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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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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)
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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: Franks doctrine
CA11: Officer’s slight misnaming prior sex offense against a child in a CP warrant affidavit wasn’t a Franks violation
Petitioner raised 78 grounds in his 2255 against a life sentence for child pornography. “As to Ground 6, Freeman’s various arguments largely mischaracterize the supposedly false statements in the warrant affidavit. And although the affidavit seemingly incorrectly stated that his … Continue reading
CA9: Virtual knowing Franks violation leads to suppression of immigration search before BIA
Petitioner established that the warrant for employment records sought by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was based on knowingly material omissions and thus qualified as an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment for an immigration proceeding. Frimmel Mgmt. v. United … Continue reading
CA11: “The record shows” without showing it is not a Franks “substantial preliminary showing”
Defendant failed to make an offer of proof as required by Franks. Merely saying “the record shows” or something like that without more is not a “substantial preliminary showing.” United States v. Ward, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 20674 (11th Cir. … Continue reading
N.D.N.Y.: Public employer’s prior failure to search work computers under policy didn’t create a REP
Plaintiff did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in her work issued computers under the school computer privacy policy. The fact they’d never looked before doesn’t otherwise create a reasonable expectation of privacy. Rissetto v. Clinton Essex Warren Wash. … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Disney World’s own fraud investigators conducted private search of hotel room
Walt Disney World’s fraud investigators received a call from American Express that a card was being used fraudulently there. Ultimately, WDW own investigators entered defendant’s room without telling the police what they were doing and found access devices in plain … Continue reading
CA3: Violation of Vienna Convention on arrest doesn’t lead to dismissal
“Dismissal of the indictment and suppression of evidence are not appropriate remedial measures for a violation of Article 36 [of the Vienna Convention] in this case.” Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, 548 U.S. 331, 350 (2006). United States v. Castillo, 2018 U.S. … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Under Franks, materiality of the omitted info to PC is required, not just that it was omitted
“Hill argues Agent Fulmer’s affidavit omitted information previously obtained during the investigation and which was contained in an affidavit submitted with a wiretap application filed in the Eastern District of Michigan in December 2016. Hill, however, does not explain how … Continue reading
CA1: Franks challenge fails to undermine PC; alternative scenario was “implausible”
Defendant posited much information that was omitted from the affidavit for the search warrant, but that would have created an implausible scenario that didn’t even make sense to the appeals court. “Even if we assume that the challenged statements and … Continue reading
OH7: There was plenty of PC for def’s DNA in a murder case to connect him to the body found in his house
Affidavits for search warrant can be based on hearsay, and here the totality of information was probable cause to gather defendant’s DNA in a murder case. There was a known connection between the defendant and the victim, and male DNA … Continue reading
D.Md.: Officer gets QI for arresting person with same name but it turned out warrant was for far younger woman of different race
Plaintiff was legally blind but owned her car. She was a passenger in the back seat. After the vehicle was stopped, the officer found a warrant for a person with the same name as her. She protested she wasn’t the … Continue reading
CA9: PC is a close question, and that’s good enough for GFE
“In this case, it is a close question whether the warrant was supported by probable cause. Although a close call, we need not resolve this issue because even if the warrant lacked probable cause, the good faith exception to the … Continue reading
Franks doctrine 40 years old this week
The Franks doctrine, Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), turned 40 on Tuesday. I missed it.
CA2: Nonmaterial error of fact in Title III application and SW for house didn’t merit Franks hearing
Nonmaterial error in inclusion of an erroneous fact in a wiretap application and search request for house didn’t require a Franks hearing. United States v. Osborne, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 17142 (2d Cir. June 25, 2018).* Defendant’s post-conviction claim defense … Continue reading
NE: A pre-Birchfield warrantless blood draw would not be excluded under GFE
A blood draw that predated Birchfield was valid under the good faith exception. “Because the good faith exception applies, the district court erred in reversing Hatfield’s conviction.” State v. Hatfield, 300 Neb. 152 (June 8, 2018). Two controlled buys by … Continue reading
S.D.Ill.: SW affidavit doesn’t have to be labeled one to be one
A search warrant affidavit doesn’t have to be headed “affidavit” to be one, and the attachments are considered sworn to if referred to in the body. The affidavit’s typo of having the 16th as the date of the offense when … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Omission of exculpatory information is far less likely to be a Franks issue
Omission of exculpatory information is far less likely to be a Franks issue because (1) it doesn’t often matter and (2) it would lead to endless forays into what is exculpatory. Defendant fails to make a Franks preliminary showing. United … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Merely saying that defendant “will offer evidence” to support his allegations at a Franks hearing isn’t an offer of proof
Merely saying that defendant “will offer evidence” to support his allegations at a Franks hearing isn’t an offer of proof. “Stating an intent to offer evidence in the future does not satisfy McMillan’s immediate burden to justify the need for … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Defense counsel’s affidavit of an alleged Franks violation was speculative
Defense counsel’s conclusion that a video at issue was the same one on a cell phone is speculative at best. “The Court concludes that the detective’s statement that the phone in the surveillance footage appears to be the same as … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Def’s disclaiming ownership of cell phone when seized is a lack of standing, even when he claimed it after it rang
Defendant had no standing to challenge a search of a cell phone found in his car that he said belonged to his girlfriend. “Jackson does not deny that he disclaimed ownership of the phone at the time it was seized. … Continue reading
CA5: Grounds to overcome GFE all have to be raised in the trial ocurt or waived
Defendant raises a ground to attempt to overcome the good faith exception, but he didn’t raise it in the district court, so it’s waived. United States v. Rosa, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 12276 (5th Cir. May 10, 2018). When defendant … Continue reading