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- USA Today: Cell phone SW for cause of crash
- Treatise on sale to 11/1
- MD: While protective sweep information made it into SW affidavit, there was PC without it
- N.D.Ga.: A Customs forensic search of a cell phone away from the border was still a border search
- CA6: State officer’s arrest for violation of federal MJ law likely wouldn’t violate 4A
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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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
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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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: Good faith exception
N-M Ct.Crim.App.: Lack of CO’s actual authority to issue search authorization fatal to search; no GFE
The Court Martial judge erred in concluding that a particular major had authority to authorize searches of appellant’s body, office, and personal property because she was not a “commander” for the purposes of Mil. R. Evid. 315 even though her … Continue reading
OK: State blood draw statute was suspect, but GFE applies
The state blood draw is constitutionally suspect, but the court doesn’t have to go there. The officer’s actions in relying on it was still good faith. Stewart v. State, 2019 OK CR 6, 2019 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 8 (May … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: CSLI order 3½ months before Carpenter was valid under GFE; officers not expected to know what SCOTUS will do
CSLI order issued 3½ months before Carpenter was valid under good faith exception. Officers were not expected to know what SCOTUS would do. United States v. Turner, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81011 (M.D. Fla. May 14, 2019), adopted, 2019 U.S. … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: Nexus & GFE: Officer’s experience drug dealers keep stuff at home alone is not enough; some fact connecting home required
Officer’s experience alone that drugs and paraphernalia are often kept at the alleged dealer’s home does not satisfy the good faith exception. There must also be some facts connecting the house to the drug offense away from the home. United … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Complete failure of nexus was no PC and even GFE won’t save it
The affidavit for search warrant here fails to show nexus to defendant’s property. Moreover, it can’t even be inferred from the CI’s statements. “The affidavit presently before this Court offers no such supplemental information. The affidavit does not describe a … Continue reading
D.Minn.: No nexus whatsoever between offense and evidence sought and place to be searched; therefore, no GFE
There was no nexus shown at all between the affidavit for the search warrant between the evidence sought and the place to be searched. The good faith exception doesn’t rescue the search here because the affidavit is, in fact, so … Continue reading
IL: Kentucky officers investigated aggravated DUI with an accident on Ohio River bridge; remanded for findings of GFE
Defendant was involved in an accident on the Brookport Bridge between Illinois and Kentucky, and he was originally charged in Kentucky. On closer examination, the accident was determined to be in Illinois, so that case was dismissed, and it was … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: State SW issued for violation of state statute under federal injunction since 1997 should be suppressed
Defendant was federally indicted for possession of child pornography after a state search warrant for violation of state law. There was, however, a federal injunction from 1997 prohibiting prosecutions under a particular New York statute, but at least 11 people … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: The potentially overbroad SW was narrowed by listing the crime under investigation
The search warrant was challenged as a general warrant, but the court finds that it specified the crime under investigation, and that limited it. “Although the specific electronics recovered were not part of [one] burglary, those devices were nevertheless well … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Strickland prejudice is subject to harmless error review
The state court post-conviction resolution of this case under § 2254 review was not unreasonable. Even if defense counsel had moved for suppression of evidence he’d stipulated to, the outcome wouldn’t have changed because of the overwhelming other evidence of … Continue reading
CAAF: Military GFE satisfied here; three military lawyers also asked about PC
In applying the military good faith exception under M.R.E. 311(c)(3), the court finds the NMCCA properly applied the exception which, under rule, blends into probable cause. There clearly was a substantial basis for finding probable cause, and good faith was … Continue reading
CA9: SW was ambiguous as to the mobile home to be searched; no PC shown as to one searched; suppressed
The search warrant authorized search of a gray mobile home. There were two on the property, and the one searched was white. The search warrant was thus ambiguous when the officers arrived, and the court finds the search unjustified because … Continue reading
CA5, 1 & 10: Even if the Playpen SW was void ab initio, that does not mean the GFE would not apply
Even if, arguendo, the NIT warrant issued in the E.D.Va. was void ab initio for violating Rule 41, that does not mean that the good faith exception cannot apply. The court concludes that it does. United States v. Ganzer, 2019 … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Body camera corroborated RS for frisk
“Body camera footage corroborated the detectives’ testimony that the circumstances reasonably suggested Defendant may have been armed and that a pat-down search was needed to ensure officer safety. …. When faced with an uncooperative and seemingly agitated individual suspected of … Continue reading
WY: New facts after the stop not required if there was RS all along
New facts after the stop are not required to extend the stop, as long as there is reasonable suspicion with the stop. Brown v. State, 2019 WY 42, 2019 Wyo. LEXIS 44 (Apr. 19, 2019). Pre-Carpenter obtaining of CSLI was … Continue reading
Collins v. Virginia on remand: GFE saves the search
Collins v. Virginia on remand: The good faith exception applies to sustain the search because no reasonably well trained officer would have known that automobile exception would apply on the curtilage in the garage. Collins v. Commonwealth, 2019 Va. LEXIS … Continue reading
LA5: CSLI obtained by subpoena 16 months before Carpenter subject to GFE
The state obtained defendant’s CSLI 16 months before Carpenter with a subpoena duces tecum. Under the Davis v. United States good faith exception, the exclusionary rule should not apply. State v. Davis, 2019 La. App. LEXIS 627 (La. App. 5 … Continue reading
WI: Exclusionary rule applies to forfeiture actions; remanded for determination of GFE
The exclusionary rule applies to forfeiture actions under 1958 Plymouth Sedan; however, the state gets to argue and develop a record on remand that the good faith exception applies. State v. Scott, 2019 Wisc. App. LEXIS 191 (Apr. 4, 2019). … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Factual mistakes in the affidavit for SW didn’t undermine the factual showing; the GFE also applies
There were factual mistakes in the affidavit for search warrant, but it doesn’t undermine the probable cause showing. In any event, the mistakes are in good faith and the good faith exception applies. United States v. Naum, 2019 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading