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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)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (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: October 2020
DE: Lack of police experience in finding touch DNA on firearms precludes finding PC here
For probable cause to seek DNA from defendant to link him to clothing worn in a crime, the police don’t need DNA to start. The officer’s experience here that DNA has been found in the past with clothing is not … Continue reading
N.D.Ill.: “Whether the driver actually committed the violation is beside the point.” It’s whether it’s based on a reasonable belief
The dashcam video of defendant’s alleged failure to come to a full stop doesn’t contradict the officer’s testimony that defendant didn’t stop. “Whether the driver actually committed the violation is beside the point.” United States v. Sanders, 2020 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
OH2: Drugs represented to be heroin in a controlled buy don’t have to be field tested to show PC
Failure to field test the purported drugs bought during a controlled buy doesn’t undermine the probable cause alleged in the search warrant. “Here, the fact that Glynn represented to the CS that the substance being purchased was heroin warranted suspicion … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Officers’ good faith belief def was a wanted person justified stop and frisk
The officers’ reasonable good faith believe defendant was another wanted person justified his stop and frisk. United States v. Galindo, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182866 (D. Nev. Aug. 25, 2020):
D.Kan.: Surreptitiously video recording a VA doctor’s exam does not violate 4A
The VA video recorded a physical exam of defendant as a part of a fraud investigation into obtaining VA benefits. Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy against recording because the examiner could have reported everything in detail anyway. United … Continue reading
CA6: Must ID the police tortfeasor under § 1983 or all avoid liability
Where one of three police officers struck a gratuitous blow that caused a brain injury and plaintiff couldn’t tell which one did it, they all avoid liability under § 1983. Pineda v. Hamilton County, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 31404 (6th … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: “probable cause does not require the best conceivable evidence”
“In defendant’s case, he was arrested for a violation of § 4.23(a)(1), permitting a BAC test as a search incident to arrest under Birchfield. Although there is a distinction between the concentration of alcohol in the blood and the degree … Continue reading
S.D.Miss.: Two gas station employees reporting suspicious car were treated as citizen informants
Reports from two gas station employees known by name and to have been robbed in the past were from citizen informants. They warned against a suspicious car. United States v. Cooper, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182012 (S.D. Miss. Oct. 1, … Continue reading
OH1: Smell of burnt MJ with nothing more doesn’t justify search of trunk
Smell of burning marijuana with no accouterments of drug usage or delivery didn’t justify a search of the trunk. There was no smell of raw marijuana. State v. Ulmer, 2020-Ohio-4689, 2020 Ohio App. LEXIS 3582 (1st Dist. Sept. 30, 2020):
N.D.Ohio: Def’s version more credible than the police version, and motion to suppress is granted
The court sides with the defense on the credibility of the witnesses that defendant’s gun wasn’t in plain view after all, and it grants the motion to suppress. Even though he has an extensive criminal history, which the government seeks … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Finding a gun during an automobile exception search doesn’t mean the search should end
Having found a gun during an automobile exception search, the officers weren’t obliged to stop the search. United States v. Green, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180561 (W.D. N.Y. Sept. 30, 2020). A CI’s information was reasonable suspicion for a probation … Continue reading
CA11: A move-on order isn’t usually a 4A violation
In terminating a consent decree involving how the City of Miami deals with homeless people, the Eleventh Circuit notes that a move-on order isn’t usually a Fourth Amendment violation. Peery v. City of Miami, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 31175 (11th … Continue reading
DC: PC to arrest isn’t necessarily PC to search; Terry stop evolved into PC
Probable cause to arrest is not necessarily probable cause to search. Defendant’s initial detention under Terry was justified and evolved into probable cause. “Mr. Ellison also argues that his pre-arrest detention was longer than permitted under Terry’s rationale permitting brief … Continue reading
The Appeal: With Little Evidence, Pennsylvania State Police Seized $600,000 From Drivers
The Appeal: With Little Evidence, Pennsylvania State Police Seized $600,000 From Drivers (“An investigation by The Appeal and Spotlight PA found that troopers in three counties have taken big money from drivers, many of whom were never charged.”)