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- N.D.Ga.: PIT maneuver here was not excessive force
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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)
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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
D.Me.: Putting an iPhone into airplane mode was not a violation of any REP
Putting a seized iPhone into “airplane mode” until a search warrant could be issued was not a search or seizure, and it did not offend a privacy interest. What officers did was contemplated by Riley. United States v. Cain, 2017 … Continue reading
WaPo: The Fourth Amendment and “no trespassing” signs
WaPo: The Fourth Amendment and “no trespassing” signs by Orin Kerr:
D.Neb.: There is no REP in jail calls
Defendant’s jail calls were known by him to be subject to monitoring, and he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in them. There was probable cause for the search warrant for defendant’s email, giving the magistrate’s finding the due deference … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Owner of housing rental units has no REP in the property during a tenancy from housing inspection
A housing rental partnership has standing to sue under the Fourth Amendment for rental inspection under a city ordinance because of collateral consequences to them. The inspections only occur when they are rented. The complaint fails on the merits, however, … Continue reading
Security Info Watch: Proliferation of smart home tech creates privacy conundrum
Security Info Watch: Proliferation of smart home tech creates privacy conundrum by Adrienne Ehrhardt:
MO: Using software to sort through publicly available information does not violate any REP
The use of software to sort through publicly available information does not violate any reasonable expectation of privacy. Shumate v. State, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 227 (March 28, 2017).* Playpen warrant sustained. United States v. Gaver, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
FL4: REP in a vehicle’s black box, and a SW required to access it
There is a reasonable expectation of privacy in information held in a vehicle’s black box, and a search warrant is required to access it. State v. Worsham, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 4162 (Fla. 4th DCA March 29, 2017):
Buzzfeed: FBI Agents Posed As Filmmakers To Interview Armed Militia In A Dramatic Standoff
Buzzfeed: FBI Agents Posed As Filmmakers To Interview Armed Militia In A Dramatic Standoff by Salvador Hernandez: FBI agents posed as documentary filmmakers to talk to militia members during an armed standoff in the Nevada desert, then used the recorded … Continue reading
MO: Police could arrest def at motel and wait until next day to get into his room for nonpayment of rent
Defendant was first stopped because housekeeping at the hotel he was staying in saw dope in the room and management locked him out and called the police. He was stopped on foot and it was discovered there was a warrant … Continue reading
A.F.Ct.Crim.App.: There’s little REP in a shared desk, and search of desk didn’t make it into SW affidavit
Appellant was an Air Force OSI investigator investigated for fraud against the government for false travel vouchers. A search of a shared desk by a coworker produced some documentation, but the government was already on to him, and a civilian … Continue reading
D.Del.: Dog sniff at a storage unit not a search
A dog sniff at a storage unit didn’t violate any reasonable expectation of privacy. It isn’t the same as curtilage of the home. Defendant’s attempt to show a Franks discrepancy because he originally rented C43 but moved two weeks later … Continue reading
New law review article: Hiding in Plain Sight: A Fourth Amendment Framework for Analyzing Government Surveillance in Public
Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Hiding in Plain Sight: A Fourth Amendment Framework for Analyzing Government Surveillance in Public, 66 Emory L.J. 527 (2017):
The Hill: ACLU challenges warrant to search Facebook page of Dakota Access opponents
The Hill: ACLU challenges warrant to search Facebook page of Dakota Access opponents by Morgan Chalfant: The American Civil Liberties Union is moving to quash a police warrant granted to search data on a Facebook page of a group protesting … Continue reading
AZ: No REP in conversations about def’s driving under influence when officer was there to hear it
Defendant was in a hospital room and had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his conversations on his cell phone or with medical personal admitting driving under the influence when he knew that the officer was near and could overhear … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: 26 U.S.C. § 7609 and the Code of Professional Conduct for CPAs creates no REP; Couch remains good law
“[D]efendant Galloway moves to suppress from admission into evidence the tax records received from CPA Livsey by IRS agents, arguing that 26 U.S.C. § 7609 and the Code of Professional Conduct for CPA’s conferred upon him a reasonable expectation of … Continue reading
techdirt: Judge: FBI’s NIT Warrant Invalid And IP Addresses Do Have An Expectation Of Privacy, But No Suppression Granted
techdirt: Judge: FBI’s NIT Warrant Invalid And IP Addresses Do Have An Expectation Of Privacy, But No Suppression Granted by Tim Cushing: Thanks to the FBI’s one-to-many NIT warrant, which was issued in Virginia but reached thousands of computers all … Continue reading
CA7: No REP re conversations with co-defs in back of a police van
Chicago courts had previously found a distinction between the reasonable expectation of privacy in conversations held in the back of a police squad car and a police van (called a squadrol). The circuit ends this distinction finding it unsupportable. There … Continue reading
GA: State computer privacy statute doesn’t protect IP information from third-party disclosure
A state computer privacy statute cannot be interpreted to protect IP information from administrative subpoena. The state courts have already held it isn’t protected because it’s third-party information. Courtney v. State, 2017 Ga. App. LEXIS 56 (Feb. 17, 2017): Here, … Continue reading
FL2: Def has standing in a package shipped to him under an assumed name
Defendant stated enough to get a hearing on his post-conviction claim that his defense counsel didn’t properly pursue a motion to suppress a package shipped to him under an assumed name, giving him standing in the package, on the ground … Continue reading