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 -
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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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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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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
TX11 applies GFE to SW based on a statute later held unconstitutional
In an opinion on remand from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Davis good faith applies to a search warrant issued under a provision of the Texas Penal Code later declared unconstitutional. Siller v. State, 2019 Tex. App. LEXIS 2227 … Continue reading
Tennessee finally adopts the good faith exception under Herring
Tennessee finally adopts the good faith exception. State v. McElrath, 2019 Tenn. LEXIS 100 (Mar. 12, 2019) (concurring-dissenting 1; concurring-dissenting 2):
CA1: Cell phones are not tracking devices, following CA7 & 3
“In affirming, we reject his arguments that there was error in the issuance of precise location information warrants (‘PLI warrants’) by a magistrate judge in Maine on a finding of probable cause, which allowed monitoring of the locations of Ackies’s … Continue reading
IN: Carpenter applies to a week of CSLI, but GFE and harmless error applies
In a case GVRd after Carpenter, Indiana finds Carpenter would be followed, but the good faith exception applied. Moreover, it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Zanders v. State, 2019 Ind. LEXIS 46 (Mar. 8, 2019):
NE: Search of the person here was valid an an inventory at the jail
The search of defendant’s person at the jail after his arrest was valid as an inventory search. State v. Garcia, 302 Neb. 406 (Mar. 8, 2019). “As set forth above, the undersigned does not agree with Defendant that the affidavit … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Federal telephonic SW not subject to suppression without bad faith
The stop, as told to defendant, was for a traffic violation, but there was reasonable suspicion for drug trafficking considering all that the officers knew. Therefore, using a drug dog was reasonable because a drug investigation was legally supported. Use … Continue reading
CA9: CSLI warrant was issued without PC, but it wasn’t so lacking that GFE should not apply
The government’s pre-Carpenter search warrant for CSLI was issued without probable cause, but it wasn’t so deficient that the good faith exception should not apply. United States v. Elmore, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 6507 (9th Cir. Mar. 4, 2019):
N.D.Cal.: Despite 2011 violations of statute on real-time CSLI and trap and trace orders, GFE requires no suppression for isolated negligence
Seven years before Carpenter, Salinas CA police violated statute in getting real-time CSLI and a trap and trace order to find defendant after a robbery. The statutory violation was negligence, but it was isolated and not systemic, and the other … Continue reading
AZ: Police relying on binding appellate precedent was subject to GFE
Police following state appellate precedent at the time of defendant’s blood test, later changed, was subject to the good faith exception. State v. Weakland, 2019 Ariz. LEXIS 56 (Feb. 25, 2019). Defendant filed what’s treated as a successor 2255 over … Continue reading
D.S.D.: SW affidavit merely referred to but not fully incorporated satisfied GFE on particularity
For the good faith exception to apply, it is only necessary that the affidavit be referred to in the warrant to save the warrant from a failure of particularity; it doesn’t need to be completely incorporated by reference. United States … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: GFE doesn’t apply to protective sweeps which must be objectively reasonable
The good faith exception cannot be applied to an overbroad protective sweep. [Yet, the court finds the exclusionary rule doesn’t apply for other reasons.] United States v. Garcia, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27861 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 22, 2019):
N.D.Ga.: No nexus shown for Facebook SW, but GFE applied
The District Court disagrees with the USMJ that there was probable cause and nexus for a search warrant for defendant’s Facebook page. But, reasonable judges disagree, and that is enough for the court to conclude that the good faith exception … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Knotted plastic bag of drugs in waistband was in plain view
Defendant was stopped for a traffic offense, and his tinted windows were way too dark and the officer couldn’t see inside. Defendant was told to lower the window, and he did. The officer could immediately see a knotted plastic bag … Continue reading
CA6: No successor 2255 for Carpenter
Petitioner seeks a 2255 successor habeas petition based on Carpenter. It’s denied because: It’s not newly discovered, and it wouldn’t even apply because of the good faith exception. In re Gipson, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 4457 (6th Cir. Feb. 14, … Continue reading
WA: Breath test was valid as search incident
A breath test conducted under the implied consent law is a valid search incident to arrest. The state constitution does not impose a higher standard. State v. Nelson, 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 354 (Feb. 14, 2019). Defendant didn’t raise a … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Corroboration of CI for rectal SW was thin, but GFE applies
Based on a CI that was partially corroborated, officers believed defendant was concealing drugs in his rectum. They obtain a search warrant for a rectal search. The probable cause from the CI is thin. “Basic fairness requires the government to … Continue reading
Two controlled buys: one not done right, one good
The search warrant was based on a controlled buy, but the CI doing the buy was controlled enough to know that what was acquired came from defendant. Therefore, probable cause is lacking, and the good faith exception won’t be applied. … Continue reading
CA7: SW affidavit failed to show nexus, but it was close enough for GFE
The affidavit for a search warrant for a third person’s home where defendant spent a lot of time was deficient on showing nexus and defendant’s connection to it, but it otherwise showed probable cause. Actually, right after three controlled buys, … Continue reading
CA11: PC showing in SW affidavit but “we cannot say that the officer’s reliance on the warrant was unreasonable.”
The affidavit for the search warrant didn’t clearly identify defendant as connected to the property or that there was drug trafficking just from the trash pulls, but it showed that there was drug activity. The court cannot say, however, that … Continue reading