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- CA5: Deficient privilege log after records search was waiver
- E.D.Ky.: When court can’t tell the dog alerted, motion to suppress granted
- OH1: A malnourished child isn’t exigency for an infant
- E.D.Pa.: Mandamus doesn’t lie to unseal SW papers
- D.Me.: Looking around house when allegedly “freezing” it was an illegal search
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
Website design by Wally Waller, Little Rock 
Daily Archives: February 14, 2018
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Should courts read statutory exclusionary rules broadly?
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Should courts read statutory exclusionary rules broadly? by Richard Re:
Reason: Alabama Prosecutor, Sheriff Threaten to Put More People in Prison in Order to Keep Seizing Massive Amounts of Property
Reason: Alabama Prosecutor, Sheriff Threaten to Put More People in Prison in Order to Keep Seizing Massive Amounts of Property by Scott Shackford: Lawmakers are considering long-overdue civil asset forfeiture reform, and law enforcement leaders aren’t happy.
Above the Law: The Vanilla Ice Rule: “Anything less than the best is a felony.”
Above the Law: The Vanilla Ice Rule by Matthew W. Schmidt: Litigators must remember that “anything less than the best is a felony.”
CA6: LEO’s conviction for criminal civil rights violation for wrongful entry to arrest affirmed
Defendant was a police officer and he’s convicted here of cirminal civil rights violation for wrongful entry into the victim’s house. The event started when the victim came home to his apartment building, found defendant parked in his parking spot, … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Def files a Franks challenge to a state issued SW, and the government says it won’t use the product of the search
The defendant filed a motion to suppress under Franks alleging numerous falsehoods in the search warrant application issued by a state judge in Arizona. “James is surprised by the government’s response. Rather than defend the credibility and integrity of the … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: To claim IAC for not challenging SW, the affidavit and SW have to be in the 2255 submission or say how
“As explained in the plea agreement, the search warrant was a state warrant obtained by the Lexington Police Department. D.E. 95 at 2. The materials related to the warrant are not in the record of this case. Strickland provides no … Continue reading
AR: Search of def’s wallet in a frisk was unreasonable
The officer made a drug arrest in the park, and defendant was around and fidgeting with his hands repeatedly going in and out of his pockets. A frisk of defendant for a weapon was reasonable, but a search of his … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: A civil detainee has no REP in his cell, despite not being a convict
A civil commitment detainee has more rights than a convict in a jail, but still practically none in his living area from a search for alleged contraband. Warrior v. Santiago, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22742 (E.D. Cal. Feb. 12, 2018). … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Weapons tossed by somebody other than def isn’t his abandonment
Weapons tossed by somebody other than the defendant aren’t abandoned as to the defendant. The search was valid as a parole search under state law. United States v. Scott, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 217307 (E.D. N.C. Dec. 20, 2017) (R&R). … Continue reading
NOLA considering ordinance to put surveillance cameras in and outside all bars feeding to a city central server
New Orleans has proposed ordinance 32,107 regulating bars, and part is about surveillance systems. This caught my eye because, in college, I first considered the privacy concerns of street cameras being installed here. That was probably 1969-70, and Katz was … Continue reading