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Recent Posts
- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
- D.Utah: Minor time detours to writing up a traffic ticket didn’t unreasonable extend this stop; the dog was quickly on its way
- KY: Despite lack of nexus, SW sustained under GFE
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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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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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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: Ineffective assistance
D.D.C.: IAC claim fails on pretrial issue defendant agreed to
Defendant fully participated in the decision not to pursue a Fourth Amendment claim (that wouldn’t win anyway) with a full explanation, so he can’t complain now in a 2255. United States v. Wright, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110991 (D. D.C. … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: 2012 download of cell phone two hours after arrest not search incident; Davis inapplicable
Two defendants, two cell phones searched in March 2012. One on parole, one not. The parole search of the cell phone is valid. The other, however, wasn’t a search incident of the cell phone; it was downloaded two hours after … Continue reading
TN: Exigency of 2 hr hospital wait supported warrantless blood draw in DUI
Exigency supported a warrantless blood draw here because defendant was in the hospital over two hours after a motorcycle accident where he was treated for his injuries and the officer got little or no time to deal with him. State … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Police observation of a controlled buy is justification for a traffic stop
Police observation of a controlled buy is justification for a traffic stop. United States v. Cooper, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105617 (N.D. Cal. July 31, 2014).* D.C. helped set up defendant’s computer system, and defendant was downloading child pornography. 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
D.Del.: Passenger lacked standing to contest placement of GPS, aside from the fact it was before Jones
Defendant as a passenger lacked standing in the GPS placement on another’s vehicle before Jones, never even having to discuss Davis good faith. United States v. Cabrera, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 96288 (D. Del. July 16, 2014).* Defendant’s overbreadth challenge … Continue reading
CA10: Heck and SoL barred claim that 2007 arrest undermined conviction
Plaintiff sued over his 2007 arrest to undermine his murder conviction. “As the district court correctly held, Mr. Williams’s complaint implicates the validity of his conviction and sentence and therefore is barred under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994). … Continue reading
N.D.Ga., S.D.Tex. & DE: Waiving a motion to suppress for strategic reasons was valid
Not filing a suppression motion was a valid strategic choice discussed on the record at the time it was waived with the USMJ. United States v. Latimore, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91777 (N.D. Ga. May 29, 2014); United States v. … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Considering suppression being tried, not attacking just one officer’s credibility wasn’t IAC
Defense counsel was reasonable in not impeaching officer at suppression hearing with his disciplinary history considering the issue being tried. The issue for the suppression hearing was whether it was reasonable for the officers to believe defendant was where he … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: Officer’s testimony the falsity in the SW affidavit was a “mere mistake” good enough to overcome Franks
False statement in an affidavit was testified to being a “mere mistake” in reporting information so the good faith exception still applies. If the officer testified it was a “mere mistake,” well, then, it can’t be wilfully false. Thus, the … Continue reading
OH2: Search of defendant’s cell phone case during patdown not shown with RS
The search of defendant’s cell phone case felt during a patdown could not reasonably be shown to be a weapon or contraband that would justify it. The officer was predisposed because she testified she assumed everybody was armed. State v. … Continue reading
CA11: Airport screenings are administrative searches
Airport screenings are administrative searches. During a more intense screening here, it was not unreasonable to look through a book because of the possibility of “sheet explosives.” The whole process here took about an hour, but it was plaintiff’s own … Continue reading
D.Alaska: SW for house includes the trash containers outside
A search warrant for a house includes the trash containers outside. United States v. Johnson, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72729 (D. Alaska May 2, 2014). Specific information that the juvenile in this case was planning to bring a gun to … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: “there is no magic number of ‘trash runs’ to be conducted prior to the issuance of a search warrant.”
“As to Defendant’s challenge of a single trash run at forming probable cause, there is no magic number of ‘trash runs’ to be conducted prior to the issuance of a search warrant.” Here, there was enough from one to make … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Drawing a Taser on a suspect and ordering him to move his hands is a seizure
Drawing a Taser on a suspect and ordering him to move his hands is a seizure. United States v. Coleman, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70867 (M.D. La. May 23, 2014). This defendant’s effort to adopt another defendant’s motion to suppress … Continue reading
IL: For an IAC claim to succeed, the underlying claim must be meritorious, not just likely to succeed
For a search and seizure IAC claim to succeed, the underlying claim must be meritorious, not just likely to succeed. Not filing a motion to suppress may be trial tactics, and, here, the question was whether there was probable cause, … Continue reading
CA3: Ptf’s § 1983 case implies invalidity of criminal case so it’s barred by Heck
Plaintiff’s fifth amended complaint necessarily implies the invalidity of his conviction and it’s barred by Heck v. Humphrey. Ollie v. Brown, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 8302 (3d Cir. May 2, 2014). Defendant’s guilty plea waived any claim that the consent … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: BOP nurse is not a law enforcement agent
A nurse in a federal prison was not acting in a law enforcement capacity in evaluating injuries to an inmate. United States v. Andrews, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56159 (N.D. W.Va. April 23, 2014). Two controlled buys were probable cause. … Continue reading