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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: July 2017
CO: In this recreational MJ use state, a dog sniff is a “search,” and a positive alert isn’t PC a crime is occurring
Use of a drug dog on a car is a “search” in marijuana recreational use Colorado, and a dog alert which could be of either legal or illegal substances is not probable cause. People v. McKnight, 2017 COA 93, 2017 … Continue reading
CA2: Waiting until trial to move to suppress computer was waiver
The FBI thought they had defendant’s wife’s consent to search his computer, but they realized she didn’t know the password, so they applied for a search warrant. Defendant waited until the start of the trial to move to suppress, and … Continue reading
CA7: Def’s wife of 21 years had apparent authority to consent to search of garage even if she didn’t regularly use it
Defendant’s wife of 21 years, 10 years at the co-owned property, had apparent authority to consent to its search. The fact she didn’t regularly go into the detached garage didn’t at all mean she didn’t have apparent authority. United States … Continue reading
TN: Def was brought before magistrate 47¼ hours after his arrest; no Riverside violation and it wouldn’t ripen to a Gerstein violation
Defendant was brought before a magistrate 47¼ hours after his arrest and arraigned at 3:15 am, and this was presumptively reasonable. His interrogation after he was released from the hospital after arrest but before arraignment complied with Miranda, and nothing … Continue reading
DE: Nervousness, criminal history, use of a rental vehicle, and high crime area not RS
“Delaware Courts have held that nervousness, criminal history, and use of a rental vehicle are not supportive of reasonable suspicion unless used in conjunction with ‘more tangible, objectively articulable indicators of criminality.’” Being in a high crime area also wasn’t … Continue reading
Motherboard: Liberty Might Be Better Served by Doing Away with Privacy
Motherboard: Liberty Might Be Better Served by Doing Away with Privacy by Zoltan Istvan: If tech is surveilling us constantly, we need the ability to use it to watch the watchers. [Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, transhumanist, author of The … Continue reading
N.D.Miss.: Heck bar doesn’t apply to search preceding arrest, but action stayed pending criminal case
Plaintiffs’ claim for illegal search and seizure at an internet café resulting in a criminal prosecution is not barred by Heck. The action is stayed, however, pending the outcome of the plaintiffs’ criminal trial. Moore v. Miss. Gaming Comm’n, 2017 … Continue reading
D.N.J.: Google has to produce emails stored overseas
Google responds to subpoenas and search warrants for email accounts from its California headquarters. The fact that the actual data may be stored in a server in another country doesn’t matter–Google still has to produce. In re Search Warrant to … Continue reading
NJ rejects a RS requirement for all vehicle dog sniffs
New Jersey adopts the Fourth Amendment standard of Rodriguez, and reasonable suspicion is not required for a dog sniff of a car unless the stop is prolonged for the sniff beyond the mission of the stop. State v. Dunbar, 2017 … Continue reading
TX13: Untested hospital drawn blood sample has to be obtained by SW not subpoena
Defendant was in a car wreck and hospitalized. The other person in the wreck died. At the hospital, he was treated and released, but blood was drawn for medical purposes but never analyzed by the hospital. The officer obtained a … Continue reading
ABAJ: Orlando cops pull over black state attorney, and the video goes viral
ABAJ: Orlando cops pull over black state attorney, and the video goes viral by Debra Cassens Weiss: Body cam video of Orlando police officers pulling over Florida’s only black state attorney has gone viral after some commentators suggested the stop … Continue reading
CNET: US Border Patrol says it won’t search travelers’ cloud data
CNET: US Border Patrol says it won’t search travelers’ cloud data by Steven Musil Clarification came in response to the senator’s questions about border agents pressuring Americans into providing device credentials. Endgadget: US Customs can search phones but not data … Continue reading
CA8: Protective sweep justified by one’s furtiveness, gun history for def, sounds of others inside
Here, there was plenty of articulable facts that added up to reasonable suspicion for a protective sweep because of one person’s apparent furtiveness, a gun history for the arrestee, and the sounds of others inside. United States v. Alatorre, 2017 … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: SW for apartment didn’t extend to vehicle
Search warrant for defendant’s apartment didn’t extend to his vehicle, which the government concedes. The warrantless search of the vehicle along with the apartment exceeded the warrant, and the vehicle search is suppressed. United States v. Salinas, 2017 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
NY Times: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Share Your Location Using a Smartphone
NY Times: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Share Your Location Using a Smartphone by Brian X. Chen:
ars technica: FBI didn’t need warrant for stingray in attempted murder case, DOJ says
ars technica: FBI didn’t need warrant for stingray in attempted murder case, DOJ says by Cyrus Farivar Prosecutors: “signals emitted from a phone are… not by their nature private.”
CA5: Ptf doesn’t show that city’s alleged failure to use SWAT teams “threat matrix” properly led to any constitutional violation
Plaintiff failed to show a pattern of unconstitutional actions or that the SWAT teams’ use of a “threat matrix” to determine when they would be called out was unconstitutional. Plaintiff doesn’t show that the failure to implement that matrix properly … Continue reading