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- 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
OH3: Def counsel not ineffective for strategy not to challenge car search to distance him from the drugs for trial
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not filing a motion to suppress because he would have to admit he owned or possessed the car for standing, and that was contrary to his defense that it wasn’t his drugs. State v. … Continue reading
DC (en banc): Way off topic but important: Possibility of deportation makes a “petty” offense “serious” and requires a jury trial
Bado v. United States, 2018 D.C. App. LEXIS 258 (June 21, 2018) (en banc):
CA3: Mere presence of transgender student in bathroom of gender identity violates no privacy right of ptfs
Plaintiffs objected to transgender students using school bathrooms in accord with their gender identity claiming a right of privacy. The district court denied an injunction and they appealed. The Third Circuit affirmed because there was no infringement on their privacy … Continue reading
WaPo: Texas woman says warrant presented for son killed by police
WaPo: Texas woman says warrant presented for son killed by police by AP: ARLINGTON, Texas — The mother of a black Texas man whom police fatally shot last year said Wednesday that sheriff’s deputies recently turned up at her mother’s … Continue reading
SCOTUS: “The automobile exception does not permit the warrantless entry of a home or its curtilage in order to search a vehicle therein.”
The power of curtilage: Collins v. Virginia, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 3210 (May 29, 2018) (8-1, Alito dissenting):
D.Minn.: No right to being stopped at earliest time
There was reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop, and it isn’t material that the officer chose to wait a few minutes before making the stop. United States v. Taariq, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85630 (D. Minn. May 22, 2018). Plaintiff inmate’s … Continue reading
NYTimes: In Fight Against Violent Crime, Justice Dept. Targets Low-Level Gun Offenders
NYTimes: In Fight Against Violent Crime, Justice Dept. Targets Low-Level Gun Offenders. In my district, through the end of March, 200 cases were filed. Normally, 100. Granted, there are many multi-defendant cases, but the AUSAs told me that they’re taking … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: Being parked in the middle of the road with the engine running is RS
“In this case, the evidence is clear that Officer Paxton observed a Mercedes Benz parked in the middle of the road with its engine running and lights on. After his initial approach to the car, he discovered that both the … Continue reading
D.Me.: Three alternative bases to uphold search
“The Court discerns [and finds] three alternative bases for determining that the December 20 interaction was lawful: either (1) the interaction with Defendant constituted a consensual encounter until Defendant admitted to possessing marijuana; (2) the officers executed a lawful Terry … Continue reading
D.Md.: After 4A claim affirmed on appeal, 2255 isn’t available to litigate the merits
No, the defendant doesn’t get to continue litigating his Fourth Amendment claim into infinity by going to 2255 after loosing the appeal. White v. United States, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70628 (D. Md. Apr. 26, 2018):
Business Insider: Three pleadings from Special Counsel in U.S. v. Manafort, two on motions to suppress
Business Insider: We read all 67 pages of Mueller’s latest court filings on Paul Manafort — here are the main takeaways by Sonam Sheth
NACDL establishes Fourth Amendment Center
Press release: NACDL establishes Fourth Amendment Center:
NJ: DV seizure order and SW issued; dismissal of DV matter doesn’t affect independent SW
Family court DV search warrant was adequate and helped support an additional search warrant by the criminal court. There was probable cause. The ultimate dismissal of the DV petition had no legal effect on the validity of the search warrant. … Continue reading
Wired: Why Police Should Monitor Social Media to Prevent Crime
Wired: Why Police Should Monitor Social Media to Prevent Crime by Christopher Raleigh Bousquet (opinion):
CA4: Even if Posse Comitatus Act was violated in investigation, there is no judicial remedy
Defendant argued “the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) violated the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA), 18 U.S.C. § 1385 (2012), by participating in the criminal investigation.” The motion wasn’t timely, and, on the merits, there is no remedy for violation. United … Continue reading
Cohen pleadings online for today’s hearing in S.D.N.Y.
Two pleadings are online in Cohen v. United States, 1:18-mj-03161-KMW (S.D. N.Y.). A reply by Cohen may be filed today. Read them. The Government has the better argument. I don’t see Cohen’s argument against a “filter team” even in the … Continue reading
Thinking:
Col. Abel to his lawyer: Abel: Standing there like that you reminded me of the man that used to come to our house when I was young. My father used to say: “watch this man”. So I did. Every time … Continue reading
Atlantic: The Principle of Professional Law Enforcement Is Now on the Line
Atlantic: The Principle of Professional Law Enforcement Is Now on the Line by Benjamin Wittes: If the president can, with impunity, remove the deputy attorney general, the very notion that law enforcement has a higher function than serving power becomes … Continue reading
PACER text entry
(This is a TEXT ENTRY ONLY. There is no pdf document associated with this entry.) ORDER granting Plaintiff’s motion to extend time 85. It appears Defendant R. Johnson refused service by mail 69. Plaintiff appears to believe the U.S. government … Continue reading
Family emergency took me away. New cases again tomorrow
As soon as I get back I have to prepare for a 5 pm hearing.