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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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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)
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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. 
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Reuters: Law firm raids bode ill for lawyers and their clients – legal experts
Reuters: Law firm raids bode ill for lawyers and their clients – legal experts by Alison Frankel:
Reason: Detroit to Pay $225000 After Cops Shoot Three Dogs in Marijuana Raid
Reason: Detroit to Pay $225000 After Cops Shoot Three Dogs in Marijuana Raid by C.J. Ciaramella The settlement is the latest big payout in a string of lawsuits over dog shootings by Detroit police.
Tennessean: Opinion | Tennessee Supreme Court must resist chipping away at Fourth Amendment rights
Tennessean: Opinion | Tennessee Supreme Court must resist chipping away at Fourth Amendment rights by David L. Hudson:
New Draft Article: “Cross-Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment”
New Draft Article: “Cross-Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment” by Orin Kerr on SSRN. The surprising uncertainty when the Fourth Amendment meets federalism. From Volokh Conspiracy:
Trial the rest of week, so postings likely late
Treatise 25% off through Friday midnight PT
Treatise 25% off through Friday midnight PT.
Volokh Conspiracy: Final Pre-Argument Thoughts on the Microsoft Case
Volokh Conspiracy: Final Pre-Argument Thoughts on the Microsoft Case by Orin Kerr: Three thoughts about the briefing in the case ahead of Tuesday’s oral argument.
15th anniversary of this blog; 257th anniversary of Otis’ argument in Paxton’s Case
Today is the 15th anniversary of this blog. Today is also the 257th anniversary of James Otis’ 1761 argument at the Boston Old State House against the writs of assistance in Paxton’s Case. Transcripts of the argument are here. (It … Continue reading
Criminal defense lawyers as privacy advocates
Being a criminal defense lawyer is a great privilege and an opportunity. It was obvious to me early in law school 48 years ago that the law of American privacy is made by criminal defense lawyers raising and litigating issues. … Continue reading
Above the Law: The Vanilla Ice Rule: “Anything less than the best is a felony.”
Above the Law: The Vanilla Ice Rule by Matthew W. Schmidt: Litigators must remember that “anything less than the best is a felony.”
First rate appellate CLE in Arkansas 3/28-29, not just 8th Cir. focused
2018 Justice Donald L. Corbin Appellate Symposium, March 28-29th in Little Rock at Bowen School of Law. Lawyers in surrounding states, please take notice. Three judges from the 8th, one from the 6th, 9th, and 11th and a state or … Continue reading
NJ: Affidavit for SW doesn’t need to be turned over at bail hearing where arrest doesn’t rely on SW under NJ law
When the state is not relying on the product of a search warrant for its arrest warrant, it does not have to disclose the search warrant affidavit under state law at the detention hearing – it can wait until later … Continue reading
WaPo: How to fight mass surveillance even though Congress just reauthorized it
WaPo: How to fight mass surveillance even though Congress just reauthorized it by Bruce Schneier What the battle looks like after Section 702’s reauthorization.
In jury trial this week, so posts will be late
techdirt: Report Shows US Law Enforcement Routinely Engages In Parallel Construction
techdirt: Report Shows US Law Enforcement Routinely Engages In Parallel Construction by Tim Cushing:
Volokh Conspiracy: The Challenge of Fourth Amendment Originalism and the Positive Law Test
Volokh Conspiracy: The Challenge of Fourth Amendment Originalism and the Positive Law Test by Orin Kerr: If the Positive Law test is originalist, then what isn’t? A close look at Fourth Amendment history and some recent scholarship.
OH12: When state SCt denies review of 4A claim, it’s law of the case on remand
After the state supreme court denied discretionary review of the search issue, the lower court ruling became law of the case, and the suppression hearing couldn’t be reopened. State v. Raphael, 2018-Ohio-140, 2018 Ohio App. LEXIS 140 (12th Dist. Jan. … Continue reading
WaPo: Meet the 24-year-old Trump campaign worker appointed to help lead the government’s drug policy office
WaPo: Meet the 24-year-old Trump campaign worker appointed to help lead the government’s drug policy office by Robert O’Harrow Jr.:
Volokh Conspiracy: Yes, the Positive Law Model of the Fourth Amendment is Originalist
Volokh Conspiracy: Yes, the Positive Law Model of the Fourth Amendment is Originalist by Will Baude Orin asked me to correct the record; I’m correcting it.
CA5: LEO’s lie to FBI about leaked SW was a crime even though FBI knew he was lying
A police officer leaked the existence of an FBI investigation that enabled the target of a search warrant to move his stash. “His statement [to the FBI] denying that he had disclosed the investigation was capable of influencing the FBI’s … Continue reading