Archives
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Recent Posts
- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
- 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
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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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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
OH3: SW for strip search didn’t authorize anal penetration, and record supports there wasn’t any; “where [do] the buttocks end and … the anal cavity begin”
Officers obtained a warrant for a strip search to retrieve a baggie of suspected drugs hidden in defendant’s anus. The warrant did not authorize penetration, and the record supports that there was no penetration. The baggie protruded some, and it … Continue reading
NC: The right to have counsel present during a breathalyzer test doesn’t apply to blood draws under a search warrant
The right to have counsel present during a breathalyzer test doesn’t apply to blood draws under a search warrant. State v. Shepley, 2014 N.C. App. LEXIS 1124 (November 4, 2014): “During the administration of a breathalyzer test, the person being … Continue reading
WaPo: Wrong-door raid gone relatively right is still wrong
WaPo: Wrong-door raid gone relatively right is still wrong by Lucy Steigerwald: Until the war on drugs entirely ends, perhaps all we can hope for is to have a police department polite enough to fix a door they just broke.
HuffPo: Michigan Cops Raid Wrong House, Shoot Beloved 15-Year-Old Dog
HuffPo: Michigan Cops Raid Wrong House, Shoot Beloved 15-Year-Old Dog by David Lohr: Authorities who went to the wrong house in search of a wanted fugitive and shot a beloved family pet are refusing to take responsibility for their actions, … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: Cops Can’t Always Be TV Stars, Judge Says
Courthouse News Service: Cops Can’t Always Be TV Stars, Judge Says by Cameron Langford: Texas lawmen who let a reality TV crew film their raid of a suspect’s home may have violated the woman’s civil rights, a federal judge ruled.
S.D.Ala.: SW for drugs doesn’t need to mention firearms to seize them when found
A search warrant for drugs doesn’t have to mention firearms to seize them. Firearms and drugs are usually linked, and there is a reasonable inference that the presence of firearms around drugs means they are related to each other. United … Continue reading
LegalIntelligencer.com: Extraterritorial Searches for Electronically Stored Information
LegalIntelligencer.com: Extraterritorial Searches for Electronically Stored Information by Leonard Deutchman: On Sept. 18, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, along with Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., introduced the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act, or the LEADS … Continue reading
NYTimes: Child Pornography Case Spurs Debate on Military’s Role in Law Enforcement
NYTimes: Child Pornography Case Spurs Debate on Military’s Role in Law Enforcement by Erik Eckholm and Richard A. Oppel Jr.: In a field office near Brunswick, Ga., a federal agent working as an undercover cybersleuth signed on to a large … Continue reading
CA6: Govt properly filtered attorney calls in wiretap
On a health care fraud wiretap, the government lawfully used Hindu translators as “contractors” assisting in the wiretap, and attorney-client privileged calls were properly filtered out. No violation of either Title III or the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Patel, … Continue reading
NJ: Emergency entry valid despite two hour delay attempting to locate victim
The entry into defendant’s home was justified under the emergency aid doctrine on a finding of blood despite a two hour delay where the police were calling hospitals trying to locate the defendant to avoid the entry unless it was … Continue reading
AZ: Visitor’s purse can be searched under SW for premises
“[A] warrant authorizing the search of a home also authorizes police to search a purse found there but belonging to a person not named in the warrant.” State v. Gilstrap, 2014 Ariz. LEXIS 142 (August 20, 2014):
E.D.Pa.: Four months not too stale for SW when $71k is still missing
There was probable cause and nexus for a search involving $71k in unaccounted for money, even though the theft was four months earlier. United States v. Little, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100795 (E.D. Pa. July 23, 2014). Officers entered defendant’s … Continue reading
MA: Baggies of drugs supported DUI detention since no alcohol signs
Defendant was stopped for possible impaired driving, but he didn’t show signs of alcohol intoxication. Instead, officers saw baggies that one would obviously associate with drugs and that supported the officer’s later actions. The motion to suppress should not have … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Drug and firearm SW turned up surveillance system; looking at images on camera was reasonable; CP found
Officers had a drug and firearms search warrant, and found a surveillance system inside with a “control room.” They looked on the camera screen and immediately saw child pornography. They obtained a second warrant for that. The view of the … Continue reading
WA: Extracting blood is a search; testing blood is a second search
“The extraction of blood from a drunk driving suspect is a search. Testing the blood sample is a second search. It is distinct from the initial extraction because its purpose is to examine the personal information blood contains. We hold … Continue reading
WaPo: Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war casualty
WaPo: Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war casualty by Radley Balko: Add another body to the drug war pile. From the Tampa Bay Times, here is the story of the death of Jason Westcott. A man who … Continue reading