September 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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Recent Posts
- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
- W.D.Tex.: What is the duty of the neutral and detached magistrate?
- D.Me.: Yes, more investigation could have been done, but there’s still PC on what there was
- CA3: Brady doesn’t apply to SW materials
- E.D.Mich.: Person a cell phone was given to as gift could consent to search
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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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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Section 1983 Blog -
"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: Probable cause
CA10: Unappealed suppression order from one district collateral estoppel on reindictment on same facts in a different district
Defendant was indicted for child pornography, and the district court suppressed. The government appealed but dismissed the appeal without filing a brief. In the district court it dismissed the indictment. Later, on the same evidence from the same search warrant, … Continue reading
NM: What was intended for SW and what it says are two different things
The search warrant request for plaintiff’s person and vehicle resulted only in a warrant for the vehicle. What the defendant officer intended doesn’t count in the face of the clear warrant. A forced rectal search and x-ray at a hospital … Continue reading
NE: Typographical error on date in SW application can be overlooked if apparent it’s wrong
A typographical error in the date of the application for search warrant could be overlooked where the actual date can be determined from the whole. State v. Benson, 305 Neb. 949 (May 29, 2020). Defendant moved to suppress his DNA … Continue reading
E.D.Ark.: “After editing out the incomplete and false portions of the warrant affidavit, the remaining information was insufficient to establish” PC
“After editing out the incomplete and false portions of the warrant affidavit, the remaining information was insufficient to establish that Green was dead and that his death was caused by the criminal act of another person. Accordingly, the Court finds … Continue reading
CA6: Lack of PC for SW doesn’t deprive court of jurisdiction over criminal case
In seeking a successor habeas petition, inter alia: (1) all the alleged ineffective assistance claims were known at the time of the original petition; (2) “Joy’s claim that the district court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over his prosecution because the search-warrant … Continue reading
CA6: No QI for prosecutors instigating raid without PC
Tennessee prosecutors have no qualified immunity for CBD raids instigated without probable cause in Operation Candy Crush. Even the state indictment they procured without probable cause doesn’t grant them immunity. Rieves v. Town of Smyrna, Tennessee, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA3: Byrd who won in SCOTUS on standing loses on remand because there was PC for the search
On remand from Byrd v. United States, 138 S.Ct. 1518 (2018), holding that defendant had standing in his rental car, defendant loses on the merits because there was probable cause for the search of his car because of the admission … Continue reading
CA5: PC to search and seize doesn’t require that a crime actually have been committed
Plaintiff’s argument that there was no gambling crime for a search to occur is “fantasy” — the question is probable cause to believe a crime occurred, not whether one actually did. Lucky Tunes #3 LLC v. Smith, 2020 U.S. App. … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Search incident for violation of no-contact order unjustified
The USMJ’s order is affirmed. The motion to suppress the search warrant is denied because there was probable cause. The search incident for evidence of violation of a no-contact order was properly ordered suppressed. United States v. Watson, 2020 U.S. … Continue reading
GA: Arrest for sex offense wasn’t PC to believe digital storage device on person had evidence; SW suppressed
Defendant was arrested for aggravated child molestation and aggravated sodomy, and he had a digital storage device on him. Police sought a search warrant for the storage device, but the affidavit failed to show any probable cause to believe evidence … Continue reading
CA8: Police looking at undercarriage of stopped car doesn’t require PC
The officer here had reasonable suspicion on the totality to extend the stop aside from the fact the two adults in the vehicle had no drivers licenses and the insurance card didn’t match them. The officer’s looking at the undercarriage … Continue reading
Cal.: Forgetting to take something under SW and getting another and coming back in days didn’t make it stale
Defendant’s alleged unlawful detention by the feds didn’t create a Fourth Amendment claim to suppress his statement to state officials while in custody. Police had at least four other ways to find defendant’s cell phone number, which they did to … Continue reading
CA8: SW to seize a car implicitly includes seizing the keys to it
A search warrant to seize a car implicitly includes seizing the keys to it. “Thiel also maintains that Baker and Minor went too far in executing the second warrant when they seized antique handguns, handguns in unopened boxes, and gun … Continue reading
IA: Def’s association with known drug dealers without any nexus to his own house isn’t PC
“Although we decide marginal cases in favor of upholding warrants, we cannot rubber stamp the authorization to search a home unsupported by probable cause. Here, the search warrant application established Higgins’s association with people who used or delivered controlled substances. … Continue reading
CA11: No REP in a police interview room where def was recorded confessing to his wife
There was no reasonable expectation of privacy in a police interview room where defendant was recorded confessing to his wife. Lundberg v. Secretary, Fla. Dep’t of Correction, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 9953 (11th Cir. Mar. 31, 2020). Police received a … Continue reading
CA8: What officer knows that wasn’t in affidavit for SW can be considered in applying GFE
The officer presented the affidavit for search warrant for child pornography on a computer to the issuing judge who read it through and asked no questions. This did not make the judicial officer a “rubberstamp” for the police. Thus, the … Continue reading
PA: No right to leave vehicle parked on another’s property to avoid inventory
Defendant showed standing by showing that he bought the car he was driving and put it in his sister’s name, and he was the only person who drove it. The inventory was proper because there was no right to leave … Continue reading
CA6 subsumes PC into the GFE, reading it out of the 4A
“Govea’s brief stop at his home—immediately before driving to the scene of a controlled buy and immediately after driving to his home from the home of the seller in the controlled buy, with the seller as a passenger—connected the drug … Continue reading
CA6: Tip of man pacing in a parking lot in an area known for burglaries was RS for stop
Defendant was found to be the subject of a tip that a man was pacing in a parking lot in an area known for burglaries. When confronted, the officer found a warrant for his arrest. When his vehicle had to … Continue reading