Archives
-
Recent Posts
- 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
- D.Utah: Minor time detours to writing up a traffic ticket didn’t unreasonable extend this stop; the dog was quickly on its way
- KY: Despite lack of nexus, SW sustained under GFE
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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)
ACLU on privacy
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
Section 1983 Blog -
"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, 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: June 2018
MotherJones: A Private Prison Company Gave 1,300 Recordings of Confidential Inmate Phone Calls to Prosecutors
MotherJones: A Private Prison Company Gave 1,300 Recordings of Confidential Inmate Phone Calls to Prosecutors by Tonya Riley: Kansas’ US Attorney’s Office has admitted listening to opposing lawyers’ conversations. Securus, the company responsible for recording the calls, has already faced … Continue reading
CA9: Shaving a spot on cattle to look at a brand doesn’t violate 4A
Shaving a spot on cattle to look at a brand doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. [Actually, nowhere does anything say that so qualified immunity must apply. The case doesn’t say that, but that’s the bottom line.] Gillette v. Malheur County, … Continue reading
D.S.C.: Cut and paste “clerical error” on address of place to be searched was overcome by GFE
Officers sought a search warrant for defendant’s house at 2681 Houston Street. The search warrant itself, obviously called up on a computer from another case, had 3438 Navajo Street, and nobody noticed the difference, including the judge who reviewed the … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Gant didn’t bar a plain view of the interior of def’s car when he was handcuffed on ground
Defendant was arrested for drug dealing, and he was handcuffed on the ground near the car. The search of the car here was based on seeing a gun in the car in plain view, so Gant doesn’t bar the search. … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Denial of one SW application is not res judicata to another different one
88 days wasn’t stale in a child pornography case. You can’t legally or factually compare marijuana possession to possession of child pornography. Denial of one search warrant application is not res judicata to another. [Usually, the second application is different … Continue reading
EFF: Does the Government Really Need this Much Power to Deal with an Attack of the Drones?
EFF: Does the Government Really Need this Much Power to Deal with an Attack of the Drones? by India McKinney and Andrew Crocker
The Atlantic: Drone Cops Take Flight in Los Angeles
The Atlantic: Drone Cops Take Flight in Los Angeles by Geoff Manaugh: The L.A. County Sheriff has deployed a quadcopter drone for rescue and reconnaissance. But will the public accept that these aerial officers come in peace?
Baylor Med School: [Medical] Ethicists examine law enforcement’s use of genetic databases
Baylor Med School: Ethicists examine law enforcement’s use of genetic databases by Allison Mickey:
NJ: Officer’s purpose in momentarily putting head in window of car was to hear def over road noise was not search; plain smell sustained
The officer momentarily put his head in the window of defendant’s car to better hear him, and then he smelled marijuana. The purpose of the intrusion was benign and not to conduct a search, and it was not unreasonable. State … Continue reading
MA: Removing paint chips off a car under the automobile exception was reasonable
There was probable cause that defendant’s car was involved in a shooting such that its stop and search was reasonable under the automobile exception. That included removing paint chips from it when it had been removed to the police station. … Continue reading
D.D.C.: HR employee of DC crime lab couldn’t be subjected to random drug testing
The District of Columbia’s policy to randomly drug test virtually everybody working at the crime lab could not constitutionally apply to plaintiff, a human resources specialist there. She was fired for refusing a drug test, and received $802,000 at a … Continue reading
The order in the Philadelphia sanctuary city case
The Philadelphia sanctuary city case: City of Philadelphia v. Sessions, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94709 (E.D. Pa. June 6, 2018).
CA7: “This is a hornbook example of how to waive an argument on appeal.”
“This is a hornbook example of how to waive an argument on appeal.” The search issue presented on appeal was never presented to the trial court. “[P]arties cannot conjure up brand new legal theories on appeal like this. Failing to … Continue reading
Cal.1: Electronic search condition on juvenile was unreasonable for possession of a knife and rolling papers at school
The electronic search condition on this juvenile for having a knife, rolling papers, and a lighter in school after a school search was unreasonable. The state says its need to prevent him from procuring more marijuana, but the court disagrees. … Continue reading
NC: 20 month old information wasn’t stale in a counterfeit goods case
The affidavit for search warrant in this counterfeit goods case at defendant’s house had information 20 months old. But, the keeping of the counterfeit goods was an ongoing operation being sold around the area, and the search warrant wasn’t stale. … Continue reading
NC: “Thursday” in a SW affidavit means the previous Thursday, and the search warrant wasn’t stale when issued
This case started with an anonymous letter about alleged drug sales at defendant’s residence. A trash pull was conducted on “Thursday.” Read in context, that means the previous Thursday, and the search warrant wasn’t stale when issued. State v. Teague, … Continue reading
NC: Seeing a “pipe” in a house in affidavit for SW doesn’t tell whether it was drug paraphernalia; no PC
The affidavit for the search warrant in this case mentioned that a pipe was seen in defendant’s house. The court of appeals finds that the affidavit doesn’t tell enough to determine whether it was a pipe for use for ingesting … Continue reading
IL: PC existed ten days after a crime to seek the weapon involved in the crime
There was probable cause for a search warrant for defendant’s house for a firearm involved in a crime ten days after the crime. Firearms are possessions usually kept. People v. Rodriguez, 2018 IL App (1st) 141379-B, 2018 Ill. App. LEXIS … Continue reading