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- D.Md.: Govt’s motion to reconsider granted motion to suppress denied; arguments now are too late
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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
KY: Defendant who refused consent for blood test and got no breath test has no Fourth Amendment claim that he wasn’t breath tested
Defendant was stopped for traffic offenses and smelled of alcohol. He refused consent to search his blood for his BAC, and the officer did not offer him a breath test. Thus, he had no “standing” because of no injury in … Continue reading
W.D.Tex. credits motorist and passenger over officer and finds no reasonable suspicion
In a rare occurrence, the Western District of Texas at El Paso believed the motorist and passenger over the officer about the reasonable suspicion for the stop. The defendant had been stopped four times in a short period of time, … Continue reading
OH10: Emergency or hot pursuit didn’t justify entry during knock-and-talk
Bike patrol officers smelled burning marijuana, and that led to them to a hotel room. When they knocked, defendant opened the door and they barged in. The entry was unlawful and couldn’t be sustained under any emergency or hot pursuit … Continue reading
CA6: Handcuffing for open carry in Ohio stated a claim; no qualified immunity
The Ohio legislature decided that open carry is permissible with a CCW. Plaintiff was stopped and handcuffed for thirty minutes and let go. He states a claim and qualified immunity is no defense. “Where it is lawful to possess a … Continue reading
WaPo: The Fourth Amendment and open carry of guns (where such open carry is legal)
WaPo: The Fourth Amendment and open carry of guns (where such open carry is legal) by Eugene Volokh: From the Sixth Circuit federal court of appeals decision today in Northrup v. Toledo Police Dept.: On a midsummer evening, Shawn and … Continue reading
CA3: Three connected cases
When the officer went to an apartment in response to a shots fired call, and defendant came running out knocking the officer over, that was reasonable suspicion to detain him. The crack in his hand was dropped. United States v. … Continue reading
D.Md.: When a business is in receivership, the receiver is the one with standing
Defendant lacked standing because the receiver of the business was the only one with standing. United States v. Cohen, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60840 (D. Md. May 7, 2015) (Treatise § 12.52 n.1). A drug dog’s alert on the passenger … Continue reading
TX4: Private security guards’ detention for police was based on reasonable suspicion
The Texas exclusionary rule applies to private actors. The club security guards here had at least reasonable suspicion to detain and handcuff defendant for attempting to sell cocaine in the club as a citizen’s detention, akin to a citizen’s arrest. … Continue reading
OR: Furtive gesture alone in OR not enough, but here there was more
Defendant was smoking in a car in a subdivision being developed, so it couldn’t be called a high crime area. A citizen informant called in that the case was suspicious, so an officer was dispatched to see. When defendant saw … Continue reading
PA: Re-engaging driver with questions after saying he’s free to leave is a second stop
When defendant during a traffic stop is told he is free to leave and the officer starts to go back to the patrol car, but returns to re-engage the driver, that is a second stop requiring reasonable suspicion. No reasonable … Continue reading
CA9: Once criminal proceedings are over, the original search isn’t an issue in Rule 41(g) proceedings for return of property
Defendant’s Rule 41(g) motion was granted in part and denied in part. The district court did not err in refusing to reconsider the original search question. “[I]n the context of Rule 41, that after criminal proceedings are completed, ‘the legality … Continue reading
IA: Where owner of car was a woman with a revoked DL, the officer didn’t see it was a man driving until he got to the driver’s window
The officer ran the LPN of the vehicle in front of him, and the owner, a woman, came back with a revoked DL. He stopped the car. When he got to the driver’s door, he saw a man, and then … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: Merely hiding something in a car doesn’t create standing
Defendant was accused of breaking into USPS mailboxes and stealing mail. He failed to show standing in the car he was stopped in. He claimed to own it, having just bought it from a guy whose name he didn’t know, … Continue reading
Big win for individual liberty: SCOTUS: Bringing out the drug dog as a matter of course during a traffic stop is unreasonable; CA8’s “de minimus” extension of stop rule violates Fourth Amendment
Rodriguez v. United States, 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2807 (April 21, 2015). The syllabus: Officer Struble, a K–9 officer, stopped petitioner Rodriguez for driving on a highway shoulder, a violation of Nebraska law. After Struble attended to everything relating to the … Continue reading
NJ: No cause shown to order passenger out of car under state law
Under New Jersey law, the driver can per se be ordered out of the car under Mimms, but not so with the passenger. Here, the trial court’s initial findings didn’t resolve this, and it was previously remanded. After the remand, … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: There is standing in a borrowed cell phone; no justification here for search
Defendant’s denial of ownership of a cell phone in his car was not determinative of his standing to challenge its search. Actually, he was loaned the phone because his was broken, and he was legitimately in possession. The question posed … Continue reading
CA3: Use of a police baton on legs to subdue struggling suspect was reasonable; SI of fleeing suspect reasonable and based on fact
Defendant was pulled over for possible speeding in a 25 mph zone, and he fled the car, tugging at his pants as he was running, strongly suggesting a gun in his pocket or waistband. One officer tackled him and had … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Reasonable to infer that robbers usually keep weapons and proceeds at home
It was a reasonable inference that a suspected robber would keep the weapons used and the proceeds of the robbery in his house. In any event, the good faith exception applies. United States v. Morgan, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48758 … Continue reading