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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)
--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: Reasonable expectation of privacy
Law Review: The Forgotten Residents: Defining the Fourth Amendment House to the Detriment of the Homeless
The Forgotten Residents: Defining the Fourth Amendment House to the Detriment of the Homeless by Lindsay J. Gus in University of Chicago Law Forum
N.D.Ga.: A wire mesh “ceiling” over a storage unit doesn’t provide a REP from someone climbing a ladder and looking
A defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in a storage unit with a wire mesh “ceiling” where the officer used a ladder and looked over the wall. There was insufficient effort to maintain privacy from others just looking. United … Continue reading
Talk Business: GPS technology benefits used car industry, privacy concerns remain
Talk Business: GPS technology benefits used car industry, privacy concerns remain; used car sales to rise in 2017 by Jeff Della Rosa
W.D.Va.: Leaving cell phone outside fed courthouse under ashtray, where CSOs commonly recommended hiding phones, was a waiver of REP in phone, albeit not abandonment
Defendant came to the federal courthouse because his mother was being arrested, and DHS officers invited him there. He did not know that he had an arrest warrant, too. When he got to the courthouse, he was told he couldn’t … Continue reading
VA: While def didn’t have standing as to whole car, he did in the space immediately around him, relying on Jones GPS case
Defendant passenger was removed from a car after a traffic stop, and the officer with the defendant directed another to look for what he thought was a gun, which the other officer found. Defendant was held not to have standing … Continue reading
OR: Trash collector could segregate def’s trash for police
Defendant’s trash was segregated by the private contractor working for the city on defendants’ collection days. That is virtually indistinguishable from State v. Howard, 204 Ore. App. 438, 129 P.3d 792 (2006), aff’d, 342 Ore. 635, 157 P.3d 1189 (2007), … Continue reading
CO: No IAC for not challenging P2P search of computer since no REP
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging the search of defendant’s computer via a P2P connection on Limewire that resulted in his child pornography conviction. By going online via Limewire, defendant essentially opened his computer to the outside world, … Continue reading
New Law Review: “The Positive Law Model of the Fourth Amendment,” for evaluating new technological problems and the third-party doctrine
New Law Review: “The Positive Law Model of the Fourth Amendment,” 129 Harv. L. Rev. 1821 (2016) by William Baude & James Y. Stern: For fifty years, courts have used a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard to define “searches” under … Continue reading
New law review: Actual Expectations of Privacy, Fourth Amendment Doctrine, and the Mosaic Theory
New law review: Actual Expectations of Privacy, Fourth Amendment Doctrine, and the Mosaic Theory, by Lior Strahilevitz & Matthew B. Kugler (not online yet, if ever).
W.D.Mo.: Officers could rely on hotel manager’s apparent authority to consent to opening work locker
Defendant had a limited reasonable expectation of privacy in his hotel work locker and its contents, and officers got the manager to open it. It was reasonable for the officers to believe that the hotel manager had apparent authority over … Continue reading
CA3: An apparent burglar has no REP or standing to challenge entry
“Martin testified that Lewis did not have a key to her home and did not have permission to be at her residence at the time of arrest. Because she did not leave Lewis in her home when she left, she … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Later suppression of drugs that led to indictment and finding more drugs on arrest doesn’t suppress the second find
Defendant was subjected to a search and arrested with drugs. He was indicted on that. When executing the arrest warrant, officers found defendant with more drugs. After that, defendant succeeded in suppressing the evidence in the first case that led … Continue reading
LA2: Even though LA doesn’t follow SCOTUS standing rules, def still had to show a privacy interest, and he didn’t have one in his murder victim’s cell phone
Defendant couldn’t challenge the search of his murder victim’s cell phone. While Louisiana doesn’t follow SCOTUS cases on standing, no privacy right of defendant was involved in her phone found at her feet when the police arrived at the crime … Continue reading
FL4: Password protected cell phone left in a stolen car still had a REP in its contents; that’s what the password means
Defendant juvenile left a cell phone in a stolen car, and it was password protected. The password protection “clearly indicat[ed] an intention to protect the privacy of all of the digital material on the cell phone or able to be … Continue reading
TX: REP in text messages and a SW required to extract them; death penalty conviction reversed
There is a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages, and a search warrant on probable cause is required to search for and seize them. (The federal good faith exception is not applicable, and there is no state good faith … Continue reading
TX6: Two TX DFPS workers’ convictions for “official oppression” for knowingly conducting illegal searches affirmed
This defendant was employed by the Greenville office of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. A.K., a 15 year runaway, was captured and taken to juvenile detention. “On A.K.’s arrival, the center’s personnel took A.K.’s personal effects, including … Continue reading
NLJ: Ninth Circuit Considers Limits to DEA Access to Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program
NLJ: Ninth Circuit Considers Limits to DEA Access to Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program: On November 7, 2016, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments in Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program v. United States DEA, No. … Continue reading
WV: Def left jacket at friend’s house where he occasionally spent the night; no REP at the time of seizure
Defendant was an occasional overnight guest in the home of a friend. He left a jacket there in a common area, and the police seized it by the consent of the homeowner. Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in … Continue reading