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- WaPo: They confided in ChatGPT. Their secrets ended up in court.
- 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
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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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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
W.D.Tenn.: No free standing 4A claim in 2255
2255 petitioner can’t make a free standing Fourth Amendment claim. Walker v. United States, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104358 (W.D. Tenn. April 20, 2017).* Defendant’s post-conviction claim that the search warrant in his case were counterfeits was waived by his … Continue reading
OH7: Bounty hunters have no license to enter as police officers do under state statute
While LEOs have the authority to break and enter to arrest a fugitive when they have an arrest warrant, state law grants no such power to bondsman. Conviction for criminal damaging affirmed for kicking in two doors, and the fugitive … Continue reading
MA: No PC shown for text messages, but PC shown for CSLI information
The state could not show that defendant’s text messages would show his connection with a murder, so the text messages were properly suppressed. The ubiquity of cell phones, however, does provide probable cause to believe that it might show the … Continue reading
MI: Video showed the stop was extended without RS
Defendant’s seizure after a traffic stop was without reasonable suspicion under Rodriguez. “We have reviewed the relevant testimony as well as the complete video/audio recording of the encounter from Daniels’s first observation of defendant’s car through the arrest. On the … Continue reading
WI: Community caretaking function can support impoundment and inventory despite lack of standardized procedures
Defendant matched the description of a man wanted for robbery and a probation violation. He was found on the property of a storage unit company. After his arrest, his vehicle was parked between two rows of buildings, blocking one unit … Continue reading
Overseizure? I’m sure the floormat wasn’t mentioned in the search warrant
Since I have one at my house … I used to have one at my office. I let a client have it, and he was arrested after a search of his house two weeks later.
US News & World Report: S.D. Cops Forced Catheters for Drug Testing
US News & World Report: S.D. Cops Forced Catheters for Drug Testing by Steven Nelson Authorities also allegedly catheterized a toddler because he wasn’t potty-trained.
MA: Hot pursuit not justified for civil infraction of possession of MJ; not serious enough offense
“In this case, we consider whether the warrantless entry by police into a residence was justified where the entry was made while chasing the defendant, who fled from police during a stop for a civil infraction of marijuana possession. Concluding … Continue reading
TX1: Shooting call a few minutes earlier justified protective sweep of apartment
The protective sweep of defendant’s apartment in response to a shooting call was reasonable. “The officers knew that there had been a shooting [just a few minutes earlier] and that at least one person had been shot. They did not … Continue reading
FL: Appellate counsel can’t be ineffective for failing to argue a defaulted 4A claim
Appellate counsel can’t be ineffective for not arguing a Fourth Amendment claim not presented to the trial court. Peterson v. State, 2017 Fla. LEXIS 1455 (July 6, 2017). Defendant didn’t have standing to challenge the search of the car he … Continue reading
KS implied consent statute unconstitutional under Birchfield
The Kansas implied consent statute, K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 8-1025(a), is facially unconstitutional under Birchfield. State v. Ryce, 2017 Kan. LEXIS 327 (June 30, 2017). Under the Tennessee child exploitation statute, “process” that must be executed by the prosecutor means arrest … Continue reading
Albuquerque Journal: ACLU: Albuquerque Police mum on cellphone spying technology
Albuquerque Journal: ACLU: Albuquerque Police mum on cellphone spying technology by Maggie Shepard:
D.Ariz.: 4A does not apply to non-U.S. person’s emails sent from overseas but stored in U.S.
The Fourth Amendment does not apply to court orders to obtain emails of a non-U.S. person created and sent from outside the country but stored in the U.S. Even if it did, the orders complied with the Fourth Amendment. United … Continue reading
OH7: Book bag in trailer not subject to search incident after defendant handcuffed and in police car
Defendant’s book bag in a towed trailer was not subject to search incident under Gant after he’d been arrested and was in the backseat of the patrol car [if ever]. State v. Johnson, 2017-Ohio-5708, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2744 (7th … Continue reading
ND unconstitutionally shifts burden of proof to def to show she was not seized
A car with two passengers was pulled over for a headlight violaiton, and the driver gave a false name and had a warrant. She was arrested. A drug dog was called. The defendant passenger was free to leave at the … Continue reading
ND: Entry by bail bond bounty hunters with police at perimeter declining to help was a private search
Three bail bond bounty hunters arrived at defendant’s house to take defendant’s brother into custody. Getting no response at the door, they called police for backup. Officers arrived and confirmed that they had a warrant for defendant’s brother and agreed … Continue reading
NYTimes: U.S. Citizen Detained by Mistake Sues Miami-Dade Over Immigration Enforcement
NYTimes: U.S. Citizen Detained by Mistake Sues Miami-Dade Over Immigration Enforcement by Caitlin Dickerson: Immigration lawyers in Miami-Dade County are challenging its practice of jailing people on behalf of federal immigration authorities, in a case that could test the Trump … Continue reading
Techno Examiner: Facebook Gag Order For User Account Search Warrants
Techno Examiner: Facebook Gag Order For User Account Search Warrants by Juliana Dante: