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- 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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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)
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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: Reasonable suspicion
OH9: Highly erratic driving with a near head-on collision and “glassy, bloodshot eyes” alone was RS for FST even without smell of alcohol
The video of defendant’s driving shows that he drove entirely into another lane and nearly had an accident with another vehicle. When stopped, he was cooperative, didn’t smell of alcohol, and denied drinking. He did, however, have “glassy, bloodshot eyes, … Continue reading
TX DWIs: RS for cont’d detention to get certified officer there; no justification shown for failure to get a SW for draw
There was reasonable suspicion of DWI for defendant’s detention for an additional 21 minutes to get an officer there certified to conduct an HGN test. The delay for was legitimate law enforcement and investigative purposes. Cagle v. State, 2016 Tex. … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: When paper tag shows to be current, the officer can still talk to the driver within the “mission” of the stop (Updated: R&R rejected)
Defendant’s stop was objectively justified for the paper tag in the back window that couldn’t be read. The fact the officer may have a subjective pretext doesn’t make the stop objectively unreasonable. Here, the pretext was that the car was … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Def’s refusal to show his hands wasn’t a seizure when he didn’t comply with it
Direction to defendant to show hands was not responded to, so there was no submission to authority and thus no seizure. United States v. Jones, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 171988 (W.D.N.Y. Dec. 13, 2016), rejecting, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108477 … Continue reading
NC: Surrounding house for a knock-and-talk didn’t make the knock-and-talk unreasonable
Defendant had a running generator connected to his house and mold and condensation on the windows. A CI had said that defendant had a grow operation. Officers came to the house and confirmed the generator and windows from the front. … Continue reading
FL4: Search of student’s purse with RS that turned up nothing was dissipation of the RS
Based on a report, the school security officer had reasonable suspicion under T.L.O. that the student had a Taser-like device on her person. He searched her purse and didn’t find one, so the reasonable suspicion thus dissipated. A second search … Continue reading
CA1: Arrest of removable alien was without RS, but because no flagrant violation of 4A, no suppression
Respondent was ordered removed from the country after ICE agents encountered him at work. They thought he was somebody else, and he was handcuffed and questioned. It became apparent that he wasn’t the man they were looking for, but he … Continue reading
LA2: Even though LA doesn’t follow SCOTUS standing rules, def still had to show a privacy interest, and he didn’t have one in his murder victim’s cell phone
Defendant couldn’t challenge the search of his murder victim’s cell phone. While Louisiana doesn’t follow SCOTUS cases on standing, no privacy right of defendant was involved in her phone found at her feet when the police arrived at the crime … Continue reading
MI: Consent to remove shoe didn’t include consent to take apart a lighter that fell out
Defendant’s consent was to remove his shoe. It did not include taking apart the lighter that fell out. Remanded to suppress. May v. State, 2016 Miss. App. LEXIS 810 (Dec. 13, 2016). Officers received a BOLO on a particular car … Continue reading
Three on reasonable suspicion
Flight led to reasonable suspicion. When cornered, defendant wouldn’t raise his hands. The frisk was valid. United States v. Strayhorn, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 169219 (E.D.Mo. Nov. 14, 2016).* A valid traffic stop led to smelling marijuana which led to … Continue reading
OH5: Fire inspector’s violation of city agreement to give notice before inspections warranted his firing
Jeffries complained that he was subjected to arbitrary and invasive fire inspections, and the city agreed to give him prior notice. Lanzer, however, violated that agreement and was fired by the city. “However, as stated above, the City of Louisville … Continue reading
W.D.Tenn.: Court just doesn’t buy that officers could see def not wearing seatbelt at night or that MJ was smelled in the car
The USMJ just doesn’t buy the testimony that the Memphis P.D. officer could see the defendant driving without a seatbelt at night coming from the other direction because the officers’ testimony on the basis for the stop disagreed. After that, … Continue reading
MO: Reliance on apparent authority was objectively reasonable
It was objectively reasonable for the officer to believe the officer’s testimony that the officers had apparent authority to enter the basement area where defendant was staying. “Defendant argues on appeal that Ms. Latcher did not reside in the home … Continue reading
CO: Stop in high crime area, false name, and large knife on floor justified protective weapons search
The protective weapons search of defendant’s car was valid. The stop occurred in an area known for frequent criminal activity, defendant gave the officer a false name, and he observed a large knife on the front floorboard near defendant’s feet. … Continue reading
LA3: Reasonable suspicion defendant is trafficking methamphetamine means there is likely the presence of firearms
Reasonable suspicion defendant is trafficking methamphetamine means there is likely the presence of firearms. State v. Flournoy, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 2225 (La.App. 3 Cir. Dec. 7, 2016). Defendant juvenile was “in custody” and handcuffed in a patrol car being … Continue reading
CA2: Judgment on liability for bogus stop and frisk was not error; $196k verdict affirmed
Plaintiffs were two teenagers stopped by police for one vaguely matching the description of one of two robbers. One of them refused to put his phone away when the officer ordered him three times not to. At a § 1983 … Continue reading
ID: The state conceded the DL held too long, but taint was not purged, so suppression should have been granted
The trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress and in finding that the evidence was purged from the taint of an unlawful detention. The State conceded that an unlawful seizure occurred when the officer held onto defendant’s driver’s … Continue reading
USA Today: Column: Predictive policing violates more than it protects
USA Today: Column: Predictive policing violates more than it protects by William Isaac & Kristian Lum: System meant to alleviate police resources disproportionately targets minority communities, raises Fourth Amendment concerns.