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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General (many free):
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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (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: February 2018
DE: Def’s crossing the unmarked center of a highway for a couple of seconds wasn’t RS
“Here, Trooper Freeman testified that ‘the only basis for the stop’ was that Defendant veered into the left lane on a roadway that did not have solid lines. Speed was not a factor. Absent any testimony or video evidence concerning … Continue reading
Curious about the FISA process? See Just Security: It Ain’t Easy Getting a FISA Warrant: I Was an FBI Agent and Should Know
Just Security: It Ain’t Easy Getting a FISA Warrant: I Was an FBI Agent and Should Know by Asha Rangappa from March 2017.
Ars Technica: Why cops [think they] won’t need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car
Ars Technica: Why cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car by Cyrus Farivar. Said a local law enforcement officer: “It’s like instant replay in the NFL; I can tell what happened.”
Just Security: “Dehumanized” at the Border, Travelers Push Back
Just Security: “Dehumanized” at the Border, Travelers Push Back by Carrie DeCell:
NYTimes: Opinion: What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State
NYTimes: Opinion: What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State by James A. Millward:
NY4: CSLI obtained by exigency mere third party information not subject to suppression
Police discovered defendant may have been involved in a quadruple homicide, and they submitted an exigent circumstances request for his CSLI for the four days around the homicide, and that put him there. His motion to suppress the CSLI was … Continue reading
W.D.La.: No clear authority says a state court tracking warrant can’t track a car into another state; GFE applies
There is no authority shown that a state court tracking warrant on a vehicle could or could not track the vehicle into another state. Therefore, the good faith exception would apply. United States v. Taylor, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17816 … Continue reading
W.D.Wash.: Exclusionary rule wouldn’t apply to USCG’s obtaining medical records of merchant mariners (dicta)
Plaintiff sued the Coast Guard because it subpoenaed his medical records for the merchant marine, something completely within its statutory and regulatory authority. The Coast Guard 40 years ago determined that the exclusionary rule wouldn’t be applied to medical records … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Def’s admission he hadn’t used phone in a year when he left it where he last lived supported finding abandonment
During a knock-and-talk, defendant admitted that he had not used a particular cell phone in over a year because it had a cracked screen. He was kicked out of a house and he left it behind with other belongings. Based … Continue reading
CA5: “The mistaken execution of a valid search warrant on the wrong premises does not automatically violate the Fourth Amendment”; officer gets qualified immunity
“The mistaken execution of a valid search warrant on the wrong premises does not automatically violate the Fourth Amendment.” The officers get qualified immunity for getting out when they discovered it. Thomas v. Williams, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 2478 (5th … Continue reading
NY4: Pinging cell phone was harmless error even if a warrant was required
The pinging of defendant’s cell phone to find him was without a warrant. If it was constitutional error, it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. People v. Moorer, 2018 NY Slip Op 00754, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 697 (4th … Continue reading
Lawfare: The Dubious Legal Claim Behind #ReleaseTheMemo
Lawfare: The Dubious Legal Claim Behind #ReleaseTheMemo by Orin Kerr: [Spoiler alert: I agree that it is more than dubious since two branches of our government have absolutely no clue what the Fourth Amendment means. It’s like a Franks challenge: … Continue reading
D.Mass: Seeking CP from work computer created reasonable inference he’d have CP on home computer
The fact defendant sought out child pornography from his work computer, coupled with the fact he had internet access at home, made it a reasonable inference that child pornography would be on his home computer. United States v. Mantha, 2018 … Continue reading
PA: Furtive movements then refusing to remove hands from pockets was RS
On a report of a man with a gun, officers went to area and found defendant who didn’t exactly match the description. As they circled the block, defendant would change directions. When they pulled up next to him, which was … Continue reading
Reason: Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Butt Heads Over the Fourth Amendment, Again
Reason: Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Butt Heads Over the Fourth Amendment, Again by Damon Root: Gorsuch advances another property rights theory of the Fourth Amendment that Alito rejects.
DE: Totality showed nexus for court ordered GPS on def’s car as suspect in burglaries
The totality of the circumstances showed a logical nexus among burglaries, defendant’s vehicle, and defendant for placement of a GPS by court order. There was a sufficient basis for finding probable cause that defendant was the person who committed the … Continue reading
ID: Hot pursuit onto curtilage led to abandonment of bag of meth
Defendant was speeding, and he was followed by the police. He failed to signal and turned into a long driveway that turned to unpaved, and the officer followed and defendant never slowed despite the police car having its lights on. … Continue reading
Cal.4th: No statutory or inherent authority for a court to impose a search condition as a condition of bail
There is no statutory or inherent authority for a court to impose a search condition as a condition of bail. The defendant is still presumed innocent and still has a reasonable expectation of privacy. In re Webb, 2018 Cal. App. … Continue reading