Archives
-
Recent Posts
- IN: Overdose call led to EMS telling police what they saw and that led to SW
- NY1: A mental health defense waives REP in the medical records about it
- MA: When a likely Franks violation comes out at trial, def gets to reopen the suppression issue
- RI: Challenge to one sentence of 8-page cell phone records SW fails; totality has to be considered
- WaPo: Subpoena bill would curtail secretive tool used to target government critics
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
-
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)
ACLU on privacy
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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)
-
“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: fourth
CA3: No reason why feds can’t search a computer seized under state SW
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA3: No reason why feds can’t search a computer seized under state SW
D.R.I.: Another staleness case; no time, no good faith
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on D.R.I.: Another staleness case; no time, no good faith
D.Mass.: Colombian wiretap didn’t violate due process
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on D.Mass.: Colombian wiretap didn’t violate due process
OH5: “Yeah, why don’t you get it out” of your pocket is a search
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on OH5: “Yeah, why don’t you get it out” of your pocket is a search
W.D.Mo.: Reasonable suspicion and knife clipped in pocket justified frisk for weapons
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on W.D.Mo.: Reasonable suspicion and knife clipped in pocket justified frisk for weapons
VT: Smell of MJ outside house doesn’t require police to assume occupant has an MMJ card
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on VT: Smell of MJ outside house doesn’t require police to assume occupant has an MMJ card
VT: CDTI followed: Issuing magistrate can impose preconditions on execution of a computer search warrant
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on VT: CDTI followed: Issuing magistrate can impose preconditions on execution of a computer search warrant
M.D.Fla.: Search protocol not needed for this CP search warrant
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on M.D.Fla.: Search protocol not needed for this CP search warrant
WaPo: Balko: How the war on drugs degrades America
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on WaPo: Balko: How the war on drugs degrades America
CA10: 911 domestic violence call supported exigency even though last actual violence was two days earlier
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA10: 911 domestic violence call supported exigency even though last actual violence was two days earlier
Politico: NSA decision has lots of winners – for now
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on Politico: NSA decision has lots of winners – for now
NYT: Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on NYT: Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps
E.D.Mich.: Cell phone could be seized incident to arrest; SW later issued for it
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on E.D.Mich.: Cell phone could be seized incident to arrest; SW later issued for it
E.D.Tenn.: Driveway not curtilage
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on E.D.Tenn.: Driveway not curtilage
WaPo: Volokh: Justice Sotomayor on her privacy opinion: “Remember, I was only one of nine.”
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on WaPo: Volokh: Justice Sotomayor on her privacy opinion: “Remember, I was only one of nine.”
S.D.Ala.: Stop became consensual, but defendant should have been allowed to leave when he refused consent; dog alert suppressed
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on S.D.Ala.: Stop became consensual, but defendant should have been allowed to leave when he refused consent; dog alert suppressed
CA6: 5 month old information not stale for SW in possession of machine gun
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on CA6: 5 month old information not stale for SW in possession of machine gun
E.D.Tenn.: 14 days video surveillance of defendant’s back yard by a pole camera unreasonable, but GFE applies
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on E.D.Tenn.: 14 days video surveillance of defendant’s back yard by a pole camera unreasonable, but GFE applies
CA6: Commercial building under demolition was “open field” because unfenced and unattended
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA6: Commercial building under demolition was “open field” because unfenced and unattended
CA3: TSA officers get QI for detaining American with Arabic flash cards including “bomb” and “to kill”
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
Comments Off on CA3: TSA officers get QI for detaining American with Arabic flash cards including “bomb” and “to kill”