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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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"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: December 2017
Cato: FISA “Reform”: The Surveillance Fear Mongering Campaign Ramps Up
Cato: FISA “Reform”: The Surveillance Fear Mongering Campaign Ramps Up by Patrick G. Eddington:
CA10: Protective sweep conducted without RS others present; SW suppressed
Officers came to arrest defendant in his home. They conducted a protective sweep of the entire premises without reason to believe anyone else was present. Their plain views made it into a search warrant, and the search is suppressed. United … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Officer’s slow walking issuance of ticket to allow drug dog time to arrive wasn’t objectively unreasonable
The officer’s subjective intent to delay the processing of defendant’s speeding ticket didn’t show that it was objectively slowed down to give time to get a drug dog to the scene to conduct a car sniff before the finishing of … Continue reading
Police News: How SCOTUS impacted law enforcement in 2017
Police News: How SCOTUS impacted law enforcement in 2017 by Terrence P. Dwyer
NJ: Failure of affidavit for SW to say which apartment was def’s was fatal error under state const.
There was a reasonable basis for finding probable cause that drug sales were occurring from defendant’s house, but the affidavit for the warrant failed to show which apartment in a 30 unit complex was his. Since New Jersey doesn’t recognize … Continue reading
CA9: Officer’s peek into backpack seeing cocaine before getting SW didn’t taint the search; plenty of PC before the peek
Officer’s peek into backpack seeing cocaine before getting a search warrant for it didn’t taint the search. There was plenty of probable cause before the peek. “The agents disclosed in the warrant affidavit that they had looked inside the backpack … Continue reading
WaPo: Jury rules against family subjected to SWAT raid over loose-leaf tea
WaPo: Jury rules against family subjected to SWAT raid over loose-leaf tea by Radley Balko
ClubNorton: Is your child’s connected teddy bear too smart?
ClubNorton: Is your child’s connected teddy bear too smart?:
A.F.Ct.Crim.App.: AFOSI form that said cell phone consent search would be done in 3 days wasn’t constitutionally binding
An AFOSI form states that a cell phone search has to occur within three days of their acquiring the phone. The court in the past has suggested that form change because it’s unreasonable to expect that it can be done … Continue reading
CA1: It was def’s burden to show guest standing and he failed
Defendant put on no proof of how long he was in another’s hotel room to claim standing in the room. The district court inferred, without much support, that he slept there for some brief period of time, and that’s not … Continue reading
FL5: Peeing in a parking lot is RS of “public nudity” justifying a stop
Peeing in a parking lot is reasonable suspicion of “public nudity” justifying a stop. State v. Harris, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 18994 (Fla. 5th DCA Dec. 15, 2017). Defendant’s rental company maintenance man was acting as a private citizen when … Continue reading
IL: A motion to suppress and a motion for directed finding of NG are fundamentally two different things
Defendant sought a motion to suppress which was actually a motion for directed finding of not guilty. They are different things. People v. Lomeli, 2017 IL App (3d) 150815, 2017 Ill. App. LEXIS 782 (Dec. 15, 2017). This immigration checkpoint … Continue reading
DE: SW materials reviewed on PCR to find no motion to suppress would be granted
Defendant was charged with rape of his daughter occurring daily for years. Defense counsel saw no reason to file a motion to suppress the search warrants for the house for the vibrator the victim described was used on her. Reviewing … Continue reading
D.Ore.: Court denies stay of execution of computer SW because of lack of proof of irreparable harm
A USMJ issued a search warrant for defendant’s computer and hard drive that had not yet been searched. The USDJ declines to issue a stay to stop the ongoing search because the defense cannot show a likelihood of irreparable harm … Continue reading
Today is the 50th anniversary of Katz and the “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard
Fifty years ago today, SCOTUS decided Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), which was the genesis of the reasonable expectation of privacy standard. LAPD vice officers investigating Katz as a college basketball bookmaker noticed he regularly used a … Continue reading
CA10: Catch-all phrase with “not limited to” in SW makes it overly general and no GFE
In an unpublished opinion (that will at least be in Federal Appendix), the Tenth Circuit holds that the use of a “catch-all” phrase and “not limited to” in a search warrant made it incurably overbroad. The court also held that … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Circuit authority doesn’t require SW for CSLI, so there’s no point in waiting for Carpenter
CSLI without a search warrant is permitted under the law of this circuit, so there’s no point in waiting for Carpenter to be decided. [Without explicitly saying it, Davis good faith exception will apply.] United States v. Simmons, 2017 U.S. … Continue reading
CA9: Failure to argue curtilage was violated in district court barred argument on appeal
Viewing photographs of the scene, the district court could conclude that the officers could see defendant with methamphetamine in his garage. “Tran did not argue below that the officers unlawfully entered the curtilage of Chong’s home and therefore waived this … Continue reading