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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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Congressional Research Service:
--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: August 10, 2019
S.D.Fla.: Search incident and community caretaking exceptions can’t support govt’s search of def’s messenger bag days later
The government’s search incident theory to sustain a search of defendant’s messenger bag days after his arrest is rejected. “The fundamental purpose of the search incident to arrest exception is to ensure safety and safeguard evidence. Neither of these concerns … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Information from a Sept. ’17 SW made it into Oct. ’18 SW affidavit and it wasn’t stale becuase of ongoing nature
Defendant’s property had been searched in September 2017. Information from that made it to a search warrant issued in October 2018, and it wasn’t stale because of the ongoing nature of the facts. United States v. Harmon, 2019 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Including 3 yo info in computer hacking SW application didn’t make it stale; it was ongoing
Defendant was suspected for years of distributing malware on his computer. The government included in the search warrant application information that was three years old. Because it was an ongoing international enterprise, the information in the search warrant wasn’t stale. … Continue reading
CA11: 4A IAC claim fails on merits of search issue
Petitioner’s IAC claim against defense counsel for not pursuing a Fourth Amendment claim was properly denied for lack of standing on the merits. Virgil v. Sec’y, Dept. of Corrections, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 23777 (11th Cir. Aug. 8, 2019).* Defendant’s … Continue reading
MD: Def’s alleged furtive movement while sitting in car wasn’t significant enough to show he was concealing a gun
Defendant’s “furtive movement” in the car while talking to the police officer outside the car wasn’t significant enough in the testimony to show that he was secreting something or moving around a weapon. There thus was no objective basis for … Continue reading
CA9: Standing shown to sue Facebook under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act
Plaintiffs stated Art. III standing to bring a class action against Facebook for violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Patel v. Facebook, Inc., 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 23673 (9th Cir. Aug. 8, 2019).* Summary by the court:
CA11: No REP in last four digits of SSN voluntarily disclosed to agency
“The district court did not err in dismissing Hollis’s right to privacy claims. Because Hollis voluntarily provided Defendants with the last four digits of his SSN, he abandoned a reasonable expectation of privacy in those digits. Miller, 425 U.S. at … Continue reading
WA: Pre-Carpenter subpoena for CSLI fails with no PC showing
Defendant’s CSLI records were obtained by subpoena without a search warrant pre-Carpenter, and the record was preserved. The Fourth Amendment and the state constitution were violated. The state just can’t use a subpoena for something this intrusive that tracks one’s … Continue reading
IN: Failure to prove dept’l inventory policy fatal to inventory search; officer calling search one thing but DA not arguing it is waiver
The state didn’t support the departmental inventory policy at trial, and that was error. Also, what the officer calls a search (here “search incident”) the prosecutor didn’t, and that argument was waived for appeal. Smith v. State, 2019 Ind. App. … Continue reading