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- CA3: Ptf was arrested on an apparent but recalled warrant, then officers confirmed it and let him go; the arrest was reasonable
- N.D.Ohio: Failure to serve state SW within state mandated time not 4A violation
- NY1: Gunshot through floor from apartment above was exigency
- Reason: Most Civil Forfeiture Victims Never See the Inside of a Courtroom
- CA8: Admission of anonymous tip that led to stop violated Confrontation Clause
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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)
--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: Search incident
FL2: Search incident for being in a city park after hours unreasonable
A custodial arrest for being in a city park after closing time and a search incident was invalid. State law cautions against search incident for noncriminal violations. Nelson v. State, 2019 Fla. App. LEXIS 3159 (Fla. 2d DCA Mar. 1, … Continue reading
CA6: OUI arrest justified search incident for visible beer cans
Defendant’s OUI arrest justified a search incident of the car for beer cans that were visible to the officer. United States v. Latham, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 4188 (6th Cir. Feb. 12, 2019). Defendant’s motion for new trial incorporates his … Continue reading
PA: Any additional penalties for refusal to do a breath test violates Birchfield
Any additional penalties for refusal to do a breath test violates Birchfield. Commonwealth v. Monarch, 2019 Pa. LEXIS 346 (Jan. 23, 2019). Defendant was arrested with probable cause, and the search incident to his arrest provided probable cause for a … Continue reading
D.Minn.: 1A retaliatory SW claim defeated by actual PC for the warrant as an independent source
Plaintiff’s claim that a search warrant for his house was retaliatory for First Amendment activities doesn’t overcome the fact there was independent probable cause for the warrant. Therefore, the Fourth Amendment claim fails. Fredin v. Clysdale, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
OH5: Traffic stop on recalled AW still valid under GFE
A traffic stop based on a recalled warrant was still reasonable under the good faith exception of Evans and Herring. When she was arrested, her purse was subject to search incident: “Accordingly, because [her] purse was voluntarily brought outside the … Continue reading
MA: Def’s clothes can be seized and searched for trace evidence on arrest for murder
When defendant was arrested for kidnapping and murder, exigent circumstances justified seizing and then searching defendant’s clothes for trace evidence of the crime. Commonwealth v. Parker, 2018 Mass. LEXIS 807 (Dec. 7, 2018). A dead body near defendant’s apartment with … Continue reading
KS: Searching purse of driver taken away by ambulance from a car wreck was unreasonable
Police conducted an unreasonable warrantless search of defendant’s purse for her DL when she was taken from the scene of an accident by ambulance. No exception to the warrant requirement applies. State v. Evans, 2018 Kan. LEXIS 580 (Nov. 21, … Continue reading
KS: Def was removed from a van and her purse left behind; it wasn’t subject to search incident
Defendant was sitting in a van when she was gotten out and then arrested. Her purse was left behind. Her purse was not subject to a search incident when she’d been handcuffed and led away. The state’s argument that inevitable … Continue reading
IN: Backpack of arrested motorcyclist was subject to SI
Defendant was stopped on a motorcycle and had a backpack. An arrest warrant was found for defendant, and his backpack was subject to a search incident. State v. Crager, 2018 Ind. App. LEXIS 385 (Oct. 25, 2018). There was no … Continue reading
CA5: Search incident of open envelope on person of arrestee for bank robbery was valid; it had the note
Defendant was arrested for bank robbery, and an open envelope on his person containing the bank robbery note was subject to search incident even though it was removed from him and not searched for maybe five minutes after the arrest. … Continue reading
TX2: A tin can in hand was “associated with the person” for search incident purposes
A tin can in defendant’s hand and dropped as she was handcuffed was “associated with the person” for search incident purposes. Texas recognizes larger items may not be “associated with the person” v. smaller items more easily held. State v. … Continue reading
ME: Def’s jacket she was sitting on when arrested was properly subject to search incident
Defendant’s jacket was still associated with her when she was arrested, and it was properly subject to a search incident even though she was handcuffed and sitting on it. The validity of the search incident, however, did not translate into … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: When officer takes your license to run it, you’re seized
“Officer Myers’ instruction to ‘hang tight’ while he ran Defendant’s driver’s license [and had it in hand], would lead a reasonable person in Defendant’s shoes not to feel free to leave. Thus, the consensual encounter became a seizure under the … Continue reading
TN: Seizure of a cell phone incident to arrest is provided for in Riley; search still requires warrant
Defendant’s cell phone was properly seized incident to his arrest, as contemplated by Riley. It was not searched until a search warrant was obtained. State v. Wade, 2018 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 523 (July 13, 2018). The search warrant for … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Gant didn’t bar a plain view of the interior of def’s car when he was handcuffed on ground
Defendant was arrested for drug dealing, and he was handcuffed on the ground near the car. The search of the car here was based on seeing a gun in the car in plain view, so Gant doesn’t bar the search. … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Def’s search incident of his backpack for fraudulent use of a Metrocard was valid at least on GFE and inevitable discovery
Defendant was stopped for using a school student’s Metrocard to get on the NYC subway because he looked and was a so older. His backpacked was removed, and he was handcuffed. His backpack was searched incident to his arrest. The … Continue reading
OH7: Driving on a suspended license doesn’t justify search incident of the car
Driving on a suspended license does not justify a search incident of his vehicle. Even worse, however, there was no justification for the arrest anyway. He was interrogated while handcuffed and admitted that there was heroin in his shoe. There … Continue reading
TX1: Search incident and inventory invalid for failing to signal; as to inventory, the inventorying officer is a necessary witness
A drug officer called a patrol officer to stop defendant. After he failed to promptly signal a turn, he was stopped, handcuffed, and his car was searched. “The search of Appellant’s vehicle incident to his arrest for failing to signal … Continue reading
CA10: GFE applied to cell phone SW in KS where phone was actually searched in MO
Search incident did not justify seizure of defendant’s cell phone when he was arrested because he’d been separated from the cell phone. The government’s claim that officers seizing the cell phone were proceeding under “direction of” defendant’s PO is rejected … Continue reading