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- CA8: Def’s 20 prior arrests helped show voluntariness of consent
- TX1: No standing to challenge seizure of ketamine off co-def, but PC was lacking for his own arrest
- KS: 13 days pole camera surveillance violated no REP
- E.D.Va.: WaPo reporter’s SW was overbroad and 1A protected
- CAAF: GFE applies to cell phone’s geolocation data because of substantial basis for the search authorization
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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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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)
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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: GPS / Tracking Data
AZ: Davis GFE saved McNeely blood draw violation
The state failed to show that defendant consented to his blood draw, but Davis’s good faith exception saves the search here. State v. Valenzuela, 2016 Ariz. LEXIS 116 (April 26, 2016), rev’g 237 Ariz. 307, 350 P.3d 811 (App. 2015):
LA2: GFE applies to GPS nearly two years before Jones; here, def fled and abandoned car
A GPS tracker was placed on defendant’s vehicle nearly two years before Jones, and he’d been under investigation for more than a year prior to that. Davis good faith would apply to the tracking, but that’s really not important: On … Continue reading
DC Velocity: Electronic logging devices do not improve safety; mandate is unconstitutional, trucking group says
DC Velocity: Electronic logging devices do not improve safety; mandate is unconstitutional, trucking group says: OOIDA files brief asking court to overturn ELD mandate, saying it violates Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
NC reverses two for no findings contrary to Grady v. NC on GPS monitoring sex offenders
The trial court failed to follow the dictates of Grady v. North Carolina that satellite based monitoring of sex offenders is a search subject to the reasonableness clause. The summary conclusion it was reasonable is rejected; remanded. State v. Blue, … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: “Strawman” car rental resulted in no reasonable expectation of privacy
Defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a rental car that was rented by another, defendant had a suspended license, it was, for all appearance, a strawman rental, and it was overdue. This was not a case … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: RS came from GPS, pole camera surveillance, CI’s observations, police surveillance
“The Court concludes that the task force’s investigation of Cupp led to reasonable articulable suspicion that he was dealing drugs from his residence and had also been stealing lawnmowers, ATV’s, and motorcycles. The informant’s observations, police surveillance, video of his … Continue reading
OR: Even if stop invalid, false name given to officer is attenuated
While the officer at the suppression hearing couldn’t remember the basis for the traffic stop, the crux was that defendant gave a false name when arrested, and that was an independent illegality attenuated from the stop. The false name charge … Continue reading
CA7: WI’s lifetime GPS monitoring of released SVPs is reasonable under 4A
Plaintiff was civilly committed as a sexually violent predator and finally released with GPS monitoring for life. Such monitoring is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment compared to parole searches, and the state has shown that there is a likelihood that … Continue reading
techdirt: FBI Finally Completes FOIA Request [re GPS] 1,393 Days After It Was Filed; Withholds All 509 Responsive Pages
techdirt: FBI Finally Completes FOIA Request 1,393 Days After It Was Filed; Withholds All 509 Responsive Pages by Tim Cushing:
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
Texas Lawyer: Identifying the Legal Boundaries of Employer’s GPS Use
Texas Lawyer: Identifying the Legal Boundaries of Employer’s GPS Use by Caleena Svatek: When using GPS tracking systems to track employee travel routes, recorded work time, safety, efficiency, and productivity, employers must ensure and be able to demonstrate that there … Continue reading
Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF to Court: Lifetime GPS Tracking Violates the Fourth Amendment
Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF to Court: Lifetime GPS Tracking Violates the Fourth Amendment by Jamie Williams: [L]ast week EFF filed an amicus brief with the United States Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit urging the court to strike down … Continue reading
Tech.mic: Police Are Putting GPS Trackers in Every Object You Can Imagine
Tech.mic: Police Are Putting GPS Trackers in Every Object You Can Imagine by Jack Smith IV: Dallas Police Sergeant James Johnson first started playing around with bait cars when he was working on auto theft cases for the DPD. Over … 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
Natl.L.Rev.: NLRB Hands Employers a Win (Seriously!): GPS Tracking of Employee Upheld
Natl.L.Rev.: NLRB Hands Employers a Win (Seriously!): GPS Tracking of Employee Upheld: It is no surprise that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been busy this summer establishing several principles that are frightening to employers. But in an unexpected … Continue reading
KY: No standing in GPS placed in a borrowed car
Defendant and others were suspects as serial robbers, and the police placed GPS devices on two cars in 2008. On defendant’s, he was not the owner and he just borrowed it. Placing the GPS in the first place was not … Continue reading
VA: GPS device could be removed and reinstalled under same warrant
The GPS tracking warrant in this case was good for 30 days, and it was installed the day after issuance. When officers learned the car was going in for service, they recovered it so it would not be detected, then … Continue reading
NYTimes (AP): Hidden GPS Devices to Track Suspects Raise Legal Concerns
NYTimes (AP): Hidden GPS Devices to Track Suspects Raise Legal Concerns: But the tiny satellite-connected devices — embedded by the manufacturer or slipped by police into stacks of cash, pill bottles or other commonly stolen items — are raising questions … Continue reading