Archives
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Recent Posts
- IL: A backpack is not as personal a repository of stuff as a purse or wallet; officers ordered it left in vehicle for safety reasons and it was inventoried
- 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
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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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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
W.D.Wash.: No 4A right to personal service of a SW
In this 2254, petitioner’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim that defense counsel didn’t object that the search warrant was not personally served on him wasn’t a constitutional requirement. Also barred by Stone. Witkowski v. Bennett, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 126262 … Continue reading
CA1: Video of SW execution sufficiently authenticated for trial
The video of execution of the search warrant was sufficiently authenticated to be admissible at trial despite coming in through a witness other than the one who took it. United States v. Reyes-Rosario, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 16316 (1st Cir. … Continue reading
Reason: Do Arrest Warrants Have a Diligence Requirement?
Reason: Do Arrest Warrants Have a Diligence Requirement? by Orin Kerr:
OR: Use of a powerful zoom to show covered up marijuana plants violated state constitution
Officers were doing a marijuana flyover looking for another operation and saw what appeared to be a grow operation on defendant’s property. The affidavit for probable cause only said that the officer saw and photographed evidence that could indicate a … Continue reading
CO: Incorporation of SW affidavit saves warrant from lack of particularity
“[T]he warrant in this case authorized collection of location data and certain message content surrounding the crimes. While the warrant could have been more particular by limiting each category using the language ‘related to the crimes,’ the warrant’s incorporation of … Continue reading
WaPo: What is and isn’t legal when ICE officers make an immigration arrest
WaPo: What is and isn’t legal when ICE officers make an immigration arrest by Arelis R. Hernández (“Videos showing masked officers whisking people into unmarked cars have sparked outcry. A look at ICE’s powers as Congress prepares to give the … Continue reading
CNS: Washington allows state, local police to execute tribal arrests
CNS: Washington allows state, local police to execute tribal arrests by Edvard Pettersson (“A change in state law will allow tribes certified by the attorney general’s office to avoid extradition proceedings to have wanted individuals returned to tribal lands.”)
W.D.Pa.: Someone actually succeeds in a Franks challenge
Defendant succeeds in a Franks challenge: Defendant’s case arose because the officer swore that defendant matched a surveillance video of a robbery. He really believed it, but he was wrong because there were obvious reasons to discount his belief. The … Continue reading
KS: Arrest and search were in KCMO, trial in KCKS; 4A applies no matter what; no state law issues
Conflict of laws: Defendant’s arrest and search was in Kansas City, Missouri, but his offense was tried in Kansas City, Kansas. State law on this doesn’t matter. Applying the Fourth Amendment, it was all legal. State v. Green, 2025 Kan. … Continue reading
CO: Three-day delay between seizure of defendant’s car and getting SW for it was reasonable
Three-day delay between seizure of defendant’s car and getting a warrant to search was reasonable. People v. Mills, 2025 CO 47, 2025 Colo. LEXIS 572 (June 30, 2025). Defendant’s cell phone was linked to his prostitution/human trafficking case, so there … Continue reading
MA: Defendant fled his allegedly illegal stop, so he can’t argue attenuation when he discarded contraband in flight
The trial court erred in applying the attenuation doctrine here. Defendant claimed he was illegally stopped, but he fled and discarded contraband in flight. Commonwealth v. Diaz, 2025 Mass. LEXIS 300 (June 27, 2025). This geofence warrant was supported by … Continue reading
TX5: State has to prove SW application properly sworn to; no GFE where it wasn’t pled
Where it couldn’t be established that the officer swore to a notary or clerk when applying for a search warrant for blood, the motion to suppress was properly granted. The state doesn’t get the benefit of the good faith exception … Continue reading
NY4: First search missed cache of drugs, so police came back for a second search; first search admissible at trial
Officers got a search warrant for defendant’s premises and searched. Two days later, they discovered through a source that they missed a cache of drugs in the house. They came back with another. The results of the first search were … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Search of international letter in D.C. was valid as border search
Search of an international letter on arrival in D.C. was valid as a border search. United States v. Martin, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 123023 (D.D.C. June 27, 2025).* There was reasonable suspicion for the officer’s encounter with defendant who was … Continue reading
CA5: Opening refrigerator here wasn’t justified by exigency during “sweep”
Opening a refrigerator wasn’t justified by any exigent circumstances in an entry to interview children about alleged abuse. McMurry v. Weaver, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 15956 (5th Cir. June 27, 2025). The dueling experts’ reports show a triable issue of … Continue reading
Reason: Using the National Guard in DEA Raids Is the Worst Kind of Drug War Mission Creep
Reason: Using the National Guard in DEA Raids Is the Worst Kind of Drug War Mission Creep by C.J. Ciaramella (“The Trump administration deployed National Guard soldiers to assist the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other federal law enforcement agencies … Continue reading
CA5: Spirit Aerosystems, Inc. v. Paxton revd
Spirit Aerosystems, Inc. v. Paxton, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 219598 (W.D. Tex. Nov. 1, 2024), posted here, rev’d 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 15838 (5th Cir. June 26, 2025).
WA: Admin. search entry through employee entrance tailgating employee into building violated statute and was suppressed
“This appeal asks us to decide whether Department of Labor and Industries (DLI) inspectors possessed authority to tailgate a fitness club member through an otherwise locked door into the fitness club to ask for permission to inspect the business premises … Continue reading
D.N.H.: Extended border search of men on bicycles was valid
Defendant was stopped on a bicycle with backpack and bedroll with another in New Hampshire by a CBP officer who suspected they’d illegally crossed the border. They admitted they had. Suspecting they were involved with human smugglers, the officers searched … Continue reading