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Recent Posts
- CA3: In seeking arrest warrants, officers need not present all exculpatory evidence to issuing magistrate unless it’s “conclusive”
- D.Idaho: Trial references to SW not barred, but govt limited in what it can say
- D.D.C.: PO’s alleged violation of probation regulations doesn’t warrant suppression if a reasonable mistake
- E.D.N.C.: SW not required to look in def’s jail property bag and retrieve car keys
- D.N.M.: Consent attenuated unreasonable search
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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)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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
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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: January 2025
E.D.Okla.: Search of lawyers and their cars coming into jail did not obstruct access to counsel
Stopping and searching the car and person of defense counsel coming into a USMS jail did not violate defendant’s right to access to counsel. The limitations were all reasonable. United States v. Freeman, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6745 (E.D. Okla. … Continue reading
NY Albany Co.: Unrestrained administrative searches of cannabis stores violates 4A
Petitioners show a likelihood of success on their claim for injunctive relief from unrestrained “administrative inspections,” essentially without boundaries. Super Smoke N Save LLC v. N.Y. State Cannabis Control Bd., 2025 NY Slip Op 25009 (Albany Co. Jan. 13, 2025). … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Overdose call justified frisk
Police encountered defendant because he was experiencing an overdose. A frisk of his pockets for the cause produced a gun. United States v. Wright, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 236845 (D. Minn. Nov. 25, 2024), adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4921 … Continue reading
CA2: Mental health seizure for danger to self or others requires PC and exigency
“[A] ‘warrantless seizure for the purpose of involuntary hospitalization may be made only upon probable cause, that is, only if there are reasonable grounds for believing that the person seized is dangerous to [him]self or to others.” Singh v. City … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: No standing to contest civil investigative demands to third parties over medical records
Defendant had no standing to contest civil investigative demands to third parties, even involving medical records of others. United States v. Hertel & Brown Physical & Aquatic Therapy, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6437 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 13, 2025):
D.Minn.: Photographs could be taken during execution of SW
Photographs could be taken during execution of a search warrant. United States v. Schultz, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 236848 (D. Minn. Dec. 2, 2024), adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4918 (D. Minn. Jan. 10, 2025). In a case involving whether … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Officer seizing notebooks couldn’t authenticate them as exhibits at trial
The seizing officer could not authenticate defendant’s notebooks as evidence at the trial. He had no knowledge about how they came into being. United States v. Sherman, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5696 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 12, 2025). Defendant’s admission at … Continue reading
D.P.R.: State nighttime search rule on state warrant inapplicable in federal court
The fact a state nighttime search warrant doesn’t comply with state law doesn’t matter in federal court. It’s whether Rule 41 and the Fourth Amendment were complied with. Then, the defendant has to show prejudice. Also, the fact defendant had … Continue reading
Reason: DEA ends airport gate searches after years of documented abuses of civil asset forfeiture
Reason: DEA ends airport gate searches after years of documented abuses of civil asset forfeiture by C.J. Ciaramella (“The Justice Department temporarily suspended the program in November because of ‘significant risks’ of constitutional violations.”):
CA8: When there’s PC for a SW, standing doesn’t even have to be decided
In a tax fraud case, there were six search warrants. Defendants challenge them all. Standing was in dispute, but doesn’t even have to be decided because there clearly is probable cause for all six, despite the claim that one piece … Continue reading
ID: DV NCO denies def standing in premises
Issuance of an NCO on defendant denies him standing when he was found in the premises he was ordered from. He has no reasonable expectation of privacy once ordered away. Prior cases in accord are not overruled. State v. Ortiz, … Continue reading
Reason: Nevada Judge to Nevada Cops: You Can’t Use This Loophole To Get Around Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform
Reason: Nevada Judge to Nevada Cops: You Can’t Use This Loophole To Get Around Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform by C.J. Ciaramella (“In the first decision of its kind in Nevada, a judge ruled last week that state law enforcement can’t … Continue reading
WaPo: Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches
WaPo: Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches by Douglas MacMillan, David Ovalle & Aaron Schaffer (“Confident in unproven facial recognition technology, sometimes investigators skip steps; at least eight Americans have been wrongfully arrested.”):
FL5: Dog alert on MJ before case law said it wasn’t PC anymore was in good faith
Newer cases hold that a drug dog can’t differentiate between legal and illegal marijuana, so a dog alert doesn’t provide probable cause. Where the dog sniff occurred before that holding, however, it was reasonable under the good faith exception. Ford … Continue reading
FL3: With a change in statute, mere possession of a firearm in a high crime area wasn’t RS
“While the officer observed Sheppard with a concealed weapon in a high crime area, under the revised statute making non-licensure an element of the crime of concealed carry, Sheppard’s mere possession of the concealed weapon did not constitute criminal activity. … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: Suppression not remedy for knock-and-announce violation
Suppression is not the remedy for a knock-and-announce violation. United States v. Bello, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 236255 (E.D. Tex. Dec. 19, 2024),* adopted, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2332 (E.D. Tex. Jan. 7, 2025).* Defendant had no standing to question … Continue reading
CA7: Concession of PC in USDC bars this claim
“On appeal, Birkley does not contest the district court’s reasons for dismissing the case, including its rationale that Birkley failed to state a claim because he conceded at his preliminary hearing that the police had probable cause for their actions. … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: Warehouse used as a residence required admin. warrant for fire inspection
A fire inspection of a warehouse that was being used as a residence was subject to the administrative warrant requirement. No exception applies. Hannan v. L.A. Cty. Fire Dep’t, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 235999 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 9, 2024). 2254 … Continue reading