September 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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Recent Posts
- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
- W.D.Tex.: What is the duty of the neutral and detached magistrate?
- D.Me.: Yes, more investigation could have been done, but there’s still PC on what there was
- CA3: Brady doesn’t apply to SW materials
- E.D.Mich.: Person a cell phone was given to as gift could consent to search
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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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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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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)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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: Good faith exception
SC: Blood draw unreasonable but saved by GFE because it happened before holding here
As to the blood draw in this DUI death case, “We conclude section 56-5-2946 is facially constitutional but unconstitutional as applied in Appellant’s case. However, we find the trial court did not err in denying Appellant’s motion to suppress because … Continue reading
NY Orange Co.: Reasonableness of seizure of firearms under 2A and 4A depends on court order, due process, and objective showing of mental impairment
Following another county court, this one also holds that Second Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights are both fundamental and an order removing firearms must be based on finding of mental impairment and due process. R.M. v. C.M., 2023 NY Slip … Continue reading
CA11: Mental health seizures require objective reasonableness of danger
Mental health seizures under Florida’s Baker Act comply with the Fourth Amendment when it’s objectively reasonable to believe that the person is a danger to himself or others. Here the officers had that from defendant’s threats to shoot people. United … Continue reading
MS: SW was for stolen property from a particular victim and clothing seen in video
The warrant here was particular enough. It didn’t just seek stolen property; it sought particular property stolen from the victim and clothing worn during the burglary caught on video. Williamson v. State, 2023 Miss. App. LEXIS 125 (Apr. 4, 2023). … Continue reading
Reason: An Oregon Man Was Wrongly Imprisoned for Almost a Year Because of an Error in a DMV Database
Reason: An Oregon Man Was Wrongly Imprisoned for Almost a Year Because of an Error in a DMV Database by Emma Camp (“Nicholas Chappelle spent almost a year in an Oregon prison after he was wrongfully convicted of driving with … Continue reading
CA8: GFE applies to dog sniff at apt door before law changed
Defendant’s apartment door was subjected to a dog sniff at his apartment door before the court limited it in United States v. Perez, 46 F.4th 691 (8th Cir. 2022). The good faith exception applies. United States v. Hines, 2023 U.S. … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Controlled buy 4 days earlier leading to SW comes in under 404(b)
Defendant’s motion in limine about a controlled buy four days before the warrant is denied. It comes in under 404(b). United States v. Neal, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37649 (M.D. Ala. Mar. 7, 2023). “As already discussed at the motion … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: SW for cash derived from drug sales was particular enough
The search warrant for U.S. currency derived from illegal drug sales was sufficiently particular as to the warrant for defendant’s house. United States v. Jones, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33429 (M.D. Pa. Feb. 28, 2023). The CSLI warrant here was … Continue reading
Cal.4: Without specific argument, court won’t look to SW and affidavit to make it for the appellant
Without specific argument, the court of appeals will not scour the record and the search warrant affidavit to make a party’s argument for him. Billauer v. Escobar-Eck, 2023 Cal. App. LEXIS 144 (4th Dist. Feb. 28, 2023) (anti-SLAPP case; not … Continue reading
N.D.Miss.: Geofence warrant approved in 2018 USPS truck robbery
A geofence warrant is sustained on probable cause and particularity in a post office truck robbery where the driver was beaten in United States v. Smith, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22944 (N.D. Miss. Feb. 10, 2023). While some later steps … Continue reading
KS: Chance of suicide justified public safety stop
Finding a car parked in a place where people notoriously went to commit suicide justified this public safety encounter. The officer smelled marijuana coming from the car and searched it. State v. McDonald, 2023 Kan. App. LEXIS 5 (Feb. 3, … Continue reading
CA4: GFE applied to SW application without PC but where two state court warrants followed up based on it
The government concedes there was no probable cause for the search warrant here, but two state judges also renewed the warrants based on the first one. That’s good faith. United States v. Jordan, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 2655 (4th Cir. … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: Def must state phone is his to have standing to contest SW
Without acknowledging the cell phone police searched was his, defendant did not show standing to contest the search. Even so, the use of forensic software to bypass the password protection on the phone didn’t make the search unreasonable. United States … Continue reading
CA8: Post-trial assertion of 4A issue was waived
Defendant’s post-trial claim that the tracking warrant used to find him expired three weeks before the arrest was waived by not having been filed pretrial. Even if plain error is applied, “we agree with the district court there was no … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Geofence warrant for cell phones in Capitol building during 1/6 insurrection was valid and relied on in good faith
The D.C. District Court upheld a geofence warrant for cell phones located in the Capitol building during the 1/6 insurrection. Surveying all the cases, and there aren’t many, and noting that there is a margin of error as to accuracy … Continue reading
CA5: GFE to scope of search moots inquiring into PC
Because the good faith exception applied to the scope of search, the merits of the justification for the warrant is moot. United States v. Edwards, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 1032 (5th Cir. Jan. 17, 2023). A passenger didn’t have standing … Continue reading
CA5: No suppression for no-knock violation
There is no suppression remedy for an unjustified no-knock warrant. United States v. Bryant, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 355 (5th Cir. Jan. 6, 2023). Defendant didn’t enter a conditional plea, so his guilty plea waived his Fourth Amendment claim. United … Continue reading
CA6: Govt completely failed to show nexus or PC thus no GFE
The affidavits supporting the records warrant for defendant’s home did not establish nexus between his alleged drug activity, drug records, and his address. Also, the affidavit did not allege that defendant dealt drugs from the house or that he even … Continue reading