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- D.Utah: Minor time detours to writing up a traffic ticket didn’t unreasonable extend this stop; the dog was quickly on its way
- KY: Despite lack of nexus, SW sustained under GFE
- CO: DNA could be seized from trash
- CA8: Nebraska statute allowing SWs to cross state lines doesn’t violate 4A
- WA: Sweat patch as condition of release violated state constitution’s privacy provision
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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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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)
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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
W.D.N.Y.: Incorrect AUSA assertion about which phone was searched had to be promptly clarified, not when he or she felt like it
Here, the AUSA was apparently confused in pleadings as to which cell phone was searched, a white or black one. When the AUSA learned that the wrong one was spoken of, he or she had a duty to promptly clarify–not … Continue reading
TN: SW didn’t say blood to be taken and seized could be tested, but it could be under common sense reading
“Although the warrant did not specifically state that the blood was to be ‘tested,’ ‘analyzed,’ or ‘examined’ for such intoxicants, a logical, commonsense reading of the warrant shows that the warrant was meant to authorize such analysis because an intoxicating … Continue reading
IN: Facebook SW production authenticated records for trial
The search warrant production helped authenticate defendant’s Facebook records for trial. Anderson v. State, 2024 Ind. App. LEXIS 351 (Dec. 20, 2024). The fog line statute requires a driver to stay “as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane” … Continue reading
NV: No suppression for a delayed return of SW
State law says that the product of search warrants can be suppressed when they were wrongfully executed. That says nothing about a delayed return, and the search won’t be suppressed for that reason. Alvarez v. State, 2024 Nev. LEXIS 69 … Continue reading
KY: Stop based on a statute not yet in effect isn’t a reasonable mistake of law
Defendant’s stop based on a vehicle equipment law that had not yet gone into effect was not saved by Heien. As in: when the law’s not yet law, there can’t be a reasonable mistake about its application. “An officer cannot … Continue reading
NC: Smell of dead animal led police to exigency of finding dogs in distress
The officer responded to a neighbor’s call that there was the smell of a dead animal coming from defendant’s property. The officer walked up the driveway and could see chained obviously sickly dogs with no food or water. The smell … Continue reading
NC: Drug dog alert on def’s car isn’t RS to frisk his person
A drug dog alert on defendant’s car isn’t reasonable suspicion to frisk his person. State v. Stollings, 2024 N.C. App. LEXIS 1006 (Dec. 17, 2024). Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not further challenging the search warrant issued after an entry … Continue reading
D.Mass.: 17-day delay between seizure and SW was reasonable
“[T]he government’s seventeen-day delay between the warrantless seizure of Thompson’s property and the issuance of the search warrants was reasonable. The first factor favors the government because seventeen days—eleven of which were business days—is relatively short and far shorter than … Continue reading
MT: Search of electronics under SW needs to start by SW expiration, not be completed
The search warrant for numerous electronic devices (phones and tablets) was served within ten days but the search couldn’t be completed for longer than that. The grant of the motion to suppress because of the delay is reversed. The warrant … Continue reading
CA2: Plain view seizure of cell phone established by officers’ knowledge of role of cell phones in crime
The evidentiary value of a cell phone for plain view was established here because, when officers saw the phone, they’d been investigating a conspiracy involving cell phone for months. United States v. Kurland, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 32177 (2d Cir. … Continue reading
OH10: Foundation for Facebook exhibits provided by seizing officer
The evidentiary foundation for Facebook messages under rule 901 was established by the officer obtaining the Facebook warrant. State v. Lathon, 2024-Ohio-5886, 2024 Ohio App. LEXIS 4539 (10th Dist. Dec. 18, 2024). Officers had neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion … Continue reading
OH10: Suicidal domestic call followed by ShotSpotter alert was RS
Police had a call about a domestic situation with a suicidal man with a gun. Shortly thereafter, there was a ShotSpotter alert of 20 gunshots from a house nearby. Officers arrived and patted down those found there. This is substantially … Continue reading
OH3: Going right into pockets was an invalid frisk
The state failed to prove the necessity for a stop and frisk because the video shows the officer going right into defendant’s pockets and not frisking. State v. Barnes, 2024-Ohio-5865, 2024 Ohio App. LEXIS 4519 (3d Dist. Dec. 16, 2024). … Continue reading
W.D.La.: Dog sniff at door of commercial rented storage unit violated no REP
A dog sniff at the door to a rented commercial storage unit violated no reasonable expectation of privacy. United States v. Harris, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 224506 (W.D. La. Nov. 4, 2024). There’s no reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s … Continue reading
AR: LA judge could issue SW for LA medical records for AR crime
After an accident in South Arkansas, defendant was airlifted to a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. A search warrant in Louisiana was issued for his medical records. There was no requirement that an Arkansas judge issue a warrant first, just so … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Cover story at time of justified stop didn’t make it unreasonable
Months of electronic surveillance gave probable cause for defendant’s stop and search. Police use of a cover story for the stop was reasonable to prevent other co-conspirators from finding out. United States v. Arrington, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 222969 (E.D. … Continue reading
CA8: Takedown was lawful, assault thereafter wasn’t
Plaintiff’s takedown was lawful, but not the assault after he was down. “It is even more clearly established now. A suspect’s ‘right[] to be free from excessive force [is] violated if officers choke, kick, or punch [him] when [he is] … Continue reading
TN: Def’s dashcam was searched with a warrant
Defendant had a dashcam, and the officer got a warrant for it. While the video was bad, the audio supported the basis for the stop. State v. Callahan, 2024 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 546 (Dec. 6, 2024).* There was reasonable … Continue reading
VI: GPS monitoring for pretrial release can be reasonable; here it was consented to as well
The VI code and rules of criminal procedure provide for electronic monitoring as a condition of pretrial release. GPS tracking is a search and involves a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy and would be reasonable if justified. Here it was … Continue reading
S.D.W.Va.: Issuance of a criminal citation is not a seizure
Issuance of a hunting violation citation is not a seizure. Even if it was, there was probable cause. Defendant wildlife officer’s seizure of antlers from a taxidermist can proceed. Craft v. Gills, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 219453 (S.D. W.Va. Dec. … Continue reading