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- N.D.Ga.: PIT maneuver here was not excessive force
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- MI: Lifetime SO registration and GPS monitoring was reasonable
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- E.D.Ark.: Facts underlying QI will be submitted to jury
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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: Reasonable expectation of privacy
DE: No REP in recorded jail calls [obviously]
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not objecting to defendant’s jail calls that he knew were monitored and recorded. Hubbard v. State, 2018 Del. LEXIS 34 (Jan. 25, 2018).* A drug raid led to a strip search of defendant in … Continue reading
CO: Def had no REP in the GPS his bondsman made him wear
The defendant was on bail, and his bondsman monitored him by GPS. The police obtained the GPS information to connect him to another crime. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the bondsman’s GPS. People v. Campbell, 2018 COA … Continue reading
CA9: Police officers have no REP in their own body camera videos
Police officers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their own body camera videos. Santa Ana Police Officers Association v. City of Santa Ana, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 1980 (9th Cir. Jan. 25, 2018):
E.D.Ky.: Jail call to wife that def knew would be recorded not privileged
In a jail call, marital privilege succumbs to the lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy because defendant knew his calls were being recorded. As to a letter to his wife in his cell, it disclosed a request to her … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: “The Myth of Fourth Amendment Circularity”
Lior Strahilevitz & Matthew Kugler, The Myth of Fourth Amendment Circularity, 84 U. Chi L. Rev. 1747 (2017): “Our findings suggest that popular privacy expectations are far more stable than most judges and commentators have been assuming.” Meaning what? To … Continue reading
D.S.D.: General description of a handyman’s tools as “miscellaneous tools” did not make the inventory “defective”
General description of a handyman’s tools as “miscellaneous tools” did not make the inventory “defective.” United States v. Bruce, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7387 (D.S.D. Jan 17, 2018). “Although the affidavit in the instant case could have provided more information … Continue reading
D.N.J.: SEC didn’t violate Model Rule 4.4(a) when it obtained SW production from USAO
“For instance, the SEC did not ‘violate [Avalon’s] legal rights’ when it ‘obtain[ed] evidence’ from the [USAO of the] DNJ that the DNJ had in turn obtained through a court-issued search warrant. Rule 4.4(a). As described above, when it accepted … Continue reading
Anchorage Daily News: State admits recording jail conversations between defense lawyers and clients
Anchorage Daily News: State admits recording jail conversations between defense lawyers and clients by Lisa Demer: For four years, a tucked-away monitoring system in a certain visitation room at the Anchorage jail recorded conversations between attorneys and their clients – … Continue reading
CA5: Forgoing license check not unreasonable under Rodriguez where investigation is proceeding apace
“Burcham’s argument based on Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S.Ct. 1609 (2015), is unavailing. Rodriguez is distinguishable; the district court did not err in finding that Jenkins’s decision to extend the stop was justified by additional reasonable suspicion developed from … Continue reading
OH8: Drug dog on scene while ticket being written caused no additional detention
Defendant’s stop was with reasonable suspicion based on corroborated informant hearsay. “Because the police were still in the process of writing the traffic ticket when the canine arrived and conducted the sniff, and thus the stop was not unlawfully extended.” … Continue reading
MyNewsLA.com: Apartment building owners sue LA over rent stabilization, argue ordinance hurts tenants
MyNewsLA.com: Apartment building owners sue LA over rent stabilization, argue ordinance hurts tenants by Toni McAllister:
WA: Shareholder or officer of closely held corp has no personal privacy interest in corporate records under state constitution
“Paul Chase, shareholder and principal officer of Red Leaf Construction Inc., appeals the trial court’s partial denial of his motion to suppress Red Leaf’s bank records. A commissioner of this court granted discretionary review. We consider, as a matter of … Continue reading
D.Minn.: No REP in inmate calls of civilly committed sexual psychopath
Defendant was civilly committed as a sexual psychopathic person. It has been held that such inmates have the same rights as a pretrial detainee. Beaulieu v. Ludeman, 690 F.3d 1017, 1028 (8th Cir. 2012). Here, defendant signed a notice of … Continue reading
PA: Telling computer repair person to move files to a new hard drive was a waiver of REP
Defendant essentially waived his reasonable expectation of privacy in his computer hard drive when he took it in for repair, was told that the hard drive was failing and he needed a new one, and then directed them to move … Continue reading
MD: Third person added to a jail call after the warning of recording didn’t violate state wiretap law
Adding a third person to a jail call after the initial recording was played saying that calls were recorded was not a wilful interception of that person’s call under the state wiretap act. The only other state to deal with … Continue reading
IN: Officers jumping over a locked gate to investigate a noise complaint was unreasonable under Indiana Constitution
Defendant was at a conservation club he was a member of, and, during a party at the club, members were shooting at a pizza box made into a target. Because it was a weeknight and late, a neighbor was disturbed … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Def’s putting cell phone in daughter’s backpack so she could play with it was not a waiver of REP
Defendant regularly stayed with his grandmother until a few weeks before the search, and by the time of search it was more intermittent. Still, he had standing in her house because he had clothes there and still stayed there. He … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: “GPS Affidavit [does not need] to include the ‘use and aims’ of the location information” to be valid
A “GPS Affidavit [does not need] to include the ‘use and aims’ of the location information” to be valid. [No case even suggests that.] United States v. Shulaya, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 209340 (S.D. N.Y. Dec. 20, 2017). Defendant consented … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Officer’s slow walking issuance of ticket to allow drug dog time to arrive wasn’t objectively unreasonable
The officer’s subjective intent to delay the processing of defendant’s speeding ticket didn’t show that it was objectively slowed down to give time to get a drug dog to the scene to conduct a car sniff before the finishing of … Continue reading