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)
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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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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
CADC: When the govt learns heroin dealers’ pattern for pick up and delivery, further acts matching the pattern are probable cause
Defendants were known heroin dealers, and they followed a pattern in travel. On the trip that resulted in their arrest, GPS data and cell site location information put them together following the same pattern, and that was reasonable suspicion. United … Continue reading
CO: Smell of MJ can still be factor in PC on totality, despite 1 oz being legal
D.Guam: CI corroborated by prior police intel
The CI in this case was supported by (1) the fact defendant had been arrested for drugs in 2006 and (2) police intelligence that he was already dealing drugs. The search warrant was validly issued. United States v. Quitugua, 2016 … Continue reading
DE: Cell phone is a tool of the drug trade for SW purposes
Probable cause was shown on the four corners of the affidavit for the search warrant. Citing a 2001 U.S. district court case, “[t]he Wiseman court [158 F.Supp.2d 1242, 1249 (D.Kan.2001)] stated that ‘it had become common knowledge in the courts … Continue reading
AZ: Serial SWs were justified by further developments in a serial murder investigation
Defendant was ultimately charged with 74 felonies, including nine murders. His house was subjected to three different search warrants, each specific to one or two crimes. It was reasonable for the police to get another warrant to go back after … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Citing wrong U.S.C. section doesn’t undermine PC if any crime is shown
Citation to the wrong U.S. Code section in a search warrant affidavit doesn’t undermine the probable cause if one can discern that some federal crime has occurred. The affidavit here described mass sale of cell phone apps in violation of … Continue reading
D.Mass.: PC shown for white collar email search by declaration of investigator that email is commonly used
A federal search warrant issued by a USMJ in the District if Massachusetts could be served on an email provider in Florida under § 2703(b)(1)(A). The affiant’s statement that white collar defendants frequently use email to communicate was sufficient to … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Affidavit for SW was “somewhat conclusory,” but it incorporated defendant’s indictment which had specific allegations of overt acts
The affidavit for search warrant was “somewhat conclusory,” but it incorporated defendant’s indictment which had specific allegations of overt acts. Taking the two together showed probable cause. United States v. Alvarez, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72791 (N.D.Cal. June 3, 2016):
E.D.N.Y.: Officer’s inability to remember minutia of search two years ago doesn’t make him unbelievable; opposite would more likely be true
The officers’ testimony is credited, and the defense cross didn’t make it better. “The inconsistencies, which in the Court’s view, were de minimis, were sought to be established by photographs of isolated portions of the living room and of Smith’s … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: The question is PC for a SW, not what else officers could do to get more information; if they have PC, that’s all that’s required
The fact officers could have done more to validate their suspicions about a Facebook picture and who the child was and defendant and child pornography allegedly involving the same child, it isn’t constitutionally required if probable cause exists. United States … Continue reading
OH11: Lack of findings of fact and conclusions of law on suppression ruling requires reversal
Lack of findings of fact and conclusions of law requires reversal. “While it is error for the trial court to fail in providing requested findings of fact, it is not prejudicial where the record provides an appellate court with a … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Controlled buys and watching def to go his storage unit for more was PC
Defendant had been coming and going from a storage unit where the police knew he stored methamphetamine. “There had been controlled purchases of methamphetamine directly from Leyva-Martinez. Officer Milone and other OPD officers had sufficient probable cause to stop the … Continue reading
CA9: 911 call about two black male teenagers involved in a crime didn’t give PC to arrest three Samoan teenagers; immediately recognizing a toy gun as such wasn’t RS
The court of appeals had jurisdiction to consider defendant officers’ appeal from denial of qualified immunity on plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment unlawful arrest and search claims, but the court’s jurisdiction was limited to deciding whether the officers were entitled to qualified … Continue reading
CA6: Where def refused to provide combination to his safe during execution of a SW, it was reasonable to pry it open
Defendant showed the police that he had marijuana inside his home and the police obtained a warrant to search his home. Thus, suppression was not warranted because there was an outright certainty, not just a “fair probability,” that the house … Continue reading
RI: Description of CP sufficient for PC; magistrate doesn’t have to view it
An issuing magistrate doesn’t have to see the child pornography to find probable cause it was on the subject computer; a description will do. IP information tied to the child pornography was probable cause for the residence and computers in … Continue reading
A.F.Ct.Crim.App.: Davis good faith applies to pre-Jones GPS installation
GPS was installed on defendant’s car prior to Jones and it’s not excludable under Davis good faith. United States v. Richards, 2016 CCA LEXIS 285 (A.F. Ct. Crim. App. May 2, 2016). The officer didn’t smell marijuana on defendant’s person, … Continue reading
CA6: Clerk issued arrest warrant without judicial authority; not unreasonable unless no PC
That court clerks issue arrest warrants, but not acting as a neutral and detached magistrate, is not a constitutional violation unless the arrest was without probable cause. Plaintiffs, given four amendments to the complaint, never show that the arrest was … Continue reading
TN: Driver slumped over wheel of running car justified opening the door
Defendant was seen parked in front of a store slumped over the steering wheel. The community caretaking function permitted officers to open the door to check on him. The community caretaking function isn’t limited to consensual encounters. State v. McCormick, … Continue reading