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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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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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"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
D.Minn.: SW’s failure to include motel name, address, and room number failed particularity
The search warrant was ostensibly for a particular Motel 6 and room number, but the warrant completely omitted reference to the place to be searched. United States v. Brown, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47675 (D. Minn. Mar. 13, 2025). When … Continue reading
PA: For crime of obstructing a search, def didn’t have to see SW to know there was one when he was told
Defendant’s conviction for obstructing a search is affirmed. He was not entitled to a jury instruction that he had to have seen or read the warrant first where it was not disputed that he knew there was a warrant. Commonwealth … Continue reading
CA7: No QI for 2015 detention of 16 year old without justification
Officers are denied qualified immunity winning at trial for his false detention four days before Christmas nearly a decade ago. The law was clearly established plaintiff couldn’t be detained like this for no apparent reason. Taylor v. Schwarzhuber, 2025 U.S. … Continue reading
CA9: Failure to tell def of precise reason for arrest when no warrant in hand did not warrant suppression
Suppression of defendant’s statements is not warranted for FBI agents’ violation of Fed. R. Crim. P. 4(c)(3)(A), which provides that an arresting officer who does not possess a copy of the arrest warrant “must inform the defendant of the warrant’s … Continue reading
The Intercept: DEA Insiders Warned About Legality of Phone Tracking Program. Their Concerns Were Kept Secret.
The Intercept: DEA Insiders Warned About Legality of Phone Tracking Program. Their Concerns Were Kept Secret. (“The DEA ignored the internal alarm about its Hemisphere mass phone data collection program, according to newly revealed details in a government report.”) It … Continue reading
Reason: Taking $200 Out of an ATM Should Not Trigger Federal Financial Surveillance: No, not even if you do it in a county that borders Mexico.
Reason: Taking $200 Out of an ATM Should Not Trigger Federal Financial Surveillance: No, not even if you do it in a county that borders Mexico. by Joe Lancaster (“One of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive orders designated ‘certain … Continue reading
D.D.C.: BLM 1A speech restriction claim can proceed as a class action
A class claim for the June 2020 Lafayette Square BLM protest is certified for the First Amendment speech restriction claims but not the retaliation claims because they do not satisfy commonality under Rule 23(a). Damages claims can be pursued separately. … Continue reading
Sophie Z. Lee, The Reconciliation Roots of Fourth Amendment Privacy
Sophie Z. Lee, The Reconciliation Roots of Fourth Amendment Privacy, 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2139 (2024):
CA3: Apartment visitor to conduct drug deal has no standing
An apartment visitor to conduct a drug deal has no standing to contest a search that happened while he was there. United States v. Loyal, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 5853 (3d Cir. Mar. 13, 2025). By collective knowledge, there was … Continue reading
CA6: Mandamus doesn’t lie to force grant of a motion to suppress
Mandamus doesn’t lie to compel a district court to grant a motion to suppress and dismiss an indictment because of an alleged change in the dates of the charge to cover up an illegal search. There’s a possible remedy in … Continue reading
GA: SW for air bag module and vehicle black box issued with PC and was particular
This search warrant for the Airbag Control Modules and the vehicle’s black box was issued on probable cause and was particular in a vehicular homicide case. Hutchins v. State, 2025 Ga. App. LEXIS 134 (Mar. 13, 2025):
W.D.N.Y.: Just saying the Stone bar is “misplaced” isn’t an answer
“In his reply …, Petitioner asserts in conclusory fashion that Respondent’s application of Stone is ‘misplaced.’ … However, he fails to explain why this is so. Nor does he attempt to show that he did not have a ‘full and … Continue reading
OH2: Motion to suppress not proper to challenge authentication of a record for trial
A motion to suppress doesn’t lie just because the defense thinks that a record can be authenticated under Rule 901. State v. Wolfe, 2025-Ohio-866 (2d Dist. Mar. 14, 2025). “Because Phillips did not make a contemporaneous objection to either the … Continue reading
IN: Greyhound bus subject to automobile exception because dog alerted on luggage compartment
If you’re riding a bus and drugs are found on one, are all subject to search. The answer can’t be yes, but it is here: Defendant was a passenger on a Greyhound bus on I-80. The bus crossed the centerline … Continue reading
D.P.R.: Motion to dismiss for an alleged illegal search is not the proper way to raise the issue
A motion to dismiss for an alleged illegal search is not the proper way to raise the issue. United States v. Ruiz-Ruiz, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47357 (D.P.R. Mar. 12, 2025):
55 years ago today: NPR: On This Day In 1970: Hruska Links Judge To ‘Mediocre’
NPR: On This Day In 1970: Hruska Links Judge To ‘Mediocre’ by Ken Rudin:
MD: A search warrant for a car’s GPS system
A search warrant for a car’s GPS system: “Officers also executed a ‘Berla warrant’2 to extract navigation data from the car’s GPS system. The navigation data showed that, on the morning of the shooting, the Maserati left Oak Haven Circle … Continue reading
CA2: Exigency of potential destruction of evidence has to be “in real time”
This pro se plaintiff was the subject of a sexual assault investigation that led to officers warrantlessly entering and seizing his home for 12½ hours before getting a warrant. Summary judgment was granted the officers. Exigent circumstances didn’t justify the … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Probable cause for evidence of tax evasion in the home where records would be
Probable cause for evidence of tax evasion in the home where records would be: “Here, the affidavit sought to establish probable cause to believe Mr. Erickson took part in an ongoing scheme to evade paying taxes. Toward that end, the … Continue reading