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- 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
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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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--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
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
CT: Keeping def’s knife because he was too drunk to be safe with it was reasonable; later he was discovered to have been in an assault with it
Defendant was first thought to be an assault victim, and the police took him home because he was intoxicated. He was asked about weapons on him, and he admitted to a knife, which he was relieved of, and it was … Continue reading
IA: Where def acquitted, denial of motion to suppress not preclusive in subsequent forfeiture action
Claimant’s acquittal of drug charges after denial of his motion to suppress gives the motion to suppress no preclusive effect. The stop here was unreasonable because it was dragged out, and the forfeiture is reversed. In the Matter of Property … Continue reading
CA4: On de novo review, the four innocent factors the District Court relied on did not show RS
On de novo review of the district court’s finding of reasonable suspicion, the court of appeals finds it completely lacking. The four factors individually and collectively (Arvizu) provides no reasonable suspicion. United States v. Williams, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 21560 … Continue reading
W.D.La.: Passenger had standing to challenge the stop and the length of detention, but not the search
Defendant passenger had standing to challenge the stop and the length of detention, but not the search. Here, the stop was continued on reasonable suspicion. United States v. Garcia, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166581 (W.D.La. Sept. 23, 2015). [Note: But … Continue reading
ID: A valid dealer tag is not reasonable suspicion
“[A] properly displayed dealer plate carries with it a presumption of validity and cannot serve as the sole basis for reasonable suspicion to allow an officer to stop a vehicle. A contrary holding would permit law enforcement officers unfettered discretion … Continue reading
MA: Police responding to a shooting call saw def hiding in a closed park with a ‘hoodie’ pulled tightly around face; that was a factor in reasonable suspicion
“At issue is whether there was reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk the defendant, who did not match the particularized aspects of the descriptions provided by eyewitnesses who called 911 to report that there had been a shoot-out on a … Continue reading
TX6: “[U]nder Rodriguez, Fourth Amendment considerations are both qualitative and temporal”
The smell of marijuana on defendant’s clothing noticed during the traffic stop and his heavily sweating during the stop although the temperature was in the high 20’s to low 30’s and travel plans that were suspicious all added up to … Continue reading
OH3: Impoundment of car for SW did not prohibit inventory before SW issued
The impoundment of defendant’s car was reasonable under the circumstances because officers intended to and did get a search warrant for it. The inventory before the search warrant wasn’t prejudicial because nothing from the inventory was even mentioned in the … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: No legal requirement to turn car over to third person rather than impound it
Officers are not required by law to turn a vehicle over to a third person rather than impound it. The impoundment was reasonable. Here, the impoundment decision was based in part on defendant’s claim to the officer that he’d had … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Def volunteering he had a warrant justified extending stop; driver’s statement passenger hid a gun was RS
Defendant volunteered early in the stop that he had a warrant out for him, and that alone justified continuing the stop. The driver of the vehicle told the officer that defendant put a gun under the seat, and that justified … Continue reading
VA: Clump of air fresheners hanging from inside mirror justified stop
Defendant was under investigation for drug offenses, and, when he drove off, he had a clump of air fresheners hanging from his rear view mirror which violated state law. Drugs were found in his car. His void for vagueness challenge … Continue reading
OH4: Defendant didn’t have standing to challenge pole camera surveillance of friend’s house
Defense counsel was not ineffective for not raising a technical challenge that, at the time, was meritless but the law later changed. The exclusionary rule wouldn’t apply. He also lacked standing to challenge pole camera surveillance of somebody else’s house. … Continue reading
OR: Stop was with RS, but it dissipated with consent search that came up empty
Defendant might have been stopped with reasonable suspicion, but it dissipated. Defendant had scabs on his arm from IV drug use. Defendant even consented to a search of his car that turned up nothing. At that point, defendant should have … Continue reading
NYTimes: Opinions: Can Predictive Policing Be Ethical and Effective?
NYTimes: Opinions: Can Predictive Policing Be Ethical and Effective? More police departments are trying to predict crime through computer analysis of data, part of the growing trend of using algorithms to analyze human behavior. Advocates say this approach focuses on … Continue reading
CA10: A federal warrantless search release condition requires particular findings
A district court may impose a warrantless search condition for supervised release if it makes findings. “The text of [18 U.S.C.] § 3583(d) does not limit the possibility of a warrantless-search condition to felons required to register under SORNA. Indeed, … Continue reading
IN: Officer’s stop for no paper license except in rear window was unreasonable because it was now lawful to have it there
State law had changed a year before defendant’s stop to allow for temporary plates to be hung in the rear window. Defendant was stopped for no license plate. As the officer approached, he could see a plate in the rear … Continue reading
D.Md.: On a stop with RS of having a gun, search of a cigarette pack exceeded Terry
The officer likely didn’t have reasonable suspicion of a man with a gun when the encounter started, but defendant’s furtive movements gave reasonable suspicion. When defendant was stopped, the officer’s search of a cigarette box on the car’s floor exceeded … Continue reading
OH12: Passenger’s nervous behavior more significant than driver’s
Defendant was not a listed driver on the rental agreement and he failed to keep eye contact with the officer during the stop. “Hill’s nervous behavior is more significant because as the passenger of the Impala, he did not commit … Continue reading
NY2: Def was accosted on the street without reasonable suspicion, and def’s flight and abandonment was precipitated by unlawful police action
Defendant fled from the police and dropped a gun. His being accosted was without reasonable suspicion and his flight was not reason to arrest. Dropping the gun while being chased is suppressed. “Detective Lunt’s experience with gang activity, his awareness … Continue reading