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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: November 2017
Newsweek: LAPD Cop Accused Of Planting Drugs In Man’s Wallet With Body Camera Rolling
Newsweek: LAPD Cop Accused Of Planting Drugs In Man’s Wallet With Body Camera Rolling by Christal Hayes: A Los Angeles police officer allegedly stuffed a baggie of cocaine into a man’s wallet after picking it up off the ground – while … Continue reading
LATimes: Editorial: Fix a surveillance law to stop backdoor searches of Americans
LATimes: Editorial: Fix a surveillance law to stop backdoor searches of Americans Congress is currently deciding: whether to let the National Security Agency continue to eavesdrop on the phone calls, emails and other electronic communications of foreigners located abroad. This … Continue reading
AP: Should police get to view bodycam footage immediately?
AP: Should police get to view bodycam footage immediately?:
Techdirt: Latest DOJ WTFness: Encryption Is Like A Locked House That Won’t Let Its Owners Back Inside
Techdirt: Latest DOJ WTFness: Encryption Is Like A Locked House That Won’t Let Its Owners Back Inside by Tim Cushing:
NC: IP address on pizza order led to PC for SW for def’s house as robber of driver
A Domino’s driver was robbed and hit with a baseball bat and knocked out. Police looked for possible robbers but found nobody. A “confidential source of information” (actually citizen informant who’s identity was withheld for protection against retaliation) said that … Continue reading
UT: Potentially missing 65 yo man led to welfare check entry of his house at insistence of his mother; “welfare check” entry valid
Defendant was 65, in ill-health, and his mother talked to him every day. When she hadn’t heard from him, she called the police to check on him. At the house, nobody answered the door, the lights were on, there was … Continue reading
PA: Commercial truck inspections coming into a landfill were valid under Burger
Pennsylvania State Police and environmental inspectors set up a roadblock into a landfill to inspect commercial trucks. In defendant’s truck they found some beer, and he was charged with DWI and “unlawful activities.” The stop and inspect of defendant’s truck … Continue reading
The Hill: Court limits DOJ warrant for Facebook data on Trump protesters
The Hill: Court limits DOJ warrant for Facebook data on Trump protesters by Morgan Chalfant:
WBAL: Device tells police when people were using cellphone while driving
WBAL: Device tells police when people were using cellphone while driving by David Collins:
Rare.us: Recent report shows Texas National Guard installed spy devices on surveillance planes
Rare Houston: Recent report shows Texas National Guard installed spy devices on surveillance planes by John Bogna:
Cert. granted: Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida: Whether the existence of probable cause defeats a First Amendment retaliatory-arrest claim as a matter of law.
Cert. granted: Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida (ScotusBlog) Issue: Whether the existence of probable cause defeats a First Amendment retaliatory-arrest claim as a matter of law. See Miami Herald: First the city sunk his houseboat. Now, he’s at … Continue reading
NM: Backpack on def when he was arrested was subject to inventory even though he was separated from it when searched
Defendant’s backpack was on him when arrested, and it was still subject to police inventory for all the policies of inventory. State v. Davis, 2017 N.M. LEXIS 86 (Nov. 9, 2017), revg, 2016-NMCA-073, 387 P.3d 274 (posted here):
KS: Stop-and-frisk was a factually justified “discretionary function” and the officer couldn’t be sued
With a due comparison to Det. Martin McFadden’s actions in observing John W. Terry and Richard D. Chilton in Terry v. Ohio, the officer on the totality was justified in inquiring of defendant what he was doing. Plaintiff wasn’t arrested, … Continue reading
Reasonable suspicion sometimes is just a Rorschach test:
Defendant “argues LPD acted on that hunch when deciding the white Ford Explorer was involved in the February bank robbery, and there was no proof beyond a speculative hunch that the February suspect and the April suspect were the same … Continue reading
CA11: Stop of man matching description of a robber in vicinity was reasonable
Officers received a report of a Friday night armed robbery of an Hispanic male by two black men wearing black. “The officer was aware that would-be robbers targeted this area because it contained a number of bars frequented on weekend … Continue reading
RI: Cell phone SW aff omission of reference to 300 other text messages to and from others wasn’t material for Franks
Omission of the fact that there were 300 text messages from the affidavit for search warrant between defendant’s text to victim and acquiring the phone was not material for probable cause purposes. Omission of references to others wasn’t material: “Although … Continue reading
MA: Trial judge’s omission of significant facts made finding of no exigency error
The trial judge’s finding that there were no exigent circumstances is reversed. Her findings of fact omitted serious facts in support of exigency, and thus was clearly erroneous. Commonwealth v. Arias, 2017 Mass. App. LEXIS 148 (Nov. 9, 2017):
Politico: Texas killings may aid Rosenstein’s crusade on encryption
Politico: Texas killings may aid Rosenstein’s crusade on encryption by Eric Geller: