September 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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Recent Posts
- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
- W.D.Tex.: What is the duty of the neutral and detached magistrate?
- D.Me.: Yes, more investigation could have been done, but there’s still PC on what there was
- CA3: Brady doesn’t apply to SW materials
- E.D.Mich.: Person a cell phone was given to as gift could consent to search
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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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
CA8: Hour long wait for a drug dog was not unreasonable in rural SD on reasonable suspicion
Once reasonable suspicion arose in a motorist assist, the officer called for drug dog, but the closest was an hour away because they were in rural South Dakota. The detention was still reasonable under all the circumstances despite that delay. … Continue reading
NJ: Discussing Navarette, an anonymous 911 call about shots fired from van was RS
Discussing but saying it’s not relying on Navarette, New Jersey holds that an anonymous 911 call about a van from which shots were fired was stopped with reasonable suspicion when it was seen and a protective weapons frisk of the … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Strong ether odor big factor in PC for a meth lab
The Eighth Circuit has long held that the odor of ether is a strong factor in probable cause for a methamphetamine lab. Here, the affidavit for the search warrant recounted many other factors in his past drug history. At the … Continue reading
IN: Refuses to find any reasonable expectation of privacy in telephone records under state constitution
Defendant didn’t pursue an interlocutory appeal of his suppression motion on telephone records being seized in violation of the state constitution. Therefore, he waived it by objecting at trial. Nevertheless, the court finds that he would lose on the state … Continue reading
D.N.J.: Merely holding a camera bag getting into a car doesn’t give standing when the car was later stopped without some ownership interest
Defendant was seen holding a blue camera bag as he entered a car that was later stopped. Holding the bag then doesn’t give standing because he later did not assert an ownership interest in it. United States v. Valle-Irizarry, 2014 … Continue reading
WI: Knocking on the window of a car to get the driver to roll the window down is not a seizure
Knocking on the window of a car to get the driver to roll the window down is not a seizure. The smell of alcohol was then lawfully discovered. County of Grant v. Vogt, 2014 WI 76, 2014 Wisc. LEXIS 490 … Continue reading
MA: Baggies of drugs supported DUI detention since no alcohol signs
Defendant was stopped for possible impaired driving, but he didn’t show signs of alcohol intoxication. Instead, officers saw baggies that one would obviously associate with drugs and that supported the officer’s later actions. The motion to suppress should not have … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Drug and firearm SW turned up surveillance system; looking at images on camera was reasonable; CP found
Officers had a drug and firearms search warrant, and found a surveillance system inside with a “control room.” They looked on the camera screen and immediately saw child pornography. They obtained a second warrant for that. The view of the … Continue reading
IN: Completely unjustified frisk suppressed
The officer in this case received word that defendant was a drug dealer, so he went around looking for defendant. He saw the defendant a couple of times but nothing was unusual or suggested a crime. Then he initiated a … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Danger not defused, so officer could conduct frisk; it’s “akin to the doctrine of a ‘protective sweep'”
I’ve analogized a frisk of a car authorized under Long as a ‘protective sweep,’ which is usually of a dwelling. Here, a court does too: Officers responded to a use of force report that had been not completely defused. When … Continue reading
PA: Request for ID of two men sitting at a vacant building didn’t rise to a detention
Two men sitting at a vacant building in the daytime, but in an area known for burglaries, could be asked for identification and it written down. It was a mere encounter and not a detention. One defendant’s continued furtive conduct … Continue reading
GA: Deliberately delaying the computer check during a traffic stop unreasonably extended it
The officer wrote a traffic ticket and then decided to run a computer check, and that unnecessarily prolonged the stop, making it unreasonable. State v. Allen, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 538 (July 16, 2014). Monitoring a controlled buy with the … Continue reading
VI: The question is not whether the driver is guilty of a traffic offense, just whether there is RS
The officer stopped defendant because he swerved, and defendant claimed it was because he was avoiding a pedestrian. The government isn’t required to prove that it was true or not; the question is reasonable suspicion of bad driving, and it … Continue reading
AZ: Open door in area known for string of burglaries justified entry
Officers came to defendant’s house looking for somebody else as a suspect because of a significant number of home burglaries in the area. They found a gate, a 120′ driveway, and opened the gate. About 15′ in they noticed that … Continue reading
WI: Mistake of law on how many taillights have to work led to suppression
One unlit bulb in a taillight system that was otherwise visible 500′ was unreasonable. This is a mistake of law. State v. Brown, 2014 WI 69, 2014 Wisc. LEXIS 483 (July 16, 2014). Driving 25 then 20 in a 50 … Continue reading
OH9: Mistake of law on where car needed to stop justified suppressing the stop
Officer’s mistake of law that a driver had to stop only at a stop line and not before made the stop unreasonable. State v. Drushal, 2014-Ohio-3088, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS 3020 (9th Dist. July 14, 2014).* [Will Heien v. North … Continue reading
GA: Officer’s ignoring dispatch that DL and paperwork were fine unreasonably extended stop
Defendant was stopped, acted somewhat nervous, and the officer called in the license check, which was complete in 2½ minutes. He ignored dispatch calling him back to prolong the stop, and that made the stop unreasonable because, since defendant’s paperwork … Continue reading