waller
Archives
-
Recent Posts
- M.D.Pa.: CSAM PC allegations never go stale
- CA10: Protective sweep of car was valid despite presence of six officers; def would get back in car
- Kavanaugh Stops #4
- Reason: DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm U.S. Citizenship
- DE: Failure to file a pretrial motion to suppress is waiver with no plain error review
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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) -
“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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew -
"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 2025
CA11: Corporate Transparency Act reporting requirements don’t violate 4A
The reporting requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act don’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Nat’l Small Bus. United v. United States Dep’t of the Treasury, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 32844 (11th Cir. Dec. 16, 2025):
E.D.Pa.: Cell phone can’t be seized on RS and exigency then wait four days to get a SW
“The question before this Court today is whether a police officer who conducts a Terry stop can seize the smartphone of a suspect without a warrant and hold it for four days before obtaining a warrant, where the suggested exigency … Continue reading
NPR: Live cameras are tracking faces in New Orleans. Who should control them?
NPR: Live cameras are tracking faces in New Orleans. Who should control them? by Martin Kaste (“New Orleans, home of Bourbon Street revelry, has become the first American city known to have a live facial recognition network. How that came … Continue reading
CA2: Merely having knowledge of prison strip searches doesn’t make that prison official potentially liable
Merely having knowledge of prison strip searches doesn’t make that prison official potentially liable. Baltas v. Jones, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 32676 (2d Cir. Dec. 15, 2025)*:
CNS: North Carolina man asks Fourth Circuit to nix child porn flagged by Google algorithm
CNS: North Carolina man asks Fourth Circuit to nix child porn flagged by Google algorithm by Steve Garrison (“A North Carolina man convicted of possessing child pornography asked the Fourth Circuit on Friday to toss out evidence that Google automatically … Continue reading
Today is Bill of Rights Day
The Fourth Amendment and nine others were adopted December 15, 1791, two years after the Constitution.
W.D.La.: Can’t be ineffective for not arguing state constitution in federal criminal case
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not arguing the state constitution in a federal criminal case. United States v. Powell, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 256220 (W.D. La. Dec. 10, 2025). “Here, the affidavit detailed the information on which the officer relied, … Continue reading
CA4: Short interaction in high crime area in daytime wasn’t RS
A short interaction in a high crime area in daytime wasn’t reasonable suspicion, even when the passenger and driver didn’t have the same story. United States v. Hawkins, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 32455 (4th Cir. Dec. 11, 2025):
M.D.Fla.: Suspicious activity reports (SARs) don’t violate the 4A under the third party doctrine
Suspicious activity reports (SARs) don’t violate the Fourth Amendment under the third party doctrine. Fid. Nat’l Fin., Inc. v. Bessent, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 255738 (M.D. Fla. Dec. 9, 2025):
W.D.Ky.: A ruse arrest is legal in CA6
Police using a ruse to arrest defendant is legal in the Sixth Circuit. (Not necessarily in the Ninth, but we’re in the Sixth.) It also doesn’t “shock the conscious [sic, quoting a pleading].” United States v. Carmona, 2025 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
TX5: Objection to “call detail records” is not a CSLI objection
A boilerplate motion to suppress cell phone records that wasn’t specific was followed up at trial with an objection to “call detail records” was not an objection to CSLI. Griffin v. State, 2025 Tex. App. LEXIS 9566 (Tex. App. – … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Electronic evidence seized in one investigation of Comey cannot be searched years later for evidence in another; return ordered under Rule 41(g)
When the government retained electronic evidence obtained from a lawyer under a warrant, concluded the investigation, and then, years later, searched the information again in a different investigation, the remedy here was order of immediate return to the lawyer and … Continue reading
W.D.Wash.: PC was shown for cell phone data for particular number and any number switched to, if provider knows it
Probable cause was shown for phone records for both the number sought and any number the provider knew that the owner had changed to, even without identifying it. And, good faith applied: “Therefore, even if the continuity provision within the … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Putting iPhone in airplane mode was reasonable, even if it was a search
Even if the officer putting defendant’s cell phone in airplane mode to protect the contents was a search, it was reasonable. Also, it yielded no evidence to suppress. United States v. Schroeder, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 256464 (E.D. Wis. Dec. … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Unauthorized practice of medicine search warrant justified 6 years of records
A claim of unauthorized practice of medicine authorized a warrant for six years worth of medical files. The good faith exception also applies. United States v. Luzod, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 256878 (M.D. Fla. Oct. 30, 2025). As to a … Continue reading
CA3: Going into a well-known drug house for 2 minutes was RS for stop
Defendant was frequenting a well-known drug house. He went in for less than two minutes and came out. The stop was with reasonable suspicion. The patdown revealed a wad of cash by plain feel. United States v. Thomas, 2025 U.S. … Continue reading
Reason: CBP Agents Held This U.S. Citizen for Hours Until He Agreed To Let Them Search His Electronic Devices
Reason: CBP Agents Held This U.S. Citizen for Hours Until He Agreed To Let Them Search His Electronic Devices by Jacob Sullum (“A federal lawsuit argues that the agency’s policy of perusing travelers’ personal data without a warrant or probable … Continue reading