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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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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)
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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
IN: Marijuana baggie was in plain view
Officers observed one of their regulars doing a likely hand-to-hand sale with a car that pulled up in front of him, and they followed him. Next, Clark was running down the street at them, and they stopped him. Protruding from … Continue reading
Hawai’i implied consent law is not unconstitutional under McNeely
The Hawai’i implied consent law is not unconstitutional under McNeely. State v. Won, 2014 Haw. App. LEXIS 147 (March 28, 2014):
WaPo: The drug war exception to the Fourth Amendment
WaPo: The drug war exception to the Fourth Amendment by Radley Balko:
E.D.Cal.: Cell phone search incident can’t be sustained under Gant; following Wurie and Smith
Defendant was stopped for no headlights, and the officers could smell marijuana and suspected he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. When he was handcuffed and arrested, the car was subject to search incident for the source, and … Continue reading
KY: Def who fled into friend’s house to elude police had no standing to complain of entry to arrest him
Defendant was driving an ATV on the road, and an officer pursued. Defendant eluded the officer, but the officer found the ATV behind a house. The officer went to the door, a woman named Parrot answered, and the officer came … Continue reading
OH10: Driver advising of CCL and he’s carrying permitted frisk of the car under Long
Apparent hand to hand exchange of cash for something else in a high crime area where it happens all the time and this officer had made hundreds of arrests was reasonable suspicion for a stop. The officer talked to defendant, … Continue reading
KS: Odor of alcohol in a vehicle is not enough to justify a search
The odor of alcohol in a vehicle is not enough to justify a search. Here, it was spilled on the interior, and a search produced drugs. State v. Stevenson, 2014 Kan. LEXIS 117 (March 28, 2014), revg 46 Kan. App. … Continue reading
CA3: “[i]mages of child pornography and files containing images of [CP] in any form[,] wherever it may be stored or found” not general
“Here, the warrant directs officers to seize ‘[i]mages of child pornography and files containing images of child pornography in any form[,] wherever it may be stored or found.’ … It then, as in both $92,422.57 and Tracey, sets forth a … Continue reading
GA: 404(b) evidence of a stop in another state required a motion to suppress, not just an objection
Defendant objected to 404(b) evidence of a stop in North Carolina but only when the state offered it at trial and not before. His argument that the state failed to prove it was lawfully seized fails because he failed to … Continue reading
FL5: Barbed wire fence and “no trespassing” sign created reasonable expectation of privacy
Defendant’s rural property was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and “no trespassing” signs. Police entered through his gate to do a knock-and-talk. They violated his reasonable expectation of privacy by entering. Bainter v. State, 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 4607 (Fla. … Continue reading
Denver Post: Colorado man sues Idaho police over “license-plate profiling”
Denver Post: Colorado man sues Idaho police over “license-plate profiling” by Alison Noon:
WSJ: Being “annoying” is probable cause in some cities
WSJ: In These Towns, Being Annoying Is a Criminal Offense by Joe Palazzolo: Dozens of cities and states have passed strictures that equate “annoying” with “illegal.”
D.Utah: Vehicle impoundment and inventory was reasonable; officer didn’t have to leave it parked where it was
Defendant was sleeping in his SUV behind a business. In the SUV were his dog and a lot of his stuff. He gave a false name to the officers then ID’d himself. They found an outstanding felony warrant on him … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Officer could enter woodlands property down def’s road
Defendant was suspected of illegal firewood cutting in a National Park. A Forest Service officer entered defendant’s property down the driveway or road, and the entry was legal. Defendant ordered the defendant off his property (“Get the fuck out of … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Even though there was no hot pursuit, there was still exigency for warrantless entry
Officers can have exigency without hot pursuit. The Dorman analysis still prevails, and exigency supported the entry. United States v. Anderson, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41773 (E.D. Pa. March 27, 2014):
N.D.Cal.: Spending the night as a guest two days ago doesn’t give standing on the day of the search
Spending the night as a guest two days ago doesn’t give standing on the day of the search. Defendant left stuff there. United States v. Arzate, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40482 (N.D. Ga. March 11, 2014):
ME: Comment that def’s refusal to submit to DNA testing was consciousness of guilt was plain error
State’s comment that defendant’s refusal to submit to DNA testing was consciousness of guilt was plain error. State v. Glover, 2014 ME 49, 2014 Me. LEXIS 51 (March 27, 2014):
CA11: Warrantless cell phone search was harmless based on all the wiretap evidence linking def to Mexican meth cartel
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
CA3: “When an apartment is abandoned, authority to consent to a search reverts to the landlord.”
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading
CT: A suppression hearing is a search for the truth; reopening not abuse of discretion
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading