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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 -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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General (many free):
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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)
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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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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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
WaPo: Number of fatal shootings by police is nearly identical to last year
WaPo: Number of fatal shootings by police is nearly identical to last year by John Sullivan, Reis Thebault, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins: Police nationwide shot and killed 492 people in the first six months of this year, a number … Continue reading
Book on sale through Friday midnight
Click here.
The Watergate break-in happened 45 years ago today
Almost certainly just before midnight the night of June 16, 1972, burglars entered the Watergate Complex to break into the Democratic National Headquarters. Shortly after midnight, June 17th, security guard Frank Wills discovered tape keeping a door from locking, and … Continue reading
D.P.R.: Parents lacked apparent authority to consent to adult child’s room
The government failed to prove common authority by the consenter, defendant’s mother, for a search of the adult defendant’s separate bedroom. Common authority is far more readily found when the child is a minor, but not when the child is … Continue reading
The last of the files left in the hacks are gone
Our server service took us down for 48 hours to cleanup files left during the hacks. Regretfully, there were phishing attacks coming from here because of implanted files. You remove what they point out, and then others appear, triggered maybe … Continue reading
Hacked again
WordPress has been updated, and it’s acting a little funny. But at least it’s working again. Getting phishing reports that tell us of the hacks. We do this whole operation on a shoestring since there is no income from it, … Continue reading
techdirt: Appeals Court Pretty Sure DOJ Use-Of-Force Guidelines Don’t Violate Police Officers’ 2nd And 4th Amendment Rights
techdirt: Appeals Court Pretty Sure DOJ Use-Of-Force Guidelines Don’t Violate Police Officers’ 2nd And 4th Amendment Rights by Tim Cushing:
S.D.N.Y.: Losing CI’s cell phone after search was not gov’t bad faith
The defendant can’t show bad faith just because the government lost the cell phone of a CI. Defendant contended that there was exculpatory information or photographs on it but couldn’t define what it was. Negligence is not bad faith. United … Continue reading
We were hacked (again). Nobody is safe
You probably noticed that the site didn’t work for a good part of yesterday. It’s been hacked before, and the server owner we contract it to took their sweet time undoing this one. The password has been changed twice, but … Continue reading
Law review article: The Effects of Legislation on Fourth Amendment Protection
The Effects of Legislation on Fourth Amendment Protection by Orin S. Kerr:
OH3: SW was clearly conclusory, but still saved by GFE
The affidavit to support the search warrant was clearly conclusory, but the court can’t say that the officers didn’t objectively rely on the search warrants for purposes of the good faith exception. It wasn’t in “bad faith,” so it must … Continue reading
N.D.Fla.: No right in federal court to interlocutory appeal of denial of a suppression motion
“A defendant may not take an interlocutory appeal from an order denying a motion to suppress evidence. Di Bella v. United States, 369 U.S. 121, 123-24, 82 S. Ct. 654, 7 L. Ed. 2d 614 (1962).” So, defense counsel’s failure … Continue reading
Nashville Scene: The Tennessee Supreme Court keeps reversing itself, and criminal defense attorneys are worried
Nashville Scene: The Tennessee Supreme Court keeps reversing itself, and criminal defense attorneys are worried by Stephen Elliot: The rapid makeover of the court has caused a noticeable and nearly instantaneous shift in its ideology – a shift that a … Continue reading
Mother Jones: “I Gotta Go and Hunt Criminals.” On the Road With Ohio Highway Patrol.
Mother Jones: “I Gotta Go and Hunt Criminals.” On the Road With Ohio Highway Patrol. by Julia Lurie: I rode along with the officers who pull over suspicious cars and hunt for drugs.
Treatise on sale through 4/14 at 11:59 pm PT
Treatise on sale through 4/14 at 11:59 pm PT here and enter LIB20 at checkout. Expires April 14, 2017 at 11:59 P.M. PT
Twelve Angry Men first showed 60 years ago today
60 years ago today was the first screening of the classic Twelve Angry Men. Although only a little over a minute of the movie occurs while the judge instructs the jury, the rest occurs in the jury room, albeit about … Continue reading
New law review article: A Tactical Fourth Amendment
A Tactical Fourth Amendment by Brandon L. Garrett & Seth W. Stoughton, Virginia Law Review, Vol. 103, 211, 2017 Abstract:
Omaha World-Herald: Nebraska law enforcement report shows racial disparity in traffic stops
Omaha World-Herald: Nebraska law enforcement report shows racial disparity in traffic stops by Alia Conley: Nebraska law enforcement agencies continued to report racial disparities in traffic stops in 2016. In Douglas County, for example, black drivers accounted for 28.5 percent … Continue reading
WaPo: How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs
WaPo: How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs by Sari Horwitz: When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum. … Continue reading
New law review article: The Original Fourth Amendment
The Original Fourth Amendment, by Laura Donohue, University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 83, 2016 Abstract: