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- MO: When officers came with an arrest warrant, def’s admission he had a firearm justified the entry
- PA: Shining flashlight into hole in a shoebox was a search; there was a REP in the closed box
- CA5: Accidentally shooting the man who disarmed the shooter from a residence was not a constitutional violation
- CA9: False evidence to arrest violates due process
- CA6: The SW affidavit here was thin, but it wasn’t completely bare bones, so GFE applies
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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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"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
E.D.N.C.: No REP in tent in homeless encampment that was trespassing on private property
Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his tent in a homeless encampment on someone else’s private property. That’s “wrongful presence.” He also disclaimed the tent, but standing is enough to deny relief. United States v. Tillman, 2026 U.S. … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: SW for gun 11 days after a shooting wasn’t stale
The search warrant for a gun involved in shooting was not stale 11 days after the shooting. Firearms are durable and not consumables. United States v. Williams, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4950 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 12, 2026). The warrant for … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Cell site tower dump governed by Carpenter, but GFE applies here because there’s almost no case anywhere else
A cell site tower dump to see who was there at the time of the crime is governed by Carpenter, but the law is completely unclear and the good faith exception saves it. United States v. McDonald, 2026 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
D.Idaho: Ping information not stale
The ping information warrant here was not stale. United States v. Torres, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4593 (D. Idaho Jan. 9, 2026). [It also seems like it would never get stale. It is information not subject to change; if anything, … Continue reading
AP: What to know about the warrants most immigration agents use to make arrests
AP: What to know about the warrants most immigration agents use to make arrests by Safiyah Riddle and Valerie Gonzalez:
E.D.Okla.: Def’s high speed chase was PC
Defendant’s high speed chase was probable cause. “Defendant’s egregious eluding combined with his throwing an object from his vehicle combine to establish probable cause to search the Defendant’s vehicle under the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.” United … Continue reading
CA6: Random and isolated interference with prisoner mail doesn’t state a claim
Random and isolated interference with prisoner mail doesn’t state a claim for relief. Malicious interference would, but that’s not alleged. Tucker v. Horn, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 531 (6th Cir. Jan. 8, 2026). Not search case, but defendant was suspected … Continue reading
D.D.C.: A private tow didn’t violate US Capitol Police inventory policy or 4A
The US Capitol Police inventory policy was followed here, and the motion to suppress is denied. The fact a private company towed the vehicle is of no moment to the policy or the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Johnson, 2026 … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: DTF stop on interstate wasn’t pretextual when it was objectively reasonable for overtinting
It doesn’t matter that DTF officers were on the interstate and ordered defendant’s stop for a window tint violation because there was objective justification for it. The rest of the stop was with reasonable suspicion for the drug dog. United … Continue reading
D.S.D.: No standing in employer’s laptop
2255 petitioner fails on standing to contest of search of this laptop. Based on all the court can see, including the PSR description, the laptop belonged to his employer, not him. All the electronic devices of the employer were seized. … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: No standing in mobile home defendant burned down
In direct appeal of his conviction, defendant was found not to have standing in the mobile home he burned because he no longer had any reasonable expectation of privacy in it. He’s Stoned out on habeas too. Sindone v. Miniard, … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Affidavit for SW could have been more explicit, but it still was good enough for PC
The affidavit for warrant isn’t perfect but it’s good enough for the issuing magistrate to draw inferences. “Again, the affidavit could have been improved with explicit explanations of the ‘how’ and ‘why.’ But I do not fault an experienced judge … Continue reading
DE: Judge issuing track and trace order didn’t have to recuse from trial
The fact “the judge who presided over trial had signed a pen register or ‘track and trace’ warrant before [defendant’s] arrest” didn’t require recusal. The state court had already held issuing a search warrant didn’t require recusal either. Fayton v. … Continue reading
D.D.C.: A dozen officers involved in traffic stop slow walked it for drug dog
A dozen officers purposely delayed the traffic stop for a dog sniff. “The Government has failed to show that police conducted this stop in a reasonably diligent manner. To the contrary, Officer Brennan’s decision to delegate all four warnings to … Continue reading
GA: REP against dog sniff at apartment door in gated complex where management let police in
A dog sniff at defendant’s apartment door seams was unreasonable, despite it being in a common area of a gated apartment building [where the general public wasn’t allowed, but management let the police in]. State v. West, 2026 Ga. App. … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Email seizure can be overbroad, but actual search has to be reasonably narrowed
In digital information searches, overseizure to start is permitted to facilitate the process, but the review of all that information has to be limited, and here it was. United States v. Flores, 802 F.3d 1028, 1044 (9th Cir. 2015). United … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Late disclosed information provided Franks challenge
How one defendant made a Franks challenge to get a hearing out of late disclosed information. United States v. Gonzalez, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3229 (D. Mass. Jan. 8, 2026)*:
D.Ariz.: No standing while violating order of protection
Being inside the garage of this house in violation of an order of protection means no standing. Hernandez v. Chandler, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3096 (D. Ariz. Jan. 7, 2026). The visual sweep of defendant’s car was just meticulous and … Continue reading
CA9: RIPP restraint was seizure and no QI here
Decedent died in a police car with an RIPP restraint bending him backwards. That’s a seizure, and the officers here do not get qualified immunity in the excessive force claim. Gonzalez v. City of Phx., 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 426 … Continue reading
NC: DL, LPN, and insurance checkpoint was reasonable
The Saint Pauls NC police department set up a two-hour checkpoint to stop all cars to check for “violations of license, registration, and insurance requirements.” Defendant was stopped and asked for his DL but he didn’t have one. The smell … Continue reading