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- CA6: No interlocutory appeal of denial of motion to suppress
- 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
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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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: June 2017
D.D.C.: Google has to produce e-mails on server in Ireland, declining to follow 2d Cir. in Microsoft II
After Second Circuit split 4-4 on whether Google could be compelled to provide e-mails stored in a server in Ireland by a warrant, a USMJ in D.C. holds that Google has to produce e-mails stored on that server. In the … Continue reading
W.D.Tex.: County Jail’s acceptance of ICE detainees without PC violates 4A
Bexar County jail’s acceptance of ICE detainers without a showing probable cause for the detention violates the Fourth Amendment. The collective knowledge doctrine doesn’t apply where there isn’t any communication between ICE and the jail other than the jail taking … Continue reading
OH9: Potential working meth lab was exigency for entry
Officer’s seeing meth through window and then bottles used for making meth suggested making methamphetamine which is recognized as an exigency. State v. Secriskey, 2017-Ohio-4169, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2217 (9th Dist. June 7, 2017). Defendant gets limited discovery of … Continue reading
DE: Positive probation drug screen 15 days earlier, with nothing more, wasn’t RS for a probation search of the house
Positive probation drug screen 15 days earlier, with nothing more, wasn’t reasonable suspicion for a probation search of the house. State v. Fax, 2017 Del. Super. LEXIS 270 (June 2, 2017). Geolocation information from a coconspirator’s cell phone was used … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Checking gun SN during frisk was unreasonable
While an officer can take a gun during a frisk, the officer can’t run the serial numbers [compare New York v. Class on VINs] as a part of a frisk. United States v. Shipley, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83985 (D. … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Dashcam video doesn’t support officer’s claim of nervousness
Defendant’s alleged nervousness, on the totality, wasn’t enough for reasonable suspicion. The officer testified to his nervousness, but the video doesn’t support it. The court just does not believe that the officer could see defendant’s heart “pounding” through his t-shirt. … Continue reading
WaPo: How tech sleuths cracked the mysterious code that turns your printer into a spying tool
WaPo: How tech sleuths cracked the mysterious code that turns your printer into a spying tool by Derek Hawkins:
MO: Stop requires RS but arrest requires PC
“Here, the trial court erred in requiring the Director to prove there was reasonable suspicion to justify stopping Williams’ vehicle. The Director was only required to prove there was probable cause to arrest Williams for driving in violation of an … Continue reading
MI: Search of def’s car was harmless compared to uncontested search of house
Even if the search of defendant’s car violated the Fourth Amendment, the uncontested search of his house did not, and that provides overwhelming evidence of guilt. Thus, the car search is harmless at best. Johnson v. State, 2017 Miss. App. … Continue reading
TX: Dorm RA couldn’t consent to police entry to dorm room to search for drugs
An RA in a college dorm searched defendant’s room and found drugs. The police were called and they entered the room and seized the drugs. There is no dorm room exception to the Fourth Amendment. This is not the same … Continue reading
Cal.6th: SW for house for CP didn’t permit search of second house found behind it
Police linked an IP address at the residence of the owner in San José to child pornography, and they obtain a search warrant for the Reynolds residence, garages, and outbuildings. They searched Reynolds’ place for child pornography and didn’t find … Continue reading
WaPo: Colorado housing officials invite cops to perform warrantless searches on poor people
WaPo: Colorado housing officials invite cops to perform warrantless searches on poor people by Radley Balko
N.D.Ala.: Nailed down plywood sheet wasn’t subject to removal under protective sweep but other exigency for search shown
Police entered because of a hostage situation. Removal of a nailed down plywood cover wasn’t valid as a protective sweep, but it was under exigent circumstances. United States v. Cooks, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83992 (N.D.Ala. April 28, 2017), adopted, … Continue reading
VT: SWs for animals are different than for other property; more likely subject to exigency
Search warrants for animals are different than for other property in that they are alive and more likely subject to exigent circumstances because animal welfare is always a consideration. When executing a warrant for two animals, others apparently in distress … Continue reading
CA5: 15 minute delay between traffic offense and stop wasn’t constitutionally “stale”
15 minute delay between traffic offense and stop wasn’t constitutionally “stale.” Also, collective knowledge applies to reasonable suspicion. United States v. Zuniga, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 9958 (5th Cir. June 5, 2017). The smell of alcohol after driving the wrong … Continue reading
IN: Unchallenged SW that led to tax assessment made seizure reasonable
“In their second amended complaint, the Garwoods did assert a Fourth Amendment claim. … It is unclear what became of it, as it was still live when the State moved for summary judgment and survived that motion. In any event, … Continue reading
NJ: Blocking car and shining light into car then approaching car was an investigative detention
“Defendant was faced with an investigative detention once the officer blocked in her vehicle, directed the patrol car’s alley light to shine into her car, and then approached her driver’s-side window to address her. Under the totality of the circumstances, … Continue reading
WaPo: Lawsuit: Mass search of Georgia high school students included genital touching, exposure of female students’ breasts
WaPo: Lawsuit: Mass search of Georgia high school students included genital touching, exposure of female students’ breasts by Radley Balko:
More news on CSLI cert grant
MIT Technology Review: Warrantless Tracking of Cell Phone Location Data by the Police Could Get Harder EFF: Supreme Court Will Hear Significant Cell Phone Tracking Case techdirt: Supreme Court To Consider Fourth Amendment Implications Of Cell Site Location Info Digital … Continue reading