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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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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: September 2020
MA: SnapChat video of def with a firearm two days before SW was PC
A SnapChat video of defendant with a gun two days earlier was probable cause for a search warrant. Commonwealth v. Watkins, 2020 Mass. App. LEXIS 139 (Sept. 16, 2020). “Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint asserts a Fourth Amendment claim for unreasonable search … Continue reading
Argus Leader: Federal judge awards thousands to those forcibly catheterized for urine samples
Argus Leader: Federal judge awards thousands to those forcibly catheterized for urine samples by Danielle Ferguson (“A federal judge has approved a settlement to individuals who were unconstitutionally made to provide urine samples for suspected drug use through forced catheterizations. … Continue reading
TX9: Officer didn’t smell MJ in car until he unreasonably opened car door; suppression affirmed
“Deferring to the trial court’s findings of fact and viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling, as we must, the trial court could have reasonably concluded from the evidence at the suppression hearing that … Continue reading
TX4: Illegal stop claim was waived for failure to present to trial court
Defendant’s illegal stop claim for having an open container in San Antonio wasn’t presented in the trial court so it’s waived. Sowers v. State, 2020 Tex. App. LEXIS 7473 (Tex. App. – San Antonio Sept. 16, 2020).* “This Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
MT: Jail entry strip searches without RS of even traffic warrant arrestees were reasonable
Strip searches of inmates coming into the county jail without reasonable suspicion the detainee had contraband or weapons were valid under Florence and under the state constitution. “Plaintiffs have not demonstrated the strip searches at issue are not reasonably related … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Health care admin subpoenas to indicted def unenforceable
“In light of the above, the Court agrees with Defendants that post-indictment, heath care administrative subpoenas that seek information that may be relevant to pending charges may not be directed towards a criminal defendant. As discussed above, Phibbs does not … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Scrivener’s error as to property to be seized was cured in context
A scrivener’s error as to alleged vagueness in the property to be searched and seized was cured in context of the documents. United States v. Carter, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 168543 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 15, 2020). Defendant’s blocking the street … Continue reading
PA: Def who encountered police officer in apt building parking lot as police cars entered with lights and sirens would not feel free to leave
“In viewing the totality of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person, innocent of any crime, would not believe that he or she was free to leave. The initial encounter between Officer Smith and Appellant commenced when Officer Smith … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: VA drug tests for medical purposes were valid under the 4A special needs exception
Plaintiff challenged UA drug tests administered by the VA because the doctors there were trying to wean him off opiates. Those tests were reasonable under the special needs exception and for medical purposes. Gorney v. Veterans Administration, 2020 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
CA2: Being in a high-crime area doesn’t add to RS; stop here lacked RS
Reasonable suspicion was lacking. Being in a high-crime area doesn’t add much of anything. United States v. Weaver, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 29187 (2d Cir. Sept. 15, 2020)*:
CA5: § 1983 4A claim that evidence was inadmissible at trial was Heck barred, and then waived on appeal
Plaintiff’s § 1983 Fourth Amendment claim was framed as a claim the evidence was inadmissible at trial. Thus it was barred. His appeal was over denial of IFP status, which was also denied, and he waived the Fourth Amendment claim … Continue reading
Law360: Discarded Phone Rulings Misapply 4th Amendment Case Law
Law360: Discarded Phone Rulings Misapply 4th Amendment Case Law
Slate: It’s Time for a Reckoning About This Foundational Piece of Police Technology
Slate: It’s Time for a Reckoning About This Foundational Piece of Police Technology by Rashida Richardson and Amba Kak (“Criminal intelligence databases may seem unobjectionable in an era of facial recognition and predictive policing. But they are deeply flawed, too.”)
N.D.N.Y.: Removal of shoes not a strip search
School administrator’s direction to a student to remove shoes was not a strip search. I.S. v. Binghamton City Sch. Dist., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167370 (N.D. N.Y. Sept. 14, 2020). 2254 petitioner litigated and lost his illegal arrest claim in … Continue reading
EFF: Things to Know Before Your Neighborhood Installs an Automated License Plate Reader
EFF: Things to Know Before Your Neighborhood Installs an Automated License Plate Reader by Jason Kelley and Matthew Guariglia (“Every week EFF receives emails from members of homeowner’s associations wondering if their Homeowner’s Association (HOA) or Neighborhood Association is making … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Civilly committed sexually violent predator was effectively in prison for his 4A claim against room search
“Spaulding is civilly committed to the Florida Civil Commitment Center (‘FCCC’) under the Sexual Violent Predators Act” and his Xbox and blu-ray player were seized because having them wasn’t appropriate for his custody level. His due process and Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
OH3: Contents of bookbag shown by baggies of drugs hanging out of it
Based on the officer’s observation of baggies of drugs hanging out of a bookbag, the contents were readily apparent. State v. Burroughs, 2020-Ohio-4417, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 3301 (3d Dist. Sept. 14, 2020). Defendant’s objection to the R&R had a … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Warrantless entry onto def’s curtilage was reasonable
The warrantless entry onto defendant’s curtilage was reasonable. United States v. Luna, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166819 (D. N.M. Sept. 10, 2020):
D.N.M.: Def can seek to preclude admissions in forfeiture case from criminal case
Defendant in a criminal case will get the benefit of a motion in limine to prevent alleged admissions under the Fifth Amendment in his forfeiture case from being used against him. United States v. Mendoza, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166898 … Continue reading
Cato Institute: Qualified Immunity: A Legal, Practical, and Moral Failure
Cato Institute: Qualified Immunity: A Legal, Practical, and Moral Failure by Jay Schweikert (“Qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine that protects public officials from liability, even when they break the law. The doctrine has no valid legal basis, it regularly … Continue reading