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- 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)
--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: October 2017
DE: Warrantless entry into def’s home seeking a man for questioning in a week old murder violated 4A
Police had no warrant to enter defendant’s house looking for another person for questioning in a robbery-homicide, not to arrest him. The alleged need for a security sweep violated the Fourth Amendment because the police were searching for a third … Continue reading
Carpenter oral set for Nov. 29, briefs all in
The oral argument in the cell site location information-third party doctrine case this past week was set for November 29th. ScotusBlog here with links to all the briefs, both parties and amici. Petitioner’s brief Amici: Competitive Enterprise Institute, et al. … Continue reading
CA1: QI for excessive force doesn’t require a case exactly on point; Garner is close enough for a jury to find liability
The district court denied qualified immunity to an officer who shot the victim in the head with an AR-15 without warning for allegedly brandishing a firearm. The victim had been wandering in and out of his house with a gun … Continue reading
OH12: SW for text messages on a cell phone was not overbroad where it was limited to messages from one person
Defendant was a police officer who was suspected of sexual battery of a student ride along. There were text messages, and a search warrant was obtained for his cell phone. The lack of a time frame for the text messages … Continue reading
CA6: Alleged defect in state arrest warrant was irrelevant under the 4A where there was PC
Defendant’s arrest under a purportedly defective Georgia arrest warrant was irrelevant under the Fourth Amendment because there was plenty of probable cause for it. Specifically, defendant contended that the officers needed an incident report or something that showed probable cause … Continue reading
TX14: Def’s gf’s private search of his cell phone finding CP wasn’t unreasonable search
Defendant’s girlfriend had free access to his cell phone because the password on the phone was shared with her and it was the same as the PIN on his debit card which she also used. She conducted a valid private … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Stopping def on the street because he vaguely matched the description of an assailant from three days earlier lacked RS
Defendant was approached on the street as he was walking past the police station because he was the same race as a man who was a suspect in an assault three days later. He gave his first name but kept … Continue reading
WaPo: Editorial: A man was wrongly incarcerated for 77 days. D.C. needs to find out why [he never saw a judge]
WaPo: Editorial: A man was wrongly incarcerated for 77 days. D.C. needs to find out why. INSTANCES OF people illegally imprisoned – without legitimate cause and denied the chance to see a judge or lawyer – may be commonplace in … Continue reading
NPR: Supreme Court Case Asks: How Much Do Partygoers Need To Know About The Party House?
NPR: Supreme Court Case Asks: How Much Do Partygoers Need To Know About The Party House? by Nina Totenberg Supreme Court justices this week looked at whether police can arrest people who they mistakenly believe are trespassing.
WaPo: This surveillance law needs reauthorizing — and tightening, too
WaPo: This surveillance law needs reauthorizing — and tightening, too by the Editorial Board:
TX14: Private search in Texas not subject to statute exclusionary rule
Defendant’s girlfriend accessed his cell phones: his Android wasn’t password protected but his iPhone was but she knew the password. This was a private search, and the Texas statutory exclusionary rule doesn’t apply. Thomas v. State, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
Star and Stripes: Factions forming as Congress attempts to curb US spy power
Star and Stripes: Factions forming as Congress attempts to curb US spy power by Karoun Demurjian of The Washington Post:
New book: “The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement” | “Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how technology is changing American policing.”
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement (Kirkus 2017) Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how technology is changing American policing. Review by the publisher:
WaPo: An innocent man lost his spleen after police shot him during a drug raid. The courts and city government say tough luck.
WaPo: An innocent man lost his spleen after police shot him during a drug raid. The courts and city government say tough luck by Radley Balko:
OH Ct.Claims: Ptf prison visitor didn’t prove her strip search was justified or unreasonably conducted
Plaintiff failed to prove her visitor strip search claim against the prison guards involved. The search was based on sufficient particularized suspicion that drugs were coming in through this visitor. The court finds she didn’t remember signing the form about … Continue reading
CA6: Def’s wife saying she was on the cell phone contract was sufficient to create a good faith belief in her apparent authority
Defendant’s wife, who told police defendant was communicating with underage girls on his cell phone, told officers that she paid for the phone and was on the contract. So, viewed most favorably to the government, this was sufficient to establish … Continue reading
EFF: 702 Spying: Backdoor Search
EFF: 702 Spying: Backdoor Search:
NYTimes: Opinion: The End of Privacy
NYTimes: Opinion: The End of Privacy by Andrew Burt and Dan Geer: Given the constant stream of breaches, it can be hard to understand what’s happening to our privacy over time. Two dates – one recent and one long ago … Continue reading
OH12: SW for text messages on cell phone was particular when limited to one person’s messages
Defendant was a police officer who was suspected of sexual battery of a student ride along. There were text messages, and a search warrant was obtained for his cell phone. The lack of a time frame for the text messages … Continue reading
WaPo: Georgia sheriff, deputies indicted after body searches of 900 high school students
WaPo: Georgia sheriff, deputies indicted after body searches of 900 high school students by Kyle Swenson: The sound system squawked at 8 a.m., just as the school day was revving up at Worth County High School. The campus was now … Continue reading