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Recent Posts
- D.Utah: Minor time detours to writing up a traffic ticket didn’t unreasonable extend this stop; the dog was quickly on its way
- KY: Despite lack of nexus, SW sustained under GFE
- CO: DNA could be seized from trash
- CA8: Nebraska statute allowing SWs to cross state lines doesn’t violate 4A
- WA: Sweat patch as condition of release violated state constitution’s privacy provision
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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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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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)
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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: Warrant execution
W.D.N.Y.: Def lacked standing in apts he owned and rented to relatives
Defendant lacked standing to contest the search of an apartment building he owned but rented the units out to relatives. The CI, however, puts the defendant in one of the apartments with cocaine and a firearm ten days before the … Continue reading
techdirt: Supreme Court Asked To Tell Cops That Consenting To A Search Is Not Consenting To Having Your Home Destroyed
techdirt: Supreme Court Asked To Tell Cops That Consenting To A Search Is Not Consenting To Having Your Home Destroyed by Tim Cushing:
NYTimes: Have a Search Warrant for Data? Google Wants You to Pay
NYTimes: Have a Search Warrant for Data? Google Wants You to Pay by Gabriel J.X. Dance and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries (“The tech giant has begun charging U.S. law enforcement for responses to search warrants and subpoenas.”): Facing an increasing number of … Continue reading
PA: SW for cell phone extraction executed after expiration was treated as a warrantless search
A search warrant executed on cell phones for extraction of data expired four days before the search. Therefore, the search was warrantless, and the trial court should have suppressed. Commonwealth v. Bowens, 2020 Pa. Super. LEXIS 22 (Jan. 17, 2020). … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: No constitutional requirement that the SW be served on the target of the search, so the missing attachment didn’t matter
There is no constitutional requirement that the search warrant be served on the target of the search, so the missing attachment didn’t matter. “As stated above, the record demonstrates with reasonable certainty that a warrant stating with particularity the items … Continue reading
WaPo: Investigative tool used in law firm searches at risk, federal prosecutors fear
WaPo: Investigative tool used in law firm searches at risk, federal prosecutors fear by Ann E. Marimow (“Last spring, more than a dozen federal agents spent six hours searching the law firm of a prominent Maryland attorney, sweeping up thousands … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Leaked existence of federal SW that had press there before the SW results in statutory damages award
Plaintiff sued the government because the IRS and FBI leaked to the media a search warrant for his premises and the media was there. He got $1000 in statutory damages. He filed an untimely motion to reopen based on alleged … Continue reading
NC: Reasonable force can be used for a DUI blood draw under SW when def refuses
Officers had a search warrant for defendant’s blood while he was in the hospital for an accident. Relying on United States v. Bullock, 71 F.3d 171 (5th Cir. 1995), the court concludes that reasonable force can be used to take … Continue reading
M.D.Pa. Delay in searching cell phones wasn’t unreasonable because def was in jail out of possession anyway
The delay between seizing defendant’s cell phones and searching them wasn’t unreasonable considering he was in jail and would have had no access to them anyway. United States v. Carey, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1150 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 6, 2020). … Continue reading
CA4: Two address typos in affidavit for SW along with correct address twice and correct address in SW not error
There were two address typos in the affidavit, but it was in there correct twice, too. The warrant was correct. The search was reasonable. “In these circumstances, the technical errors in the search warrant affidavit did not invalidate the warrant … Continue reading
CA9: There was PC for the warrant for the premises, and officers were not unreasonable in continuing the search for an hour when they learned their target didn’t live there
Officers got a search warrant for a mobile home, and found out when they executed it that their target didn’t live there. The search warrant was based on informant hearsay that was reliable enough for the search warrant to issue. … Continue reading
AR: Prosecutor also didn’t know for a year that an HBO documentary crew was present at search; no discovery violation on SW materials
About a year after the execution of the search warrant, the parties learned that an HBO documentary crew recording Meth Storm was along for the search. Citing Layne v. Wilson and Brady, the defense sought access to the video and … Continue reading
NY1: Execution of SW on cell phone in police custody in 30 days not unreasonable
Defendant’s cell phones were already in the possession of the police, and the search warrant was deemed by its own language as executed on issuance. The actual search, however, took 30 days, and that wasn’t unreasonable. People v. Ruffin, 2019 … Continue reading
WA: Arrestee’s right to advice of right to counsel doesn’t require stopping execution of SW to tell him
While an arrestee is entitled to a prompt notice of his right to counsel, police do not have to interrupt execution of a search warrant to do it. State v. Ackerman, 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 3023 (Dec. 2, 2019). Officers … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Among eight 4A issues, none prevails; failure to provide inventory at the time of search is ministerial and requires a showing of prejudice
Defendant raised almost every conceivable Fourth Amendment and Rule 41 issue he could, and the district court rejects them all: (1) “The information in the affidavit is insufficient to support a finding of probable cause as to the crimes listed … Continue reading
PA: Refusing to submit to BAC blood draw under SW supports obstruction of justice conviction
Refusal to submit to a blood draw search warrant for BAC supports a conviction for obstruction of justice. Commonwealth v. Palchanes, 2019 Pa. Super. LEXIS 1186 (Nov. 27, 2019). The CI’s basis of knowledge and reliability was adequately shown, and … Continue reading
IL: Once def was acquitted, seized computer data should have been returned, not searched again without a warrant
Defendant was a Peoria police officer being accused of sexual assault, and the Illinois State Police obtained a search warrant for his computer and other devices. The hard drives were copied with EnCase software. Defendant was tried on the sexual … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: No 4A right via Rule 41 to have copy of SW at scene; no exclusion for failure to timely leave it
Rule 41 requires that a copy of the search warrant be left at the premises, but it grants no constitutional right to the target of the search to supervise the search. Moreover, failure to leave a copy of the warrant … Continue reading
CA4: “Filter Team” of govt agents and AUSAs violated separation of powers and A-C privilege
The USMJ’s ex parte creation of a “Filter Team” of federal agents and prosecutors to review the seizure of records from a law firm under a search warrant violates separation of powers and doesn’t adequately protect attorney-client privilege and work … Continue reading
VA: Def’s refusal to submit to a SW for DNA could be argued as consciousness of guilt at trial
Defendant’s conscious refusal to submit to a DNA buccal swab sought by a search warrant could be argued as consciousness of guilt. Haas v. Commonwealth, 2019 Va. App. LEXIS 237 (Oct. 29. 2019). The officer’s knowledge from nearly six months … Continue reading