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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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)
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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
E.D.Pa.: SW affidavit didn’t show def a drug dealer to use assumption drug dealers keep stash at home
As a general rule, drug dealers keep their drugs at home, and that’s sufficient to get a search warrant for their home. Here, however, the affidavit falls far short of showing that defendant was a drug dealer. He was just … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Old background info coupled with new info doesn’t make warrant stale
The search warrant was not stale. It had pretty old background information that alone would be stale, but it provided recent information as well, and that was sufficient to overcome staleness. United States v. Thomas, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 125410 … Continue reading
OH9: Excessive nervousness and sweating when asked about gun was RS
When defendant was asked about whether he was armed, he became excessively nervous and started sweating. This was reasonable suspicion to the officer. During the patdown, the rock of crack was immediately apparent to the officer. State v. Mathis, 2014-Ohio-3803, … Continue reading
FL2: Common authority to consent did not extend to guest’s backpack
The owner of the place searched had the authority to consent to a search of the bedroom where defendant was sleeping. Defendant was just a short term guest and was asleep when the police came in. The common authority applied … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: Where subject of SW is cash, it was reasonable here to conclude it was in defendant’s home
In a white collar case involving receipts of large sums of cash, it was reasonable for the USMJ to conclude on the totality that evidence, like cash, would be found in defendant’s home. United States v. Martinez, 2014 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
MN: No inventory permitted when defendant not being physically arrested
Because defendant was not being arrested for a minor drug offense, it wasn’t proper then to impound her car for an inventory. State v. Rohde, 2014 Minn. LEXIS 406 (August 20, 2014). The 52 page affidavit for the search warrant … Continue reading
CA6: Ptf’s own video of stop supported that his arrest was without PC
Plaintiff in this § 1983 case videotaped his own stop because he was concerned of continued harassment by one particular officer. The video shows no factual basis for plaintiff’s arrest for “menacing” or disorderly conduct in his interaction with the … Continue reading
CA7: Def’s car with his phone in it parked repeatedly outside a house supported PC to search that place
The repeated presence of defendant’s car and cell phone at the place searched under the warrant added to the probable cause that that was a place where evidence could be found. It wasn’t misleading to the USMJ to not tell … Continue reading
NM: No PC for SW in VIN switching scheme; not enough shown
Because of 1983’s Gates, it’s a rare case that doesn’t find probable cause, or at least good faith reliance on the finding of PC via Leon. Here’s one from New Mexico on a VIN switching scheme where the search warrant … Continue reading
IN: PC required to install a GPS device
Probable cause is required to install a GPS device on a vehicle. Keeylen v. State, 2014 Ind. App. LEXIS 384 (August 8, 2014): Still, we readily conclude that probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, is the standard that must be established … Continue reading
CA6: No RS for a frisk; gov’t waived standing in DC and can’t argue it on appeal
There was a basis for the stop, but there was none for a frisk, and the district court erred in concluding otherwise. Also, the government waive a standing argument in the district court and it can’t raise it on appeal. … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Strong ether odor big factor in PC for a meth lab
The Eighth Circuit has long held that the odor of ether is a strong factor in probable cause for a methamphetamine lab. Here, the affidavit for the search warrant recounted many other factors in his past drug history. At the … Continue reading
KS: Outgoing prison letters may be searched
A prison inmate’s outgoing letters are not protected by the Fourth Amendment since Stroud (1919). State v. Burnett, 2014 Kan. LEXIS 429 (July 25, 2014) A brief hand-to-hand transaction may have been innocent, but it was enough for a trained … Continue reading
FL2: Old information doesn’t corroborate a CI; no GFE
Search warrant affidavit failed to show probable cause and nexus. The attempted corroboration of the CI was with old information that proved really nothing. The good faith exception does not apply because no reasonable officer could rely on this search … Continue reading
IN: Completely unjustified frisk suppressed
The officer in this case received word that defendant was a drug dealer, so he went around looking for defendant. He saw the defendant a couple of times but nothing was unusual or suggested a crime. Then he initiated a … Continue reading
GA: Deliberately delaying the computer check during a traffic stop unreasonably extended it
The officer wrote a traffic ticket and then decided to run a computer check, and that unnecessarily prolonged the stop, making it unreasonable. State v. Allen, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 538 (July 16, 2014). Monitoring a controlled buy with the … Continue reading
CA11: Defendant lacked standing on the curtilage of a house he was often a guest in when he was fleeing police and stopped in front yard
Defendant was riding a bicycle on the wrong side of the street, and the police recognized him from prior investigations, so they followed and attempted to stop him. He pedelled faster and went to house and entered a gate to … Continue reading