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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: March 2018
NPR: A Homeless Man’s Truck Is His Home, Judge Rules In Seattle
NPR: A Homeless Man’s Truck Is His Home, Judge Rules In Seattle by Laurel Wamsley: In a case that may have significant implications for Seattle’s fast-growing homeless population, a King County Superior Court judge ruled on Friday that the pickup … Continue reading
CA10: Three CIs corroborated each other and were independently corroborated
The affidavit for the arrest warrant was based on three CIs who corroborated each other and which were independently corroborated by the police. A Franks challenge was included that a prior search resulted in finding drugs that were not mentioned … Continue reading
MD: Use of text messaging is not a waiver of REP for spousal privilege
The state obtained text messages by legal process and admitted them at trial, arguing that the Verizon service agreement was a waiver of any reasonable expectation of privacy in third party records. It is not a waiver of spousal privilege … Continue reading
LR article: Manuel v. City of Joliet: Pursuing a Claim Under the Fourth Amendment
Manuel v. City of Joliet: Pursuing a Claim Under the Fourth Amendment by Lynda Hercules Charleson, 5 Tex. A&M L. Rev. Arguendo 47 (2017). Abstract:
OH8: No standing in a package neither sent nor to be received by def
Defendant lacked standing to challenge the placing of the GPS tracking device on the package because she was neither the sender nor addressee of the package and demonstrated no reasonable expectation of privacy in the package. The police could validly … Continue reading
The Intercept: New Orleans Surveillance Program Gives Powerful Tools to a Police Department with a History of Racism and Abuse
The Intercept: New Orleans Surveillance Program Gives Powerful Tools to a Police Department with a History of Racism and Abuse by Michael Isaac Stein:
Gizmodo: FBI’s Use of Paid Best Buy Informants Goes Deeper Than We Knew
Gizmodo: FBI’s Use of Paid Best Buy Informants Goes Deeper Than We Knew by Dell Cameron:
The Crime Report: Does Police Immunity for Wrongful Arrests Really Deter Crime?
The Crime Report: Does Police Immunity for Wrongful Arrests Really Deter Crime? In the wake of ongoing attention to police misconduct, a new economic study considers the cost of granting full immunity to officers for wrongful arrests and detention of … Continue reading
AK: SW clause to “search any persons” here didn’t enable search of every person who came to the premises during the search
Defendant came to a Fairbanks house when a search warrant was being executed, and he was searched, too, under the auspices of the “search any persons” present reference in the warrant. Defendant’s search was unreasonable under the circumstances. Innocent persons … Continue reading
MN: Shoplifter placed stuff in her purse, and that made it subject to search incident
Defendant was observed shoplifting and put the allegedly stolen item into her purse. Outside, a struggle ensued, and defendant handed her purse off to another. It was subject to search incident because it was evidence [and an instrumentality] of the … Continue reading
CA6: Ptf inmate’s bodily privacy not unreasonably violated because female guard saw him in shower
Summary judgment was properly granted against plaintiff’s prison Fourth Amendment claim that his privacy rights were violated because a female guard happened to see him in the shower. He has a limited reasonable expectation of privacy in his bodily privacy … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Affidavit for CP didn’t show PC, but GFE still applies
The affidavit for this child pornography search warrant was conclusory as to alleged sexual activity of minors and did not show probable cause. It was, however, not so devoid of a showing that it wasn’t reasonable to rely on it … Continue reading
The Champion: Breaking Blue: Challenging Police Officer Credibility at Motions to Suppress
Jennifer Sellitti, Breaking Blue: Challenging Police Officer Credibility at Motions to Suppress, 41 The Champion (No. 10) 16 (Dec. 2017):
FL5 following FL SCt: Davis GFE doesn’t apply to pre-Riley cell phone searches
On remand from the state supreme court, the Davis good faith exception does not apply in Florida to cell phone searches occurring before because there was no settled law, following Carpenter v. State, 228 So. 3d 535 (Fla. 2017). Burton … Continue reading
OH4: PC shown by inference that def had drugs in hotel room; officers don’t have to see a drug transaction to have PC
An actual drug transaction doesn’t have to happen for officers to have probable cause defendant likely had drugs in his hotel room. The investigation here developed logical inferences that’s what defendant was doing, and there was a nexus between his … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Officers’ one minute discussion about def deciding what to do wasn’t being undiligent in pursuing their investigation
The officer here had reasonable suspicion defendant was carrying drugs, and the fact that another officer arrived and they talked about defendant for one minute didn’t show that they weren’t diligently following up in their investigation. United States v. Green, … Continue reading
GA: Def failed to show standing in apt he was arrested in in early morning hours
Being arrested in an apartment that’s not yours doesn’t confer standing without some proof of a relationship to the property. The evidence at the suppression hearing did not address defendant’s status relative to the apartment; i.e., whether he was the … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Entry for protective sweep with gun drawn wasn’t per se a “forceful entry”; announcement unnecessary
The officer in this case did not have to knock-and-announce to make a protective sweep after defendant was arrested. The officer testified that he did. Entering with gun drawn doesn’t make it a “forceful entry.” United States v. Israel, 2018 … Continue reading
LA3: Once parolee found in possession of MJ, search of his hotel room was justified
Defendant was arrested for possession of marijuana so the search of his wallet was justified as a search incident. As a parolee, his hotel room was his “residence” for purposes of a parole search. State v. Warren, 2018 La. App. … Continue reading