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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
D.Utah: Using drug dog while waiting for call back from dispatch was reasonable; didn’t prolong the stop
During the eight minutes of a normal traffic stop, the use of a drug dog by the officer while waiting for word back from dispatch was reasonable. United States v. Guzman-Cruz, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3312 (D. Utah January 11, … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Any possible mistake of law on open carry was reasonable under Heien
In a consensual encounter, the officer saw the butt of a gun sticking out of defendant’s back pocket. The direction to him to “turn around” was custodial. Even assuming that defendant had a right to carry a gun, any mistake … Continue reading
IA: Burnt aluminum foil in plain view in a car is probable cause for a search
Burnt aluminum foil in plain view in a car is probable cause for a search. State v. Johannes, 2015 Iowa App. LEXIS 25 (January 14, 2015). Officers assembled outside a hotel room after neighbors complained that there was yelling and … Continue reading
TN: Officers could go to door of rear apartment for knock-and-talk
Defendant lived in a rear apartment on the property, so the police did not violate curtilage or a no trespassing sign by going to the rear door since it was his entry. After that, his consent to enter and search … Continue reading
PA: Motion for return of property in criminal case was remedy, not civil case years later
Defendant had to seek return of his property during the pendency of his criminal case. A separate civil case more than seven years later was barred under state law. Commonwealth v. Allen, 2014 Pa. LEXIS 3526 (December 29, 2014). A … Continue reading
IL: Handcuffs may be applied during a Terry encounter without turning it into an arrest
Handcuffs may be applied during a Terry encounter without turning it into an arrest. Here, there was plenty of reasonable suspicion and an uncooperative defendant. People v. Fields, 2014 IL App (1st) 130209, 2014 Ill. App. LEXIS 950 (December 31, … Continue reading
OH5: Six weeks after second controlled buy not stale where there’s ongoing drug dealing
There were two controlled buys of marijuana from defendant’s store on May 3d & 21st. A third buy was July 2d but the test results weren’t back when a search warrant was obtained on July 3d. The July 2d buy … Continue reading
OH7: After neighborhood shootout, bullet holes in door across street and no answer justified community caretaking entry
Police responded to a shootout on the street, and an officer went to defendant’s house and saw fresh bullet holes in the door. He knocked and got no answer. The next door neighbor said that the occupants had to be … Continue reading
WI: Apartment building’s parking garage was not part of the apartment’s curtilage
An apartment building’s parking garage was not part of the apartment’s curtilage. “Dumstrey appeals from a judgment of conviction for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (OWI), second offense. Dumstrey argues that the off-duty officer who pursued him in traffic … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Two border crossings at San Ysidro in 12 hrs added to reasonable suspicion
Reasonable suspicion for a stop 70 miles from the border was supported by the fact the car had crossed into the U.S. at San Ysidro twice in 12 hours. United States v. Garcia-Grimshaw, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173631 (S.D. Cal. … Continue reading
Reason.com: Sotomayor Is Right: SCOTUS Gave Too Much Leeway to the Police in Heien v. North Carolina
Reason.com: Sotomayor Is Right: SCOTUS Gave Too Much Leeway to the Police in Heien v. North Carolina by Damon Root: Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of the police in a Fourth Amendment case in which … Continue reading
IN: No-knock issue moot by Hudson v. Michigan
Officers obtained a search warrant for firearms, but they also suspected they’d find drugs. There was probable cause for the firearms search and the rest was plain view. Even if the no-knock provision in the warrant was invalid, Hudson bars … Continue reading
The Atlantic: When Cops Don’t Know the Law
The Atlantic: When Cops Don’t Know the Law by Garrett Epps: On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that police stops are legal when the officer has a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that a law is being broken-even if that law doesn’t exist.
MD: A motion for return of property can’t include a damages claim; that’s a separate action
A motion for return of seized property can’t include a claim for damages; it’s only for return of property that the owner believes he or she is entitled to. A separate action has to be filed for that. Bord v. … Continue reading
AR: Hunting compliance stops in the field require RS; Hiibel distinguished
This is a game warden stop of a duck hunter. The state argued, and the court agreed, that any confrontation between a game warden and the public amounted to a stop based on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Hunting … Continue reading
The Economist: Driving while nervous
The Economist: Driving while nervous by S.M.: IN AN unusual 8-1 split, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the lone dissenter, the Supreme Court issued a ruling on Monday that whittles away at the Fourth Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and … Continue reading
CA6: Violation of some regulations may be “sloppy police work” that doesn’t make out a constitutional violation
There was probable cause for this § 1983 plaintiff’s arrest. While there may have been some violations of police regulations in how the controlled buy went down, a little “sloppy police work” that doesn’t make out a constitutional violation. Womack … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Reasonable mistake on facts that person entering car was wanted on a warrant still supported stop on RS
Officers reasonably mistaken on the facts that the person entering a 4Runner from a drug house was a particular wanted person still justified the stop. Then, furtive movements justified a protective weapons search. United States v. Black-McCormick, 2014 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading