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Recent Posts
- CA2: Failure to read a SW isn’t a 4A violation without overseizure
- NY3: Cannabis stores are closely regulated business
- D.Haw.: It wasn’t objectively reasonable that def’s bag had been abandoned
- D.R.I.: Defense attorney’s affidavit for Franks motion was insufficient for lack of personal knowledge
- Philadelphia Inquirer: Two Philadelphia police officers stopped hundreds of Black men on the street. Lawyers say the stops were illegal and racially biased.
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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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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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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. 
Author Archives: Hall
CA: Avoiding the police in a high crime area isn’t RS
Defendant’s avoiding the police and not wanting to interact with them did not rise to reasonable suspicion, even in a high crime area. The officers before the trial court didn’t articulate enough to show there was reasonable suspicion here. People … Continue reading
CA7: Jail officials holding plaintiff under a valid court order aren’t liable for not releasing him sooner after a sentencing error
Jail officials holding plaintiff under a valid court order aren’t liable for not releasing him sooner after a sentencing error. Sabo v. Erickson, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 10503 (7th Cir. Apr. 30, 2024). “The record further reflects that when Officer … Continue reading
Volokh: Do Fourth Amendment Protections Change When Property Is Moved?
Volokh: Do Fourth Amendment Protections Change When Property Is Moved? by Orin Kerr:
M.D.Pa.: Def was neither shipper nor recipient of USPS parcel, so he had no standing in it
Defendant was neither the shipper nor recipient of a USPS parcel with drugs in it, opened six weeks after it was unclaimed. He had no standing in it. United States v. Bell, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78182 (M.D. Pa. Apr. … Continue reading
WI: Obtaining def’s DNA by ruse wasn’t an illegal search
The state got defendant to lick an envelope and hand it over as part of a ruse. His DNA matched to a cold case. That was not an unreasonable search. State v. Vannieuwenhoven, 2024 Wisc. App. LEXIS 349 (Apr. 30, … Continue reading
WaPo: Apple, Google and Venmo fight new U.S. plan to monitor payment apps
WaPo: Apple, Google and Venmo fight new U.S. plan to monitor payment apps by Tony Romm (“The U.S. government is weighing whether to treat Apple, Google and PayPal-owned Venmo more like banks — and regularly inspect some of their operations … Continue reading
CA4: Tracking order using cell site simulator with PC was reasonable
The use of a cell site simulator to track defendant’s phone was conducted by a tracking order issued under state law with probable cause. Tracking him led the police to his place, and then a search warrant issued for the … Continue reading
CADC: When searching a cell phone and officers find it belonged to someone else, a new SW isn’t required; SWs are directed at things, places, and people and owner doesn’t matter for PC
Officers seized a cell phone from Thorne, a suspected narcotics and firearms trafficker. In a search under a warrant, the officers found out the phone actually belonged to defendant. Warrants are directed at things, and that didn’t require them to … Continue reading
Seattle Times: US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources
Seattle Times: US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources say by Lindsay Whitehurst, Joshua Goodman, Zeke Miller and Jim Mustian. NYT: Justice Dept. Plans to Recommend Easing Restrictions on Marijuana (“The move … Continue reading
E.D.Mo.: PV warrant permitted entry to place where def reasonably suspected to reside
PV warrant permitted entry into suspected residence of violator. “However, the Eighth Circuit has made clear that, provided an administrative warrant is supported by reasonable cause, it carries the same implied limited authority to enter a dwelling to effectuate an … Continue reading
Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas sets higher bar for police seizure after accusations of for-profit policing
Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas sets higher bar for police seizure after accusations of for-profit policing by Jack Harvel (“Kansas reformed civil asset forfeiture — the law enforcement tactic of seizing property suspected of being used in a crime — to be … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: SW for cell phones allowed seizure of others found on premises
In this cell phone search warrant case, the government could seize multiple cell phones found at defendant’s house, old phones and others not named when they were found. Old phones and other phones could also have evidence on them. United … Continue reading
CA6: No QI for shooting a man obviously surrendering
Officers responded to an armed potentially suicidal man they found in his house. When commanded to show his hands he started to get down to the floor when he was shot. “A jury could find these actions would indicate to … Continue reading
DE: Officers approaching men on a stoop at night with a police dog saying “nobody move” was a seizure
Officers approaching men on a stoop at 10 pm with a police dog and saying “nobody move” was a seizure. Here it was with reasonable suspicion based on a CI’s information that was detailed, reliable, and significantly corroborated. State v. … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: To get CSLI, there must be some showing the phone was involved in the crime
Just saying that criminals usually have their cell phones on them is not sufficient for probable cause. Something tying the phone to the crime, however, is enough. Here it was text messages.United States v. Rutledge, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76534 … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Illegal stop that was suppressed not excluded in § 1983 case
“Although the marijuana in Codrington’s car was discovered through an unreasonable search, that is immaterial to the Court’s analysis because the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule does not apply to § 1983 proceedings. As long as the marijuana found in Codrington’s … Continue reading
CO adopts Graham for state excessive force claims
Colorado adopts the Graham v. Connor standard for excessive force under state law. Plaintiff stated enough to overcome a motion to dismiss. Woodall v. Godfrey, 2024 COA 42 (Apr. 25, 2024).* “Scafidi’s ‘seizure’ was not unreasonable, because his arrest was … Continue reading
D.Me.: Alleged statutory violation doesn’t warrant exclusionary rule
In a search of medical records, records were seized in excess of the scope of a prior Patient Records Order for information other than patient drug abuse, but that did not warrant suppression here because the Fourth Amendment was not … Continue reading
WaPo: Dating apps selling users’ sexual preferences
WaPo: Dating apps are collecting more of your information than you think by Chris Velasco (“Research from the Mozilla Foundation says these apps are getting ‘thirstier’ for our data”)