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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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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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
Missing posts for book supplement added back in
Those cases that will definitely make it into the 2015 book supplement have been added back in. Those marked with an * weren’t. Yes, and still behind.
PA: Cell phone not per se subject to plain view for seizure and search for its potential information
A cell phone is not per se subject to the plain view exception just because it contains information that the police might suppose conceivably has some relationship to the crime they are investigating. Commonwealth v. Wright, 2014 PA Super 189, … Continue reading
We’ve been down for 9 days; back up Sunday
Longest ever down in 11½ years. Most likely cause: WordPress plug-ins got corrupted. Right now it’s missing a few posts from late August to September 5th. They’re backed up somewhere and will be added back in shortly. In the interim, … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Justification for stop “does not pass the laugh test” but still objectively reasonable
“Although this is a close decision, the Court denies Defendant’s motion. Sergeant Timberlake’s testimony that he stopped Davidoff’s van for a lane change [on an almost vacant interstate highway] does not pass the laugh test. He obviously stopped Davidoff’s vehicle … Continue reading
Politico: Uphill battle on police militarization
Politico: Uphill battle on police militarization by Byron Tau: Police leadership is often fiercely protective of the right to run their departments as they please. Police crowd-control techniques and military-like equipment used in response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following … Continue reading
NE: Anonymous call here too thin to base a stop
An anonymous call without anything really supporting a crime was an insufficient basis for a stop. State v. Rodriguez, 288 Neb. 878, 2014 Neb. LEXIS 139 (August 29, 2014): In Navarette and White, the investigatory stops were approved, but both … Continue reading
CA10: Defendant abandoned carry-on luggage by disclaiming ownership
In a case involving use of a drug dog on a Greyhound bus in Utah, a drug dog alerted on a bag in the luggage compartment. In the passenger compartment, the defendant disclaimed ownership of a bag in the overhead … Continue reading
Cal.4th: “A partially open door by itself is not probable cause justifying warrantless search or seizure in a residence”
One man was stripping insulation from copper wire in front of a house. The door to the house was partially open. The police thought that a burglary was in progress. They made no effort to determine whether the person in … Continue reading
MD: SW not required to test abandoned DNA
Testing DNA left behind on a chair in a police station did not require a search warrant. Raynor v. State, 2014 Md. LEXIS 538 (August 27, 2014).
CA8: Entry after attempted knock-and-talk was invalid, but consent actually proved attenuated
Officers came for a knock-and-talk and developed a suspicion, likely less than reasonable, that there might be a gun inside, and it was taking too long to get an answer about consent, one way or the other. When the first … Continue reading
WI: 15 yo girl could consent to being wired to catch conversation with father about his having sex with her
Defendant’s 15 year old daughter properly consented to putting a wireless transmitter on her to record defendant sexually assaulting her. It was a proper one-party consent to a recording. Minors about this age can consent to a search so why … Continue reading
CA9: Officer can’t presume a motorist reaching for waistband is going for a gun until they see it
A motorist reaching for his waistband as he gets from a car with five officers already drawn down on him can’t be presumed by the officers to be going for a weapon. Here, the unarmed Cruz was shot 20 times … Continue reading
NY Kings Co.: 2012 warrantless search of cell phone seized for taking pictures in courtroom was suppressed
There is a diminished expectation of privacy in courthouse for security and decorum purposes. What is legal on the street may not be in a courthouse. Defendant was observed using his cell phone in a courtroom with strong suspicion he … Continue reading
D.Md.: Federal implied consent regulation not contrary to McNeely
Defendant was stopped by U.S. Park Police for suspected DWI, and the federal regulation (36 C.F.R. § 4.23) on implied consent is not unconstitutional under McNeely. United States v. Muir, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119921 (D. Md. August 28, 2014), … Continue reading
CA10: Reasonable suspicion dissipated, and the vehicle was detained too long
This forfeiture is remanded on a 2-1 vote because the stop was continued too long, but the two votes are slightly different. “On appeal, all panel members agree that the initial stop was justified at its inception. But Judge Phillips … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Omission of text messages from wiretap order was inadvertent and saved by GFE
A wiretap order [inadvertently] failed to include “electronic communications” in his search clause but the officers and the judge talked about it. This is Sheppard good faith. “The Court finds that the issuing judge and executing officers both understood the … Continue reading
IA: Claim that consent search went beyond purpose of stop wasn’t preserved by scope of consent argument
“In his motion to suppress, Anderson argued ‘1) The consent to search was not knowing or voluntary. 2) If the consent was knowing and voluntary, the search exceeded the scope of the consent.’ Anderson now complains the search was unreasonably … Continue reading
TX13: Merely showing up at place per anonymous tip isn’t enough
Merely corroborating an anonymous tip that defendant would show up at a particular place isn’t corroboration enough to make the tip reliable. State v. One 2004 Lincoln Navigator, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 9557 (Tex. App. – Corpus Christi – Edinburg … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Pre-Riley warrantless search of cell phone in CA saved by Davis GFE
Binding precedent in California at the time of defendant’s cell phone search said that a warrant wasn’t needed, so Riley v. California is mooted here by Davis good faith exception. United States v. Peel, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118264 (E.D. … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Pre-Riley warrantless cell phone search suppressed; no GFE here
A[n apparently] pre-Riley cell phone search in Nevada was governed by Riley. There was no binding Ninth Circuit authority that said search incident was good enough before Riley was decided. Therefore, no good faith exception. United States v. Eisenhour, 2014 … Continue reading