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- 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
- CO: DNA could be seized from trash
- CA8: Nebraska statute allowing SWs to cross state lines doesn’t violate 4A
- WA: Sweat patch as condition of release violated state constitution’s privacy provision
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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)
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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: December 2019
VICE: Inside Ring’s Quest to Become Law Enforcement’s Best Friend
VICE: Inside Ring’s Quest to Become Law Enforcement’s Best Friend by Caroline Haskins (“Amazon’s surveillance company has seeped into hundreds of American communities by throwing parties for police and giving them free devices.”)
WaPo: DHS withdraws proposal to require airport facial scans for U.S. citizens
WaPo: DHS withdraws proposal to require airport facial scans for U.S. citizens by Lori Aratani (“Homeland security officials said Thursday they were dropping a proposal that would have required citizens to have their faces scanned when entering or leaving the … Continue reading
WSJ: A Billion Surveillance Cameras Forecast to Be Watching Within Two Years
WSJ: A Billion Surveillance Cameras Forecast to Be Watching Within Two Years by Liza Lin and Newley Purnell (“Global numbers to grow almost 30% as higher image quality allows better facial recognition. … As governments and companies invest more in … Continue reading
IL: State’s delay in getting blood draw showed no exigency for dispensing with warrant
State’s own delays in attempting to get a blood draw showed lack of exigency for it. People v. Eubanks, 2019 IL 123525, 2019 Ill. LEXIS 1235 (Dec. 5, 2019):
NY1: Execution of SW on cell phone in police custody in 30 days not unreasonable
Defendant’s cell phones were already in the possession of the police, and the search warrant was deemed by its own language as executed on issuance. The actual search, however, took 30 days, and that wasn’t unreasonable. People v. Ruffin, 2019 … Continue reading
Two on excessive force and QI
“We conclude that Detective Minium is entitled to qualified immunity. It was not clearly established in August 2014 that an officer uses excessive force when he tackles and uses a taser in “drive stun” mode on an individual he is … Continue reading
The Federalist: The Feds Don’t Need To Tell You Or Get A Warrant To Collect Your Emails And Phone Records
The Federalist: The Feds Don’t Need To Tell You Or Get A Warrant To Collect Your Emails And Phone Records by Leslie McAdoo Gordon.
Philadelphia Inquirer: It should be unconstitutional when police officers kill fleeing felony suspects, Philly DA’s office says
Philadelphia Inquirer: It should be unconstitutional when police officers kill fleeing felony suspects, Philly DA’s office says by Chris Palmer:
ID: Unlawful warrantless search isn’t salvageable by inevitable discovery by later learning of probation search waiver
A unreasonable warrantless search is not cured by inevitable discovery because the officers later find out defendant was on probation and had a search waiver on file. State v. Maxim, 2019 Ida. LEXIS 216 (Dec. 4, 2019):
OH7: Officer’s stop of def outside of jurisdiction wasn’t unlawful because local officers were ultimately there, too
Defendant was stopped outside the officer’s jurisdiction. The officer had probable cause to stop and detain defendant when he personally observed defendant’s traffic violation and personally observed defendant’s slurred speech and sluggish motor skills. The interest in protecting the public … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Private security guards conducting search for weapon and turning over to police was private search
Two private security guards searched defendant, allegedly without probable cause, and seized a gun off of him which they turned over to the police. This was purely a private search not implicating the Fourth Amendment. The court also declines to … Continue reading
CA4: Search of def’s backpack and finding gun was inevitable because it would have been inventoried in any event
“The evidence presented to the district court supported a finding that the firearm inevitably would have been discovered during an inventory search of the plastic bag. Officers Lucy and DiPentima testified that it was standard procedure to inventory an arrestee’s … Continue reading
The Hour: ‘Stop-and-frisk’ can work, under careful supervision
The Hour: ‘Stop-and-frisk’ can work, under careful supervision by Henry F. Fradella:
D.Mont.: Using Western Union for money transfer creates no REP in WU’s records
Western Union’s production of money transfer records was a classic third-party record situation where there was no reasonable expectation of privacy. United States v. Escobedo, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 208067 (D. Mont. Dec. 2, 2019). Defendant’s inconsistent story about whether … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: False positives by drug dog don’t necessarily undermine PC for SW; GFE can still apply
The fact a drug dog has alleged false positives (i.e., hits on things but no drugs found) does not mean that a dog alert that led to a search warrant still cannot be relied upon in good faith. United States … Continue reading
JDSupra (press release): DOJ Announces New Drone Policy
JDSupra (press release): DOJ Announces New Drone Policy by Kelly Daly
E.D.N.C.: Defendant doesn’t get additional discovery in his quest to get a Franks hearing
Defendant doesn’t get additional discovery in his quest to get a Franks hearing. He has the burden of going forward and of proof. And, even if what he says is true, the probable cause isn’t sufficiently undermined. United States v. … Continue reading
OH5: Officer doesn’t need to be able to quote a statute in court to issue a ticket for violation of it
Even if the officer had an ulterior motive for defendant’s stop, it was based on probable cause of a traffic offense. The fact the officer couldn’t quote the statute in court doesn’t show that the stop was unreasonable or without … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Criminal history and gang affiliation alone isn’t RS
Defendants were riding in the back of a pickup truck after getting a ride from an acquaintance. The officer stopped the truck and extended the stop about 90 minutes without any reasonable suspicion at all. Their criminal histories and alleged … Continue reading
WA: Arrestee’s right to advice of right to counsel doesn’t require stopping execution of SW to tell him
While an arrestee is entitled to a prompt notice of his right to counsel, police do not have to interrupt execution of a search warrant to do it. State v. Ackerman, 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 3023 (Dec. 2, 2019). Officers … Continue reading