the state can treat … Continue reading
Hudson gutted the knock-and-announce rule by making it purely optional 11 years ago today
Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006), decided 11 years ago today, unraveling the knock-and-announce rule of Wilson v. Arkansas (1995) and Richards v. Wisconsin (1997). It’s constitutionally required, it saves lives, it’s far more civil in a civil society, … Continue reading
IL: Officer reaching into vestibule of home violated curtilage
The officer’s reaching into the vestibule of a two-unit apartment building intruded into an area with a reasonable expectation of privacy under Jardines. The building was essentially a one family dwelling. People v. Martin, 2017 IL App (1st) 143255, 2017 … Continue reading
The Hill: Opinion: Mass surveillance reform is one issue where Republicans and Democrats can work together
The Hill: Opinion: Mass surveillance reform is one issue where Republicans and Democrats can work together by Neema Singh Guliani and Jesse Blumenthal: The government has a responsibility to help keep Americans safe, but in the process it must also … Continue reading
CT: Slight difference between description and actual dress didn’t undermine RS
Defendant’s request to stop by the police based on his description and clothing was still justified despite the slight disagreement between what he was wearing and the description. Reasonable suspicion developed and defendant’s pat down was justified. State v. Lewis, … Continue reading
PA: Having hotel room key without anyone being registered in room doesn’t show standing
Defendant in speaking to the police said that he was staying in 111 of the Knights Inn hotel, and he showed a key card. When the officer turned away the key was hidden in the car. Later the police retrieved … Continue reading
PA: Deciding a motion to suppress on grounds not raised by the defense was an abuse of discretion; state didn’t get to respond
Deciding a motion to suppress on grounds not raised by the defense was an abuse of discretion because the state did not get to raise a defense to it. Commonwealth v. Banks, 2017 PA Super 182, 2017 Pa. Super. LEXIS … Continue reading
NYTimes: ‘How Far Can They Go?’ Police Search of Hundreds of Students Stokes Lawsuit and Constitutional Questions
NYTimes: ‘How Far Can They Go?’ Police Search of Hundreds of Students Stokes Lawsuit and Constitutional Questions by Jacey Fortin: Worth County High School was buzzing with late-year activities on April 14. Seniors had recently taken their group photo for … Continue reading
NY4: Probation condition that def consent to searches reasonably related to his crime and rehabilitation
Defendant’s probation condition that he consent to searches is reasonably related to his crime and rehabilitation. People v. King, 2017 NY Slip Op 04618, 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4686 (4th Dept. June 9, 2017).* “Giving due weight to each … Continue reading
CA9: Second coordinated traffic stop after first was prolonged in violation of Rodriguez was “fruit of the poisonous tree”; cash for forfeiture suppressed
“We hold that the search of Gorman’s vehicle following the coordinated traffic stops violated the Constitution and affirm the district court’s order granting Gorman’s motion to suppress. Gorman’s first roadside detention was unreasonably prolonged in violation of the Fourth Amendment. … Continue reading