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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
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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)
ACLU on privacy
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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. 
Category Archives: Uncategorized
CA5: 9 day delay in getting SW for cell phone wasn’t unreasonable
The search warrant reasonably authorized seizure of defendant’s cell phone but not its search. The nine day delay in getting the search warrant for the phone was not unreasonable. The court declines to adopt a bright line rule and goes … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Interesting application of “clearly established law” prong of 2254(d) and a state court’s resolution of a search claim
As Orin Kerr would say: This is for habeas nerds: An interesting and straight-forward application of the alleged violation of the “clearly established law” prong of 2254(d) and a state court’s resolution of a search claim is Horst v. Roy, … Continue reading
Lexology: Recent rulings indicate Fifth Amendment may join Fourth Amendment as critical consideration in courts’ efforts to apply constitutional protections to smartphones and other new technology
Lexology: Recent rulings indicate Fifth Amendment may join Fourth Amendment as critical consideration in courts’ efforts to apply constitutional protections to smartphones and other new technology by Brian Willett
ABAJ: How to redact a PDF and protect your clients
ABAJ: How to redact a PDF and protect your clients by Jason Tashea:
Two on successor habeas petitions with search claims
Alleged withheld information of a Franks nature that undermines the search and defendant’s guilty plea was still barred as a successor petition. United States v. Hayes, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1516 (W.D. Va. Jan. 4, 2019).* Petitioner’s search claim was … Continue reading
Treatise on sale through 1/2
Book (all Lexis books, apparently) on sale for 31% off through 1/2 midnight PT.
TN: Implied consent law doesn’t violate right to a warrant under religious liberty
Defendant’s sovereign citizen claim the state DUI implied consent violated his religious liberty without a warrant and right to travel is rejected. How does religion figure into it? State v. Simmons, 2018 Tenn. App. LEXIS 755 (Dec. 21, 2018).* Sovereign … Continue reading
Reason: Kansas Supreme Court Says Cops Can Search Your Home Without a Warrant If They Claim It Smells Like Pot
Reason: Kansas Supreme Court Says Cops Can Search Your Home Without a Warrant If They Claim It Smells Like Pot by Jacob Sullum: Cops supposedly smelled 25 grams of pot inside a plastic container inside a safe inside a closet … Continue reading
MO: Requiring trial objection after denial of motion to suppress allows trial court to reconsider; issue still preserved here
Defense counsel in Missouri is obligated to object again when evidence that was subject to a motion to suppress that was overruled is offered into evidence. This gives the trial court the opportunity to revisit the ruling under the evidence … Continue reading
Today is Bill of Rights Day
227 years ago today the Fourth Amendment became effective, Dec. 15, 1791
New Law Review Article: Cross-Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment by Orin Kerr
Cross-Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 471 (2018), by Orin Kerr. Abstract:
Human Rights Watch: =Dark Side: Secret Origins of Evidence in US Criminal Cases
Human Rights Watch: Dark Side: Secret Origins of Evidence in US Criminal Cases
E.D.N.Y.: Partially redacted aff for SW admissible to show consciousness of guilt
The government gets to use the affidavit for search warrant but partially redacted to show defendant’s consciousness of guilt. United States v. Zhong, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199848 (E.D. N.Y. Nov. 26, 2018). A firearm found in a search of … Continue reading
Book 30% off this week
Book on sale at 30% off all week.
AK: Search of tenant’s computer found during SW for landlord’s computer was unreasonable
Alaska State Troopers had a search warrant for a computer in a house. While there, they find a computer that belonged to another who was the target’s tenant, so they decided to seize that computer, too, and search it. The … Continue reading
WA: State AG’s civil investigative demand to a company did not unreasonably intrude into “private affairs” or violate 4A
A company that consolidated student loans was required to comply with the Washington State Attorney General’s civil investigative demand (CID) under Wash. Rev. Code § 19.86.110. The company did not have a right against self-incrimination and the CID did not … Continue reading
We’re back, catching up
Perhaps you’ve noticed that the postings have been a bit behind. That’s because I’ve spent the last two weeks reading 2600 pages of page proofs for Trial Handbook for Arkansas Lawyers 4th. Today I have to drive two hours to … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: A protective sweep doesn’t permit a look in a toilet tank
A protective sweep doesn’t permit a look in a toilet tank. United States v. Brown, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185187 (S.D. Fla. Oct. 29, 2018). Plaintiffs’ 1983 search case fails. There was probable cause for issuance of the search warrant … Continue reading
CA9: Using ruse to gain entry for civil investigation and surreptitious video recording was a “search,” but QI applies
The use of a ruse to get consent to enter plaintiff’s house to conduct a civil fraud investigation violated the Fourth Amendment. The surreptitious use of a video recorder was a “search.” However, it was not clearly established at the … Continue reading