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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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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)
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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
D.Del.: Passenger lacked standing to contest placement of GPS, aside from the fact it was before Jones
Defendant as a passenger lacked standing in the GPS placement on another’s vehicle before Jones, never even having to discuss Davis good faith. United States v. Cabrera, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 96288 (D. Del. July 16, 2014).* Defendant’s overbreadth challenge … Continue reading
AP: GPS Tracking Case Has Left Unsettled Questions
AP: GPS Tracking Case Has Left Unsettled Questions by Eric Tucker: Judges around the country are grappling with the ripple effects of a 2-year-old Supreme Court ruling on GPS tracking, reaching conflicting conclusions on the case’s broader meaning and tackling … Continue reading
ACLU: Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them?
ACLU: Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them? The map below tracks what we know, based on press reports and publicly available documents, about the use of stingray tracking devices by state and local police departments. Following the map is a … Continue reading
WaPo: How hard should it be for cops to track your location? A new lawsuit revives the debate.
WaPo: How hard should it be for cops to track your location? A new lawsuit revives the debate. by Brian Fung: Privacy advocates sued a Florida police department Tuesday over a controversial surveillance technology that, they say, improperly lets authorities … Continue reading
D.D.C.: GPS on taxicabs doesn’t violate Fourth Amendment
Requiring D.C. taxis to have GPS that transmits detailed information about their location and fares being charged does not violate the Fourth Amendment (following the NYC case). Azam v. D.C. Taxicab Comm’n, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74353 (D.D.C. June 2, … Continue reading
TX11 declines to follow Davis good faith exception for Jones GPS violation
A GPS device installed on mere reasonable suspicion with a court order was invalid under Jones. Texas’s limited good faith exception does not recognize the Davis good faith exception. State v. Jackson, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 5861 (Tex. App.–-Eastland May … Continue reading
news.gnom.es: Quantifying Privacy: A Week of Location Data May Be an “Unreasonable Search” & New Law Review Article: Mosaic Theory and Machine Learning
News Gnomes: Quantifying Privacy: A Week of Location Data May Be an “Unreasonable Search” When does the simple digital tracking of your location and movements — the GPS bleeps from most of our smartphones — start to be truly revealing? … Continue reading
Wired: Cops Must Swear Silence to Access Vehicle Tracking System
Wired: Cops Must Swear Silence to Access Vehicle Tracking System by Kim Zetter: Vigilant Solutions, founded in 2009, claims to have the nation’s largest repository of license-plate images with nearly 2 billion records stored in its National Vehicle Location Service … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Inventory in aid of car forfeiture was valid
Defendant was arrested at home for money laundering. A protective sweep of the premises revealed a Lamborghini and Ferrari in the garage, and they were seized for forfeiture. An inventory of the vehicles in aid of the forfeitures was proper. … Continue reading
AZ: GPS on another’s vehicle targeting def as driver gave standing; no GFE where no prior state authority
Officers placed a GPS on another person’s vehicle knowing that defendant would be driving it, and he was the target. That gave him standing. The good faith exception doesn’t apply because there was no binding state precedent that said GPS … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: GPS “Bullets” and the Fourth Amendment
Matthew F. Meyers, GPS “Bullets” and the Fourth Amendment, 4 Wake Forest L. Rev. Online 18 (2014). Abstract: For as long as there have been cars, there have been car chases. A car chase connotes a dangerous, high-speed dash through … Continue reading
CA11: Pre-Jones GPS valid by good faith exception
Because there was clear precedent that GPS monitoring before Jones was valid, and at least by the Davis good faith exception, the GPS here was valid, too. During the pendency of this appeal, other cases so held. United States v. … Continue reading
AOL: Senate Committee Votes To Keep Driver Black Box Data Private
AOL: Senate Committee Votes To Keep Driver Black Box Data Private The legislation stipulates that the owner or lessee of the vehicle is the only person entitled to the data in the black box