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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www.fd.org
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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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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
CA6: Affidavit for SW showed PC for bank robbery, in part because def had a note with the names of the kidnapped employees
“Here, the affidavit summarized the entirety of the agents’ investigation: the two abductions of bank employees in Knoxville, the September 3rd chase in a nearby area, Benanti’s arrest shortly after leaving the cabin, the surveillance tools in his possession, and … Continue reading
WA: State AG’s civil investigative demand to a company did not unreasonably intrude into “private affairs” or violate 4A
A company that consolidated student loans was required to comply with the Washington State Attorney General’s civil investigative demand (CID) under Wash. Rev. Code § 19.86.110. The company did not have a right against self-incrimination and the CID did not … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Govt showed basis to get SW for def’s blood to prove he wasn’t taking the oxy he was prescribed
Defendant’s oxycodone use was tipped to the police by an automated system that he was prescribed 50 oxys a day for five years [yet wasn’t dead]. “The indictment further alleges that from November 2012-November 2017, Defendant filled prescriptions on a … Continue reading
M.D.Tenn.: The affidavit for SW of def’s cell phone was mostly “boilerplate,” but added enough to get over the PC threshold
Because of evidence in plain view (drugs and a gun) after a traffic accident and all of defendant’s prior drug arrests, it was not unreasonable for officers to seize defendant’s Tracfone incident to arrest. The affidavit to search the cell … Continue reading
PA: Firing an assault rifle in your house justifies a protective sweep
After defendant fired an assault rifle in his house, the police were called. A protective sweep to see if anyone was injured was reasonable. Commonwealth v. Coughlin, 2018 PA Super 304, 2018 Pa. Super. LEXIS 1221 (Nov. 14, 2018). “‘Probable … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Emails from CIs provided PC, and the SW was limited to categories of information
A CI gave emails to government investigators about health care fraud. They and other information provided probable cause for more emails. The warrants were particularized by being limited to eight categories. United States v. Mathieu, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 192281 … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Illegally obtained evidence cannot be used to establish probable cause
Illegally obtained evidence cannot be used to establish probable cause. United States v. Gordon, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 190782 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 12, 2018):
W.D.La.: Officers’ subjective belief in def’s standing at time of search isn’t material to the court’s determination on objective facts
At the time of the search, officers believed defendant had standing in the place searched, but that’s not relevant to the court’s determination. “Federal agents were aware of Defendant and believed that he lived in the residence in question. But … Continue reading
CA8: Means and opportunity to commit bank robbery and carjacking in flight was PC
Defendant’s means and opportunity to commit this bank robbery and carjacking in flight was probable cause. Video showing him at a motel was nexus to his room. United States v. Evans, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 31326 (8th Cir. Nov. 6, … Continue reading
The Recorder/Law.com: NITs to Pick: An EFF Attorney Riffs on a Recent Ninth Circuit Malware Decision
The Recorder/Law.com: NITs to Pick: An EFF Attorney Riffs on a Recent Ninth Circuit Malware Decision by Ian Lopez: The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Andrew Crocker says that a controversial warrant employed in an FBI child pornography sting also recently waived … Continue reading
CA6: Affidavit for SW failed both PC and nexus, but GFE applied: affidavit was detailed and 62 pages
The affidavit for the search warrant here failed to show both probable cause and nexus, and the court details why. However, the 62 page detailed affidavit detailing the whole investigation was not bare bones by any means, and the good … Continue reading
OH5: To prove GFE doesn’t apply, the defense has to show bad faith [never mind that the burden is on the govt in GFE]
Officers could conduct a protective sweep when executing a search warrant. “In the case at hand, there was no testimony regarding bad faith on part of the officers who searched the residence where Appellant was hiding.” State v. Davis, 2018-Ohio-4368, … Continue reading
D.Kan.: After a Franks hearing, PC exists despite omitted information
Defendant was under investigation for threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction. After the search, police found child pornography, too. He filed a Franks motion about omitted information and got a hearing. The court finds probable cause and no … Continue reading
CA6&4: There clearly was PC for the SWs
“The affidavits supporting the searches of Sullivan’s apartment and vehicle overwhelmingly established probable cause to believe that Sullivan committed voyeurism, burglary, and possession of criminal tools.” “The search warrants for Sullivan’s vehicle, apartment, and computer were all sufficiently particular. The … Continue reading
TN: Police get a call about a passed out parked car driver, but when they get there he’s out of the car; under community caretaking function they can still inquire what’s going on
Police received a call from a liquor store operator that a man was passed out in a car behind the store. When they got there, the man was getting in the car. The community caretaking function still applied because of … Continue reading
CA7 also affirms Playpen warrant on PC and GFE
As with every other circuit, the Seventh Circuit affirms a Playpen warrant on probable cause and good faith exception. United States v. Kienast, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 29887 (7th Cir. Oct. 23, 2018).* Probable cause for the search warrant for … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: Def counsel’s decision not to pursue a motion to suppress was reasonable and designed to prevent superseding indictment with higher MM
Defense counsel’s decision not to pursue a motion to suppress was reasonable under the circumstances. Defendant was already facing a 60 month minimum. The government made clear that they had additional counts they could bring but wouldn’t if the defense … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Drugs don’t have to be forensically tested after a controlled buy for there to be PC
The CI was corroborated and the totality gives probable cause. The fact that the drugs were not tested prior to the search warrant doesn’t undermine the probable cause or good faith because the officer could tell what it probably was. … Continue reading