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Recent Posts
- DE: Cell phone SW was limited by time and data sought, so it was not a general warrant
- MD: Under Bruen, mere possession of a handgun outside the home is no longer RS; Terry stop doesn’t include looking in a bag
- 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
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (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
N.D.Ohio: Abandonment in flight from arrest under alleged illegal warrant still abandonment
Fleeing an arrest under what is now alleged to be an invalid warrant and abandoning property is still abandonment. United States v. Pool, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138465 (N.D. Ohio July 21, 2025). There was probable cause for plaintiff’s arrest … Continue reading
WA: Probation searches don’t violate WA Const.
Probation searches are a codified exception to the warrant requirement and not in violation of the Washington constitution. State v. Smith, 2025 Wash. App. LEXIS 1418 (July 21, 2025). Leaving defendant’s vehicle on a parking lot potentially for days was … Continue reading
Louisville Courier Journal: Ex-LMPD detective Brett Hankison sentenced to 33 months in prison
Louisville Courier Journal: Ex-LMPD detective Brett Hankison sentenced to 33 months in prison by Josh Wood (“A federal judge sentenced former Louisville Police detective Brett Hankison to 33 months in prison for the shots he fired during the fatal 2020 … Continue reading
GA: 404(b) adult porn seized in CP case more prejudicial than relevant
Not strictly a Fourth Amendment case, but interesting: Defendant’s place in a child molestation case was searched and adult porn was seized. The porn was admitted over objection as 404(b) evidence, and it was prejudicial and completely inadmissible because it … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Being a longtime member of a group that shared CP supported PC for defendant’s devices
“Given the length of Estrada’s membership in the two groups, the volume of files depicting child pornography shared during Estrada’s membership, and the detailed description of a file shared while Estrada was a participant in one of the groups, the … Continue reading
C.D.Cal. denies stay in immigration stops without RS
Perdomo v. Noem, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137993 (C.D. Cal. July 17, 2025), posted here, holds that reasonable suspicion is required for immigration stops and race alone isn’t enough. The government’s motion for stay pending appeal is denied. Without more … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: Did Cleveland police cut corners when they used AI to recover a suspected murder weapon? Appeals court to decide
Cleveland PD used AI for facial recognition to get probable cause for a search warrant. Cleveland.com: Did Cleveland police cut corners when they used AI to recover a suspected murder weapon? Appeals court to decide. Oral argument August 22. Since … Continue reading
DC: Flight even in a high crime area isn’t RS
Relying on the en banc opinion in Mayo v. United States, 315 A.3d 606 (D.C. 2024), flight in a high-crime area is not reasonable suspicion. People flee to avoid unnecessary confrontation with the police, who just might be potentially too … Continue reading
CA7: Lifting mattress during protective sweep here wasn’t justified
The protective sweep under a mattress here was unjustified. Protective sweeps have to be based on known facts, not theories. Here, without deciding whether it was justified, on this record, lifting a mattress was unreasonable. There was no reason to … Continue reading
TX7: SW sworn to before wrong officer still in GF
The search warrant affidavit was not sworn to before a judge as required by the statute, but it was sworn to before an officer with the authority to take oaths. That was sufficient for the good faith exception to apply. … Continue reading
The sixth edition of this book is at the publisher
The manuscript is in (all 7,500 single spaced pages), and the sixth edition of this book is at the publisher. Publication in December.
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Supreme Court Shadow Docket Database added, not that any Fourth Amendment cases ever end up there. Update: Wrong.
C.D.Cal.: Roving immigration patrol stops without RS violate 4A
“Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and denying access to lawyers violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. What the federal government would have this Court believe—in the face of a mountain of evidence … Continue reading
NYLJ: ‘This Is Not Science Fiction’: Trump Administration Uses Peter Thiel’s ‘Planantir’ Surveillance Technology to Spy on Americans
NYLJ: ‘This Is Not Science Fiction’: Trump Administration Uses Peter Thiel’s ‘Planantir’ Surveillance Technology to Spy on Americans by Bennett L. Gershman:
E.D.La.: Use of translation app to communicate with def slowed the stop, but didn’t make it unreasonable
The officer’s use of a translation app on his cell phone to communicate with defendant didn’t unreasonably extend the stop. If limited questions can be asked, then logically an app can translate. Here, cell coverage was limited so that slowed … Continue reading
CA11: Ptf’s four arrests didn’t lack PC
Plaintiff was arrested four times in nine months, but he doesn’t plausibly allege that the arrests lacked probable cause. Hernandez v. Sheriff of Manatee Cty., 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 17342 (11th Cir. July 14, 2025)*:
M.D.Fla.: Def had standing in his father’s home as a regular occasional guest with a key
The property searched was defendant’s father’s but he occasionally stayed there and had a key. On the day in question, police saw him going in. While he has standing, he loses on the merits of probable cause for the search … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: 4A IAC shown by 2255 petitioner; arrest lacked all probable cause
2255 petitioner prevails on a Fourth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claim. There clearly was no probable cause for defendant’s arrest and car search. United States v. Henry, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133252 (N.D. Ind. July 10, 2025).* The government … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Abandoning three large dogs to flee is more than just “mere refusal to cooperate”
“At the very least, leaving three large dogs effectively unrestrained in a public place to flee from law enforcement certainly amounts to more than the ‘mere refusal to cooperate’ that is protected by the Fourth Amendment. Cf. [Wardlow, 528 U.S. … Continue reading
D.Wyo.: SW’s catch-all phrase was still limited to drugs
“The warrant in this case has a catch-all phrase as to the types of evidence to be searched but is affirmatively limited to evidence of drug trafficking, manufacture, delivery, and possession. The warrant therefore satisfies the requirement described in cases … Continue reading