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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: August 2017
ND: 9 hour old call about a suicidal man was no longer emergency; “Every emergency ends at some point.”
A nine hour old report of a man claiming suicidal ideations was no longer an emergency when the police got it. It was also vague and uncorroborated. “Every emergency ends at some point.” And this one did before the entry. … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Justices poised to consider, or reconsider, Fourth Amendment doctrines as they assess the scope of privacy in a digital age
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Justices poised to consider, or reconsider, Fourth Amendment doctrines as they assess the scope of privacy in a digital age by John Castellano, Asst. District Attorney of Queens County, New York
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Will the Fourth Amendment protect 21st-century data? The court confronts the third-party doctrine
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: Will the Fourth Amendment protect 21st-century data? The court confronts the third-party doctrine by Jennifer Lynch, EFF
SMU Law Review: Reaching Across the Threshold of the Fourth Amendment — Why Payton v. New York Should be Interpreted Broadly
SMU Law Review: Reaching Across the Threshold of the Fourth Amendment — Why Payton v. New York Should be Interpreted Broadly by Caroline Hunt, 70 SMU L. Rev. 189 (2017)
NY1: Staying “on and off” with an uncle for many years, getting mail there, storing all his clothes there gave standing
The trial court erred in finding that defendant lacked standing to challenge the propriety of the search of the apartment because defendant’s uncle, who resided in the apartment, told the police that defendant had stayed with his family “on and … Continue reading
CA8: Code inspectors’ entry into common areas of rental property wasn’t 4A violation
City code inspectors’ entries into the common areas of plaintiff’s “historically unmanageable rental properties” did not violate the Fourth Amendment for lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in those places. His claims as to allegedly protected areas was waived. … Continue reading
Federal “war on drugs” started “80 Years Ago Today: President Signs First Federal Anti-Marijuana Law”
NORML Blog: 80 Years Ago Today: President Signs First Federal Anti-Marijuana Law by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director:
N.D.Ga.: A Franks challenge has to be more than just an argument over interpretation of meaning of facts
When the Franks challenge is more of a different interpretation of facts, it doesn’t suffice. “And, frankly, Defendant is just arguing that a different interpretation should be placed on his conduct than Agent Cunningham’s interpretation – or most likely the … Continue reading
D.Nev.: An email warrant can be for servers outside the jurisdiction of the court
A search warrant for email can be for servers outside the jurisdiction of the court. United States v. McGuire, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 114471 (D. Nev. Feb. 9, 2017). The Coast Guard was surveilling Arroyo Quemada Beach in Santa Barbara … Continue reading
Politico: Sessions offers rare warning on dangers of police misconduct
Politico: Sessions offers rare warning on dangers of police misconduct by Josh Gerstein:
The Guardian: ‘Anonymous’ browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal
The Guardian: ‘Anonymous’ browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal by Alex Hearn: A journalist and a data scientist secured data from three million users easily by creating a fake marketing company, and were able to de-anonymise many users.
NPR: U.S. Citizen Who Was Held By ICE For 3 Years Denied Compensation By Appeals Court
NPR: U.S. Citizen Who Was Held By ICE For 3 Years Denied Compensation By Appeals Court by Camila Domonoske: In a ‘botched’ investigation, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement kept Davino Watson, a U.S. citizen, imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: A defense of the doctrine [Re Carpenter]
SCOTUSBlog: Symposium: A defense of the doctrine by David LaBahn, president and CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (with links to other articles in the same vein):
N.D.Ga. predicts CA11 would go with totality standard in standing in a borrowed rented car
Noting the different approaches of the circuits to the standing of a driver of a rental car who is not on the contract but operating with permission of the renter, the totality of circumstances test is adopted, and he lacks … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Driver’s license checkpoints don’t require written rules
Driver’s license checkpoints don’t require written rules. United States v. Moore, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116012 (E.D. N.C. May 18, 2017), adopted, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115453 (E.D. N.C. July 25, 2017):
NYT: Border Agents Test Facial Scans to Track Those Overstaying Visas
NYT: Border Agents Test Facial Scans to Track Those Overstaying Visas by Ron Nixon:
OR: State’s inevitable discovery argument was speculative and rejected
The state’s argument that the finding of a used syringe and a “cooker” on him would have been found lawfully anyway during a patdown was based on speculation the court can’t accept. State v. Sigfridson, 287 Ore. App. 74, 2017 … Continue reading
The Hill: Digital privacy bill still abandons probable cause for our papers
The Hill: Digital privacy bill still abandons probable cause for our papers by Mark J. Fitzgibbons
OR: Three on preservation of search issues at the suppression hearing
Defendant preserved his argument that officer safety was not a valid justification in his memorandum of law, and that put the state and the trial court on notice that was an issue the state had to address, and didn’t. State … Continue reading
How to Respond to Cops Who Want Your Passwords
How to Respond to Cops Who Want Your Passwords by Stephanie Lacambra of EFF (Prezi presentation)