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Recent Posts
- WaPo: Apple, Google and Venmo fight new U.S. plan to monitor payment apps
- CA4: Tracking order using cell site simulator with PC was reasonable
- CADC: When searching a cell phone and officers find it belonged to someone else, a new SW isn’t required; SWs are directed at things, places, and people and owner doesn’t matter for PC
- Seattle Times: US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources
- D.N.M.: Even if def’s DNA was not obtained by consent, inevitable discovery applies
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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)
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Daily Archives: April 20, 2018
WaPo: Opinion: ‘The Watch’ blog: Lunch links: Louisiana attorney general approves of arresting people who threaten to file police complaints
WaPo: Opinion: ‘The Watch’ blog: Lunch links: Louisiana attorney general approves of arresting people who threaten to file police complaints by Radley Balko:
NJ: DV seizure order and SW issued; dismissal of DV matter doesn’t affect independent SW
Family court DV search warrant was adequate and helped support an additional search warrant by the criminal court. There was probable cause. The ultimate dismissal of the DV petition had no legal effect on the validity of the search warrant. … Continue reading
DE: “The scope of the warrant so far outruns that probable cause finding—and is so lacking in particularity relative to that probable cause finding—that it qualifies as plain error.”
A rare outcome: “The scope of the warrant so far outruns that probable cause finding—and is so lacking in particularity relative to that probable cause finding—that it qualifies as plain error.” Buckham v. State, 2018 Del. LEXIS 166 (Apr. 18, … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: The fact FL law provides a reasonable expectation of privacy in bank records has nothing to do with an IRS summons
The fact Florida law provides a reasonable expectation of privacy in bank records has nothing to do with an IRS summons for bank records. Presley & Presley P.A. v. United States, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65421 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 16, … Continue reading
Wired: Why Police Should Monitor Social Media to Prevent Crime
Wired: Why Police Should Monitor Social Media to Prevent Crime by Christopher Raleigh Bousquet (opinion):
CA11: Financial fraud SW permits search of def’s wallet on his person
In a search warrant for financial fraud of defendant’s house, finding defendant there allowed a search of his wallet under the warrant. United States v. Shabazz, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 9774 (11th Cir. Apr. 18, 2018):
CA11: While time wasn’t clearly stated, it was inferred on the totality; therefore, not stale
While the affidavit for the search warrant didn’t clearly specify a time frame, it was inferred, and it was clearly reasonable to conclude on the totality that the defendant would still have the sought after images on his computer. United … Continue reading
CA4: Even if Posse Comitatus Act was violated in investigation, there is no judicial remedy
Defendant argued “the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) violated the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA), 18 U.S.C. § 1385 (2012), by participating in the criminal investigation.” The motion wasn’t timely, and, on the merits, there is no remedy for violation. United … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: “The vast majority of current Fourth Amendment doctrine unfounded, incoherent, and dangerous.”
Gray David, The Fourth Amendment Categorical Imperative, 116 Mich. L. Rev. Online 14 (2017): The vast majority of current Fourth Amendment doctrine unfounded, incoherent, and dangerous.