Archives
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Recent Posts
- VA: 12 second question about drugs didn’t unreasonably prolong the stop that was going to take a while anyway
- E.D.Tenn.: Application for SW was considered in detention ruling
- TN: RS didn’t develop to continue stop; second stop based on first suppressed
- CA4: Traffic stop immediately became firearms investigation; suppressed
- CA10: Disagreement over spelling of street name didn’t make warrant fail particularity; GFE at least would apply
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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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F.R.Crim.P. 41
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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)
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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) -
“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: F.R.Crim.P. 41
D.Mass.: Failure to leave a full copy of the SW at scene does not require suppression
“Jones alleges that he entered a guilty plea unknowingly because [defense counsel] Cloherty incorrectly informed him that, after testifying at the suppression hearing that he lived part-time at the apartment where the officers executed the search, he could not testify … Continue reading
CA9: Playpen warrant violated Rule 41(b)(1), but GFE still saved it
A Network Investigative Technique (NIT) warrant (“Playpen” warrant) issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia exceeded the general territorial scope identified in Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(b)(1) and was thus void ab initio because it authorized … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: Neither 4A or Rule 41 requires SW be served on def before its execution
“Neither the Fourth Amendment nor Rule 41 requires the executing officer to serve a search warrant on the owner before beginning the search. United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90, 98-99 (2006). Counsel was not ineffective for failing to file … Continue reading
D.R.I.: Delay in getting cell phone SW as attributed to parties’ settlement discussions
The delay in getting a search warrant for defendant’s cell phones was caused in part by the parties’ negotiations over pre-indictment resolution, and it was reasonable. United States v. Boudreau, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48686 (D. R.I. Mar. 24, 2018).* … Continue reading
S.D.Ala.: AL state requirement of recording SW application doesn’t apply to SW used in federal court
The Alabama state requirement that an application for a search warrant be recorded doesn’t apply to using the product of the search in federal court. United States v. Tensley, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29979 (S.D. Ala. Feb. 26, 2018). Defendant’s … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: Argument analysis: Justices divided over disclosure of overseas emails
SCOTUSBlog: Argument analysis: Justices divided over disclosure of overseas emails by Amy Howe:
WaPo: Supreme Court to hear Microsoft case: A question of law and borders
WaPo: Supreme Court to hear Microsoft case: A question of law and borders by Ellen Nakashima:
CA3: Playpen SW violated Rule 41 and 4A, but GFE saves the search
Playpen search warrant violated Fourth Amendment, but the good faith exception saves it. “For the reasons discussed below, we hold that the NIT warrant violated Rule 41(b). As a result, the magistrate judge not only exceeded her authority under the … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio declines to wait for Microsoft to be decided and issues SW for gmail in another country
The government has applied for a Google search warrant stored overseas. Rather than wait for United States v. Microsoft to be decided, the court reviewed all the briefing in that case and decides that the search warrant will issue. In … Continue reading
Just Security: Microsoft Ireland: Extraterritoriality Step Zero
Just Security: Microsoft Ireland: Extraterritoriality Step Zero by Pamela Bookman:
CA4: Playpen SW sustained
Playpen warrants (where the seized server was in the Eastern District of Virginia) were valid, and the good faith exception applied because it wasn’t readily apparent that the USMJ exceeded his or her jurisdiction or that that would be a … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: A claim that government agents disclosed the contents of the search of his house to FoxNews didn’t state a claim under The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a
A claim that government agents disclosed the contents of the search of his house to FoxNews didn’t state a claim under The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a. “Rule 41 does not authorize a court to manage the collection, storage, … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Good cause shown for execution of SW at night because of neighborhood children
The government showed good cause for execution of a search warrant at night because of defendant’s house’s proximity to a school on break that would likely have kids around in the day in case the raid became violent. In any … Continue reading
D.Md.: A SW for cell phone data going to Verizon in FL was within the court’s jurisdiction
Where the crime under investigation is in this district, it doesn’t matter that the search warrant for geolocation data from defendant’s cell phone is located in another district. The government can still get it by search warrant under Rule 41(b) … Continue reading
techdirt: First Circuit Appeals Court Latest To Overturn Playpen Suppression Order
techdirt: First Circuit Appeals Court Latest To Overturn Playpen Suppression Order by Tim Cushing: A third Appeals Court has ruled on the tactics the FBI used to track down users of a dark web child porn site. And the third … Continue reading
OR: Under automobile exception, exigency for stop may dissipate as to one thing yet arise as to another
“[T]he automobile exception continues to supply the per se exigency necessary to conduct a warrantless search of the vehicle that was mobile when stopped so long as the officer has probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains evidence of … Continue reading
CA8: (1) In drug conspiracy case, the govt overcame staleness because of ongoing crime; (2) Issuance of SW in D.Neb. by non-cross designated USMJ in N.D.Iowa was subject to GFE
First, the search warrant in this drug conspiracy case wasn’t stale, although a long time had elasped during and between the times recorded in the affidavit of things that happened. While the evidence wasn’t strong, the deference accorded the issuing … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Extraterritorial Gmail SW enforced
A search warrant for Google email stored extraterritorially will be enforced. In re Search Warrant No. 16-960-M-1, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131230 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 17, 2017). The request to search did not come during an unavoidable lull in the … Continue reading
D.Nev.: An email warrant can be for servers outside the jurisdiction of the court
A search warrant for email can be for servers outside the jurisdiction of the court. United States v. McGuire, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 114471 (D. Nev. Feb. 9, 2017). The Coast Guard was surveilling Arroyo Quemada Beach in Santa Barbara … Continue reading