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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"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
TX10: Walking away from a traffic stop is the crime of evading detention
For the purposes of the evading arrest or detention statute, defendant fled when he got out of the car and walked away from a lawful detention and did not stop when commanded by officers until he was about 40 feet … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Furtive movement toward car during stop justified protective frisk of car
Defendant’s furtive movements toward his car and his agitated state justified a protective frisk of the car. United States v. Vaccaro, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 205804 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 18, 2017), adopted, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 204625 (E.D. Wis. Dec. … Continue reading
New York Magazine: Are Trump’s Transition Team Lawyers Attempting to Discredit Mueller?
New York Magazine: Are Trump’s Transition Team Lawyers Attempting to Discredit Mueller? by Chas Danner Well, duh! “To ask the question is to answer it.” Heald v. Rice, 104 U.S. 737, 755 (1892); In Re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 581 … Continue reading
TN: Multiple mistakes on time of issuance of SW supported suppression under state law
Multiple typos on the time of issuance of the blood warrant (2044, 2244, 2244 pm, 2244 am) resulted in the trial court’s suppressing the warrant. The facts don’t preponderate against the findings of the trial court because the witnesses were … Continue reading
KY: Confrontation clause doesn’t apply in suppression hearings
The Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause doesn’t apply to a suppression hearing to get the typical CI on the stand to attack his reliability. [Now, if the CI was a material witness to the case under Roviaro, likely so.] Hawkins v. … Continue reading
Once again, Trump team lawyer doesn’t understand search warrant process (Part 2) | And the President undermines U.S. criminal justice to benefit all suspects
Once again, a Trump team lawyer doesn’t understand the Fourth Amendment. Saying the Fourth Amendment was violated doesn’t make it so. I hear this everyday from my own clients who are far less sophisticated about the law than Trump’s own … Continue reading
NY3: Failure to search cell phone within the time limits on the warrant after timely seizure required suppression
Defendant’s cell phone was seized under a search warrant but the search did not occur for two months. The cell phone search violated state law because the search did not occur within the ten days required by the rule and … Continue reading
IL: Def’s stop was without RS, and his flight didn’t add anything to the totality
The stop of the juvenile in this case was without reasonable suspicion and was designed to be a show of authority. The juvenile fled, and, under the totality of circumstances, the court can’t say that it added anything to the … Continue reading
techdirt: Cop Shuts Off Dashcam During Drug Dog Sniff. Appeals Court: This Is Fine.
techdirt: Cop Shuts Off Dashcam During Drug Dog Sniff. Appeals Court: This Is Fine. by Tim Cushing
Law Review: Government Analysis of Shed DNA Is a Search under the Fourth Amendment
Government Analysis of Shed DNA Is a Search under the Fourth Amendment by Tracey Maclin, Boston Univeristy School of Law, 48 Texas Tech Law Review 287 (2015) (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2685766). Abstract:
IA: SW for taking blood includes testing it
The search warrant authorized taking defendant’s blood so it impliedly permitted testing it as well. The expectation of privacy is already reduced by the blood draw by authorization of law. State v. Frescoln, 2017 Iowa App. LEXIS 1227 (Dec. 6, … Continue reading
MA: PC was shown for searching def’s cell phone for messages to and from murder victim; SW’s overbreadth was cured by searchers’ limiting scope of search
Probable cause was shown to search defendant’s cell phone for text messages and calls from the murder victim. The victim’s phone wasn’t found, and it was logical there could be information on the phone and the victim’s was taken to … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Facebook SW was valid when issued, but later case law said it would have been overbroad; valid by GFE
The Facebook warrant here was overbroad, but it was consistent with case law at the time. Later case law said that it would have been overbroad. Nevertheless, reliance on case law at the time the search warrant was issued is … Continue reading
TX2: No exigency shown for warrantless blood draw in DUI case
The state failed to prove exigent circumstances for a warrantless blood draw from the defendant. There were other officers around and a warrant could have been sought. State v. Sanders, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS 11674 (Tex. App. – Ft. Worth … Continue reading
CA3: Frisk was justified by RS and plain feel of drugs resulted
The officer had reasonable suspicion to frisk defendant, and the drugs in his pocket were discovered by plain feel. United States v. Graves, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 25157 (3d Cir. Dec. 13, 2017). Smell of marijuana during a traffic stop … Continue reading
Bill of Rights Day — 226 years ago today the Bill of Rights was ratified
CA1: SW affidavit’s misstatements were careless at worst and not material to finding of PC
Defendant did not make the required showing that the search warrant affidavit misstatement that a black Volvo with the key license plate number was seen in the area of the fifth robbery was made intentionally rather than merely out of … Continue reading