Archives
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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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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)
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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)
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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: August 2017
OH4: Objective basis for stop obviates racial profiling claim
Defendant’s stop for an abrupt lane change and then driving 45 in a 55 was justification for the stop. There was an objective basis for the stop, so defendant’s racial profiling claim is rejected. The driver was obviously extremely nervous … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Def’s public opposition to PO walk throughs of his residence added to RS
Defendant’s opposition to home walk throughs by his probation officer added to reasonable suspicion. When he spent $20,000 on Christmas gifts with a $1,500 a month income, they had cause to do one. United States v. Rogers, 2017 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Driving up to a drug house where a SWAT raid was about to happen here was RS
Defendant drove up to a known drug house that was about to be searched by a SWAT team, and reasonable suspicion quickly developed for his stop. United States v. Clayton, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128041 (W.D. Ky. June 13, 2017).* … Continue reading
OH3: The 3 days that an Ohio SW has to be executed in is business days
Ohio’s rule that a search warrant be executed in three days doesn’t include weekends. State v. Seaburn, 2017-Ohio-7115, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 3241 (3d Dist. Aug. 7, 2017). Defendant’s jaywalking stop didn’t justify a patdown where defendant wasn’t even asked … Continue reading
CA5: Bodycam video showed that this fatal shooting was apparently justified, and that essentially made credibility of the officer irrelevant
In this § 1983 action against a former deputy sheriff, which alleged excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the factual issues identified by the district court on summary judgment were immaterial in light of undisputed filmed facts of … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Scope of a parole search is based on RS parolee is in control of specific place searched
The scope of a parole search has to be based on at least reasonable suspicion that the place to be searched was under the control of the parolee. There was no evidence available that showed he had joint control of … Continue reading
Techdirt: ACLU Tells Court Long-Term Cell Site Location Tracking Should Require A Warrant
Techdirt: ACLU Tells Court Long-Term Cell Site Location Tracking Should Require A Warrant by Tim Cushing:
ABAJ: Traveling out of the country? Lawyers should consider using ‘burner’ devices
ABAJ: Traveling out of the country? Lawyers should consider using ‘burner’ devices by Debra Cassens Weiss:
Cato: To Apply the Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age, Go Back to Its Text
Cato: To Apply the Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age, Go Back to Its Text by Ilya Shapiro re Cato’s Carpenter amicus brief:
CA11: Def stated enough to get a hearing on a 4A IAC claim in his 2255 action
Defendant raised a colorable claim of a Fourth Amendment violation and ineffective assistance in not pursuing it. Therefore, the district court erred in just assuming defendant would lose on any motion to suppress without a hearing. Reversed. Spriggs v. United … Continue reading
Trump team lawyer doesn’t understand search warrant process
Trump team lawyer doesn’t understand search warrant process, from Trump lawyer John Dowd: Robert Mueller’s team using tactics employed ‘in Russia not America’ by Anna Giaritelli in the Washington Examiner:
CA10: CSLI is third-party information
Noting pendency of Carpenter, the Tenth Circuit finds CSLI third-party records and they are bound to apply the third-party doctrine. United States v. Thompson, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 14551 (10th Cir. Aug. 8, 2017). Defendant had a warrantless search condition … Continue reading
MI: Leaving backpack in car def was ordered out of was a lack of standing when the car got searched
Defendant lacked standing in his own backpack in a vehicle that was subject to search for impoundment for having no valid LPN under People v. LaBelle, 478 Mich. 891, 732 N.W.2d 114 (2007). The motion to suppress was properly denied. … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Taint team not required for this document and ESI search, and that part of process vacated
The USMJ’s requirement of a taint team to review the materials seized in execution of the search warrant is unnecessary in this case and not required by the Fourth Amendment, and it is set aside. United States v. Sealed Search … Continue reading
D.Minn.: The gov’t cites a three-way circuit split on standing in a rental car; the circuit authority controls
Defendant was driving a rental car with permission of the renter, and that gives him standing in this circuit. There is a three way circuit split, and this court can’t resolve that. United States v. Bettis, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
WI: While RS might not have existed for a pro forma patdown, the officer had RS when this one happened
Defendant and his passenger ran out of gas on a freeway, and an officer came along to help. He was going to take them to the next gas station, and he planned to frisk them before putting them in the … Continue reading
CA5: Ptf in a 4A § 1983 case has to plead violation of a “clearly established right” to get over QI in complaint
Although an arrestee adequately alleged that members of a parish council and sheriff’s office maliciously conspired to prosecute him under an unconstitutional statute in retaliation for online comments about council members, his right was not clearly established because there was … Continue reading
CA8: Halfway house resident’s cell phone subject to suspicionless search
Defendant’s cell phone was subject to search when he resided at a residential reentry program after release from an FCI. Child porn was found on the phone. Defendant’s reliance on Riley’s warrant requirement is misplaced. Yes, this is a cell … Continue reading