Archives
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Recent Posts
- N.D.Tex.: AUSA can summarize what the gov’t knows for SW application
- S.D.N.Y.: No right to quash SCA warrant before execution; remedies are after
- S.D.N.Y.: SW not based on mere speculation
- D.Mont.: Officers had RS for stop; it wasn’t based on the race of the suspects
- M.D.Pa.: SW for phone 19 months after alleged crimes showed PC
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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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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)
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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: July 2020
E.D.Ky.: SW can compel persons present at time of seizure of cellphone to provide biometrics to unlock it on mere RS; PC not required
“Modern day biometric authentication features for electronic devices allow once trivial gestures, such as a momentary stare or touch, to be the barrier between the outside world and an individual’s most intimate, private details. The United States has applied for … Continue reading
AK: Misspelling of target name in a warrant to record a conversation didn’t void the warrant when right person was recorded
Officers obtained a warrant under state law to record a future conversation with defendant about his alleged sexual assault of a passed out woman, but they didn’t have the spelling right (Darren, not Darin) and a wrong middle initial. There … Continue reading
OR: Disclaiming ownership of purse brought to police station police wanted to search wasn’t abandonment
Where defendant was told to bring her purse and later disclaimed ownership when the officer wanted to search it, she did not abandon it to the degree she lost ownership or a reasonable expectation of privacy in it. It wasn’t … Continue reading
D.Del.: Mere denials of the facts doesn’t make a Franks claim
Just saying in a motion to suppress the defendant “‘denies telling law enforcement that additional drugs could be found within his apartment’ and ‘disputes the accuracy’ of the statement that officers detected the odor of burnt marijuana in the apartment” … Continue reading
CA6: Filing a case report with the DA doesn’t make a malicious prosecution action
“Cases after Skousen have continued to apply its holding that filing a case report, taken alone, is insufficient to support a malicious-prosecution claim. See Miller v. Davis, 653 F. App’x 448, 455-56 (6th Cir. 2016) (holding that a detective’s report … Continue reading
TX: Perjured police testimony in drug raid leads to finding of actual innocence
Petitioner showed actual innocence to get his drug conviction set aside. The Houston officer involved was shown to be a perjurer in drug case search warrant requests and trial testimony. That led to two deaths during a botched no-knock drug … Continue reading
MD & NY2: Court ordered GPS tracking satisfied warrant requirement
Court ordered GPS tracking of a vehicle for up to 30 days under state statute satisfied the warrant requirement for its showing of probable cause before a neutral and detached magistrate. Whittington v. State, 2020 Md. App. LEXIS 621 (July … Continue reading
CA5: Reasonable mistaken identification made stop reasonable
“In any event, even if it is assumed arguendo that an attempted seizure could in fact trigger the Fourth Amendment, Ferguson has failed to show that the attempt to detain him for an investigatory Terry stop was not supported by … Continue reading
WaPo: California begins enforcing digital privacy law, despite calls for delay
WaPo: California begins enforcing digital privacy law, despite calls for delay by Rachel Lerman (“California’s privacy law, often called the broadest law for digital privacy in the United States, can finally be enforced starting Wednesday. And despite industry calls for … Continue reading
NY Times: How Infrared Images Could Be Part of Your Daily Life
NY Times: How Infrared Images Could Be Part of Your Daily Life by Jonah M. Kessel (“In a post-quarantine world, heat sensors could help spot sick people with elevated temperatures as they enter public places. But it’s not that simple.”)
CA5: Bitcoin transactions are like third-party bank records with no REP
Bitcoin transactions are akin to third-party bank records and are not governed by Carpenter. There is no added reasonable expectation of privacy in them. United States v. Gratkowski, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 20501 (5th Cir. June 30, 2020). The vehicle … Continue reading
WA: Private party returning property to def’s house per request was private searcher
The observations of a private person returning something to defendant’s dwelling for him were a private search. The police had nothing to do with it. State v. Lake, 2020 Wash. App. LEXIS 1925 (June 30, 2020).* Reasonable jurists would not … Continue reading
CA6: When target of an IRS summons is named, it’s not a “John Doe summons”
“There is no shortage of reasons to reject Byers’s argument. But her argument, we acknowledge, has intuitive appeal—‘Shouldn’t the government have to give a reason why it wants my information?’—and merits this fulsome response. In all, Byers has raised a … Continue reading
CA7: On the totality, RS was thin, up until def fled
“If these were all the facts, establishing reasonable suspicion might have been a close call for the officers. But Wilson’s unprovoked, headlong flight from police in a high-crime area put any lingering doubt to rest. Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. … Continue reading
OH9: State argued RS but didn’t come forward with proof of it
The state argued there were factors supporting reasonable suspicion, but they didn’t come forward with it. Order granting motion to suppress affirmed. State v. Thomas, 2020-Ohio-3539, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 2453 (9th Dist. June 30, 2020). The search warrant was … Continue reading