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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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: Probable cause
OH2: Somebody leaning in car window then leaving when police approach is not PC
Somebody leaning in the car window to talk to defendant then walking away as police approached is not probable cause to believe a drug deal just went down. Suppression motion should have been granted. State v. Ward, 2017-Ohio-8141, 2017 Ohio … Continue reading
NC: Make and model of a firearm isn’t required for PC as long as it’s described as similar
That a gun matched the description of defendant’s gun was still probable cause on this record. The police didn’t have to have the make and model of the gun to have probable cause. State v. Messer, 2017 N.C. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA6: Alleged defect in state arrest warrant was irrelevant under the 4A where there was PC
Defendant’s arrest under a purportedly defective Georgia arrest warrant was irrelevant under the Fourth Amendment because there was plenty of probable cause for it. Specifically, defendant contended that the officers needed an incident report or something that showed probable cause … Continue reading
TX14: Def’s gf’s private search of his cell phone finding CP wasn’t unreasonable search
Defendant’s girlfriend had free access to his cell phone because the password on the phone was shared with her and it was the same as the PIN on his debit card which she also used. She conducted a valid private … Continue reading
NPR: Supreme Court Case Asks: How Much Do Partygoers Need To Know About The Party House?
NPR: Supreme Court Case Asks: How Much Do Partygoers Need To Know About The Party House? by Nina Totenberg Supreme Court justices this week looked at whether police can arrest people who they mistakenly believe are trespassing.
TN: SW issuing magistrates have only district-wide jurisdiction and couldn’t issue SW here
By statute, magistrates issuing search warrants have only district-wide jurisdiction, and here the magistrate lacked authority to issue the search warrant at issue. The state did not show any exceptions. State v. Frazier, 2017 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 861 (Sept. … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Arrest warrant for another in def’s home didn’t authorize entry without exigency
An arrest warrant for Tyler in defendant’s home didn’t justify entry here because officers didn’t show any exception to the warrant requirement. “The government has provided no authority for the proposition that the arrest warrant for Tyler, Tyler’s status as … Continue reading
Manafort’s no-knock warrant and Facebook’s search warrants in Russia investigation
The New York Times reports tonight that search warrants were used for the first time in a Special Counsel’s investigation: Not in Watergate, not in Iran-Contra, not in Whitewater, not in the Valerie Plame investigations. With a Picked Lock and … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: Under collective knowledge doctrine, the officer making the stop doesn’t need to know the PC
There was probable cause from collective knowledge for defendant’s stop and the search of his vehicle for a hidden compartment with drugs, even though the stopping officer didn’t know what it was. United States v. Isshpunani, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
IN: A dog alert on a package wasn’t PC because it only proved the package could have been handled by somebody who might have used MJ legally
The state seized cash in a package for mailing for forfeiture and then sought to turn it over to the federal government. The owners sought to recover the cash. The court finds that the seizure of the cash was without … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: It’s reasonable to infer that def’s shipping firearms to Trinidad would have records in residence and on computers and cell phones there
Defendant was suspected of shipping firearms to Trinidad from Atlanta. “The nature of the criminal conduct in which Defendant was engaged, purchasing firearms for the unlawful export to Trinidad and involving utilizing third parties to make the unlawful firearms purchases … Continue reading
DC Cir.: The mere fact a person has a cell phone isn’t PC to search it; must be PC evidence would be found
“Most of us nowadays carry a cell phone. And our phones frequently contain information chronicling our daily lives—where we go, whom we see, what we say to our friends, and the like. When a person is suspected of a crime, … Continue reading
CA4: Inevitable discovery applies to def’s name
The district court did not err in finding the inevitable discovery doctrine applied where officers responded to an assault call and saw defendant, believed to be a felon, with a gun. It was inevitable that police would have lawfully discovered … Continue reading
DE: Driving on wrong side of road, smell of alcohol, refusing breath test, failing FST adds up to PC
There was probable cause for taking defendant’s blood from driving on the wrong side of the highway, smelling of alcohol, refusing a breath test, and failing an FST. State v. Dopirak, 2017 Del. Super. LEXIS 358 (July 24, 2017). “Dearry … Continue reading
WaPo: 10th Circuit grants narrow victory to family raided by a SWAT team over loose leaf tea
WaPo: 10th Circuit grants narrow victory to family raided by a SWAT team over loose leaf tea by Radley Balko. The case is Harte v. Bd. of Commissioners, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 13399 (10th Cir. July 25, 2017), over a … Continue reading
D.Utah: Repeated flushing of toilet in a hotel room added to PC
“All of these facts, taken in their totality, support a finding of probable cause. There was a fair probability that the Defendant was present in room #209 based upon the informant’s tip indicating he was there, Defendant’s motorcycle found in … Continue reading
ProPublica: Houston Police End Use of Drug Tests That Helped Produce Wrongful Convictions
ProPublica: Houston Police End Use of Drug Tests That Helped Produce Wrongful Convictions by Ryan Gabrielson: The cheap kits were often the sole evidence used to win guilty pleas, against the innocent as well the as guilty.
CO: In this recreational MJ use state, a dog sniff is a “search,” and a positive alert isn’t PC a crime is occurring
Use of a drug dog on a car is a “search” in marijuana recreational use Colorado, and a dog alert which could be of either legal or illegal substances is not probable cause. People v. McKnight, 2017 COA 93, 2017 … Continue reading