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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: Good faith exception
IN: Private university’s police dept serves police function; records thus public
Notre Dame’s police department serves a police function, therefore a public function, and it is subject to public records disclosure, even though the university as a whole isn’t. [So, no private search doctrine?] ESPN, Inc. v. Univ. of Notre Dame … Continue reading
D.Minn.: When lack of PC for SW is raised, this court looks to whether there was enough for reliance on SW to be objectively reasonable
Defendant argued lack of probable cause for search warrants for two vehicles and a computer, so the court goes first to good faith and analyzes the probable cause through that lens finding that reliance on the warrants with this much … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: Four corners rule does not apply to additional facts supporting good faith exception
Defendant’s original motion didn’t support standing but his brief did, and the court finds he was an overnight guest with standing. “At the outset, the court seriously doubts that the search warrant in this case was valid. While a magistrate’s … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Pre-Riley warrantless state search of cell phone was valid, so GFE applies
Defendant’s cell phone was searched without a warrant pre-Riley under California’s Diaz which expressly permitted warrantless cell phone searches. Therefore, that search was valid at the time under the good faith exception. United States v. Williams, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
IL: Warrantless blood draws pre-Neely are valid under GFE
Illinois law before McNeely permitted warrantless blood draws, and pre-McNeely searches would be valid under Davis good faith. People v. Harrison, 2016 IL App (5th) 150048, 2016 Ill. App. LEXIS 73 (Feb. 18, 2016). A 2254 petitioner gets a COA … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Guilt by association here clearly wasn’t enough for a cell phone and CSLI search warrant, and GFE doesn’t apply
The cell phone and CSLI warrant were truly lacking in probable cause as to defendant. There was but a passing reference to him in an effort to show guilt by association, and that clearly was not a sufficient showing of … Continue reading
FL5: SW in burglary had no nexus, was fatally overbroad, and no GFE
The affidavit for the search warrant in this case completely lacked probable cause by showing a nexus to defendant, 12 other burglaries, and the place to be searched. Moreover, the list of things to be seized was completely without particularity … Continue reading
MO: Even though SI was well after Gant, state hadn’t overruled prior authority, so David GFE applies
Even though Gant was decided in 2009, and Davis good faith post-Gant was decided in 2011, and the search incident here was in 2012, the good faith exception would be applied to save an unreasonable search incident because the state … Continue reading
CA11: Two men, two beds = common authority over room
When two men shared a room with two beds, one can consent to a search of the whole room. This is joint custody and control. “Marvin had common authority to consent to search his shared bedroom, including Espinoza’s designated side … Continue reading
Good faith as a part of inventory searches? In Ohio since at least 1992. Coming to a court near you. Is good faith being subsumed into the “reasonableness” inquiry?
In 2009’s Herring, “good faith” is referred to in the majority opinion seven times as a reason for not applying the exclusionary rule. There it was a search incident to a recalled arrest warrant, a Warrantless search. In Ohio, at … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: Davis applies to GPS placed three years before Jones
A GPS device was placed on defendant’s motorbike in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2009 by a CI working for the U.S. government. Davis applies because Jones wasn’t decided until 2012. United States v. Boyajian, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 170782 (C.D.Cal. … Continue reading
W.D.Okla.: Rare successful Franks challenge on reckless statements of fact
Defendant made a successful Franks challenge in his drug case. The officer affiant was reckless in overstating facts that were critical to the finding of probable cause and the warrant was suppressed because a Franks violation means no good faith … Continue reading
Cal.5th: Schmerber applies pre-McNeely and def’s statement he was withdrawing from meth was exigency for a blood draw
Schmerber not McNeely was the law at the time of the blood draw here, and Davis means that Schmerber applies. Here, defendant said to a nurse he was withdrawing from methamphetamine and that reasonably was exigency. People v. Jimenez, 2015 … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Assuming that the SW affidavit lacked PC, defendant makes no effort to show that the affidavit fit any of the exceptions to the GFE
Even assuming that the search warrant affidavit lacked probable cause, defendant makes no effort to show that the affidavit fit any of the exceptions to the good faith exception. United States v. Pettis, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 154439 (D.Minn. Oct. … Continue reading
VA: Davis good faith saves SI of a cell phone before Riley; even though no state case permitted it, CA4 did
Defendant’s cell phone was searched without a warrant months before Riley even had its cert grant. Even though no state case held that the warrant requirement applied to cell phones, the Fourth Circuit had concluded that the search incident doctrine … Continue reading
CA7: GPS installation 2 yrs before Jones was in good faith no matter how you cut it
Here the GPS was put on defendant’s vehicle two years before Jones and stayed 55 days. It was replaced repeatedly because of dead batteries or because it fell off. Defendant tried to get around Davis good faith by arguing that … Continue reading
VA: Davis-type good faith exception applies to the length of the detention where Rodriguez decided while case on appeal
Davis-type good faith exception applies to a violation of Rodriguez on the length of the detention where no state or Fourth Circuit case said an overlong stop was unreasonable. (Rodriguez was decided while the appeal was pending, but the defense … Continue reading