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- S.D.Fla.: SW for def’s house included his tent outside
- 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
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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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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
DE: Nervousness, 3 cell phones, past drug conviction, old alias not used not RS beyond a mere patdown; extension of stop unreasonable
The stop was for speeding, 48/25. Defendant’s extreme nervousness and criminal history for drugs and weapons and an old alias justified his patdown for weapons. Defendant was previously asked for consent to search the car and declined. The extension of … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Def’s supervised release condition did not amount to consent to a search of his computer; he could refuse under risk of revo
The terms of defendant’s supervised release for his child pornography conviction provide that he is subject to a search on reasonable suspicion, but he can refuse and risk revocation if it is not well taken. The condition the government relies … Continue reading
OR: State fails on probation search justification by not developing it in trial court
The state conceded that the stop was unreasonably extended, but argued inevitable discovery because defendant was on probation and the search of her purse was a product of that. She’d refused consent to search her purse, and then her being … Continue reading
IL: IAC where defendant would have won nonappealed search issue
Defense counsel was ineffective in not appealing a valid motion to suppress that had been denied by the trial court but, on the merits, would have been reversed. Going to the merits of the search and seizure claim, defendant would … Continue reading
AR: Mere color discrepancy between the DMV record and what the car looks like is not reasonable suspicion
Mere color discrepancy between the DMV record and what the car looks like is not reasonable suspicion, following FL3 and CA7. Schneider v. State, 2015 Ark. 152 (April 9, 2015), rev’g 2014 Ark. App. 711, 492 S.W.3d 601:
CT: CSLI was harmless error, even if unreasonably obtained
Even if the cell site location data for defendant’s phone was unreasonably obtained, it showed only that his phone was in the area of the crime not him, and he attempted to rebut it by claiming that his truck was … Continue reading
MS: Search warrant to seize cell phone fairly includes ability to search it
The search warrant to seize defendant’s cell phone, fairly read, permitted a search of the phone for photographs of defendant’s sexual battery of the victim. Moore v. State, 2015 Miss. App. LEXIS 182 (April 7, 2015). The invalidity of the … Continue reading
CA10: Ptf’s Fourth Amendment claim here creates a Heck bar to relief
Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment 1983 claim was barred by Heck v. Humphrey. He also did nothing to controvert the probable cause affidavit of the police. Lemmons v. Clymer, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 5484 (10th Cir. April 6, 2015).* Defendant’s argument that … Continue reading
MD: Painstaking discussion of a mere “accosting” and a stop
Distinguishing between a mere accosting of persons in a parked car and a stop, the court finds this was a detention governed by the Fourth Amendment and without reasonable suspicion. There was a call at 12:11 am about “drug activity” … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Apt was small enough that protective sweep was valid, even to balcony
While the record isn’t clear, the apartment here appears to be small enough that a protective sweep validly covered all the space inside, including the balcony near where defendant was arrested. United States v. Washington, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43617 … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Power company was not a state actor in providing electrical usage information
“The aphorism that ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ would certainly apply to the law enforcement officials who investigated this case.” Here, the city sanitation workers were seeing large amounts of marijuana debris coming in, and they called the … Continue reading
CA6: Court can’t dictate how officers conduct their reasonable suspicion inquiry, but there are some limits
The stop was for speeding, 72/55. Nervousness alone is not enough for reasonable suspicion. An “oddity” in the rental contract, a third party renter not present, was enough to extend the stop. The dog sniff here occurred during the process … Continue reading
ID erroneously puts burden of proof on driver in DL suspension cases to prove stop was not valid
In DL suspensions in Idaho, the burden is on the driver to show a lack of justification for the stop, not on the state to prove that it was valid. “The hearing officer properly concluded that Wernecke failed to prove … Continue reading
GA joins jurisdictions finding smell of raw marijuana PC
“Based on the foregoing cases, it appears to be widely accepted in numerous jurisdictions that a trained police officer’s detection of the odor of raw marijuana can be the sole basis for the issuance of a search warrant, and we … Continue reading
CA4: Failure to raise search issue on first appeal waived it for appeal after remand
Defendant’s conviction was previously reversed and remanded. On this second appeal, defendant raises a search issue that wasn’t in the first appeal. That issue is barred by the “mandate rule” that it had to be appealed the first time or … Continue reading
D.Nev.: No reasonable mistake of law where only case on point says no RS for stop
A Nevada statute proscribes things “upon” the windshield. Air fresheners hanging from the mirror don’t violate the statute. The only Ninth Circuit case involves an almost identical city code provision, and that court held that something hanging from the mirror … Continue reading
E.D.Mo.: Not knowing your address while walking “home” in a high crime area and pulling up pants because of likely weight of gun was RS
Walking alone at night in a high crime area [the ‘hood?] and pulling up pants strongly suggested defendant had a gun there in his pants. He was nervously looking at the police car. He said he was going home but … Continue reading
CA7: Parole search permitted of gym bag left in cousin’s car when defendant wasn’t present
Defendant was on parole and suspected of being involved in a shooting. He left a gym bag in his cousin’s car. The parole search condition permitted the search of his gym bag even though he wasn’t present at the time. … Continue reading
CA7: Inmate forced to wear a see-through jumpsuit for prison transfer stated 8th Amd. claim but not 4th
Plaintiff inmate was forced to wear a see-through jumpsuit, and he stated an Eighth Amendment claim, but not one under the Fourth Amendment. He couldn’t comply with PLRA. “We reverse and remand for further proceedings. King’s transfer to the state … Continue reading