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- 404 Media: Flock: LAPD Regularly Pulled Over Innocent People Because License Plate Readers Flagged Their Cars As Stolen
- CA6: Despite two guns being suppressed from arrest on bare-bones arrest affidavit, third gun was later validly seized by independent source
- D.Md.: Govt’s motion to reconsider granted motion to suppress denied; arguments now are too late
- CA4: Cell phone non-forensic border search doesn’t require individualized suspicion
- ND: Probation search of cell phone was reasonable
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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)
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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: Reasonable suspicion
IA: Video didn’t support officer’s version of stop; no RS and suppressed
The officer testified that defendant crossed the centerline of a gravel road and came at him, and that was the basis of the stop. “Officer Van Gundy stated he ‘slowed down and pulled to the right’ because he was afraid … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: Cell phone likely had evidence on it and police saw it in plain view and could seize it to get SW
Defendant and his wife had an argument about him communicating with underage girls, and he left the house and she called the police. The phone was in plain view in the house, it had apparent evidence on it, and it … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Surrounding car on day old robbery report with no specific facts was without RS; suppressed
Officers approached defendant’s vehicle, completely without reasonable suspicion, looking for a robbery suspect from a robbery a day earlier. They surrounded the car, had their hands at their weapons at the ready, and told defendant to roll down the window. … Continue reading
D.Minn.: No standing in the search of the person of another
Defendant’s motion to reopen the suppression motion for the third time is denied. He has no standing in the search of somebody else. United States v. Spencer, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174240 (D.Minn. Dec. 11, 2015). The officer ran LPNs … Continue reading
ID: Officer stalled the stop to give drug dog time to arrive without RS
Defendant argued that his motion to suppress should have been granted because the officer slow walked the stop for 19 minutes without reasonable suspicion to give time for the drug dog to arrive. The trial court’s findings were not helpful … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Def handcuffed standing at door of his car permitted search incident
Defendant was arrested, handcuffed, and standing at the door of his car. The CI said that he was always armed, and a search incident of the console was proper because of the likelihood of a gun. United States v. Eno, … Continue reading
Two on detentions without cause and no attenuation
Officers were running license numbers of cars on a drug store parking lot and found one where the owner had warrants out for him. When the driver showed up, and he generally matched the description of the owner, he fled … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Protective sweep was for evidence not persons, but there was an independent basis for the SW
The protective sweep in this case was not a look for persons but evidence, and the body cam audio supports that conclusion. However, there was an independent basis for a search warrant, and the motion to suppress guns found in … Continue reading
OR: Hyperventilating def was exigency for dispensing with blood draw warrant as time wore on
Because the warrant process [despite Oregon’s use of telephonic warrants] would take 2½ hours, there was exigency for defendant’s blood draw in the hospital. Moreover, defendant was hyperventilating when he was stopped, and they didn’t know whether he was faking … Continue reading
NY4: Pulling def’s underwear out on the street was without reasonable suspicion
Forty-three months after his drug conviction, the officer’s search on the street of defendant’s genitals by pulling out his underwear and looking in was not based on reasonable suspicion he was armed. Search suppressed and case dismissed. People v. Smith, … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Even if def’s stop was without RS, his flight and subsequent traffic violations were an independent basis for arrest
Officers had reasonable suspicion to approach defendant’s vehicle for being engaged in a pending drug sale. “However, even if officers lacked reasonable suspicion to support the stop of defendant’s vehicle, the Court finds that defendant’s attempt to flee from law … Continue reading
PA: Plain view of possession of a firearm is RS to see if the person is licensed or not
“‘[P]ossession of a concealed firearm in public is sufficient to create a reasonable suspicion that the individual may be dangerous, such that an officer can approach the individual and briefly detain him in order to investigate whether the person is … Continue reading
OH4: Dog alert here conflated into RS question
Defendant was stopped for following too close and the state trooper found that she had a territorially limited DL, and she was outside the territory. He remembered her from a prior drug investigation and called for a drug dog. The … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Emergency entry on domestic call was unjustified where caller was outside uninjured
On a domestic battery call, when the police arrived one person was outside, having run out yelling “psycho” and the other was standing in the window of a bedroom. Police entry into the apartment was not justified by exigency because … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Rodriguez violated where def told he was “good to go” but officer then said turn pockets inside out
The officer told defendant that he was “good to go” but sought consent to go through his pockets and then told him to turn the pockets inside out. That was a Rodriguez violation, and the motion to suppress is granted. … Continue reading
OH9: For appellate court to consider trial testimony on motion to suppress, motion to reopen or reconsider required
To get the appellate court to consider trial testimony to supplement the motion to suppress, it’s necessary to renew the motion in the trial court after that point. Otherwise, the appeal proceeds on what was developed at the suppression hearing. … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Nexus to crime showed on one phone but not another; second phone suppressed
Information that a cell phone was being used in drug trafficking was nexus to one phone for a search warrant. As to the other phone, probable cause is actually lacking, and the tracking of that phone is suppressed. United States … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Bank fraud conspiracy investigation supported PC for SW for cell phone
In a bank fraud conspiracy, other person’s cell phones had evidence of the conspiracy on them. That led to a fair probability defendant’s phone would, too, based on the PC showing. There was also PC for a tracking device and … Continue reading
PA: Anonymous tip that a parolee had marijuana in his house wasn’t sufficient for RS for a parole search
Anonymous tip that a parolee had marijuana in his house wasn’t sufficient for reasonable suspicion for a parole search, despite the lesser expectation of privacy that a parolee has. Commonwealth v. Coleman, 2015 PA Super 258, 2015 Pa. Super. LEXIS … Continue reading