Archives
-
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
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
Section 1983 Blog -
"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: July 2017
Cal.1: Inventory of duffle bag at booking was reasonable
Defendant refused to leave a 24 hour restaurant after being asked several times, and the police were called. Finally, defendant was arrested and taken into custody. His duffle bag was inventoried at the police station and a .38 revolver and … Continue reading
OR: Def being under influence of drugs isn’t per se RS he’s in possession
Defendant was likely under the influence, but the officer lacked reasonable suspicion that he was in possession of drugs for the detention. State v. Davis, 286 Ore. App. 528, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 861 (July 6, 2017):
CT: When two grounds are found to support the search, def on appeal has to challenge both
Defendant’s claim that the officers did not follow administrative regulations on conducting his parole search was moot where the trial court also found defendant consented to the search and he didn’t challenge consent. State v. Holley, 2017 Conn. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: PC for search of def’s car didn’t dissipate just because another person came into the case
Defendant’s [creative] argument that the probable cause for search of defendant’s car dissipated when another person came into the equation is rejected. In fact, it appears contemplated. United States v. Henley, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105138 (N.D. Ga. May 19, … Continue reading
D.Vt.: Officers had RS when they told def to roll his window down
“Because they had a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, the BPD officers were entitled to exert a minimal restraint on Defendant’s freedom of movement by directing him to roll down his vehicle’s windows in order to investigate further.” “In the … Continue reading
D.Vt.: Payton doesn’t require an arrest warrant come with a SW
Payton does not require that an arrest warrant also be obtained to arrest a suspect during the execution of a search warrant on his premises. Defendant was lawfully arrested in the house when the search warrant was executed. United States … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Supposition isn’t enough to discredit officer’s testimony about the stop
The court finds the officer’s testimony credible: “The court is likewise unpersuaded by the defendants’ arguments that Arwood’s testimony regarding the events of the day and his reason for stopping defendants’ vehicle lacks credibility. Defendants raise a litany of concerns … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: Albuquerque Police Call Spying Tech So Secret They Can’t Even Say They Have It
Courthouse News Service: Albuquerque Police Call Spying Tech So Secret They Can’t Even Say They Have It by Victoria Prieskop:
The Guardian: Facebook among tech firms battling gag orders over government surveillance
The Guardian: Facebook among tech firms battling gag orders over government surveillance by Olivia Solon:
CA11: Punching ptf in the face because of apparent threat to officer was QI
Punching plaintiff in the face was objectively reasonable on these facts, and the officer is entitled to qualified immunity. “Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Avery, Davis saw a brawl break out between two groups of young … Continue reading
WI: Failure to call one officer was not IAC because it wouldn’t change the outcome of suppression hearing
The record supported that defendant consented to the search of his car. The IAC claim was denied because the failure to call one of the officers would not have changed the outcome. State v. Floyd, 2017 WI 78, 2017 Wisc. … Continue reading
CA9 affirms $1.25M verdict for search of wrong house in Pima Co. AZ
Plaintiffs’ neighbor made a 911 call about a possible altercation with a gun. The Pima County AZ Sheriff’ Office arrived, beat on the door and ordered the plaintiffs out, handcuffed them and placed them in police cars, and then searched … Continue reading
WI: Tax assessor’s effort to see interior of home for assessment implicates the 4A
The tax assessor’s demand to see the interior of plaintiffs’ house is a search governed by the Fourth Amendment. Because it is the home, it is not “minimal,” and there is no administrative search exception that permits it. The city … Continue reading
NY4: Not granting a continuance of suppression hearing for unavailable witnesses was an abuse of discretion
The trial court erred in granting the motion to suppress for the nonattendance of its police witnesses after they were subpoenaed but didn’t show. The state sought an adjournment which the trial court denied. It was the first request for … Continue reading
CA3: Ptfs dismissed their 4A claims to appeal 1A claim of right to video police in action, and they prevailed
There is a First Amendment right to video or photograph the police doing their jobs. Plaintiffs were arrested for doing that, despite a city policy saying it was legal, and the district court ruled against them on the First Amendment … Continue reading
CA2 looks at CSLI anew and still finds warrant not required
The Second Circuit declines to find its precedent in In re Application of the United States for an Order Directing a Provider of Electronic Communication Service to Disclose Records to the Government was still binding. Looking at the issue anew … Continue reading