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- CA11: Service of SW without attachments isn’t 4A violation
- KS: Running warrants on a passed out person is reasonable
- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
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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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"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
Cal.3: PC to search passenger compartment for gun didn’t extend to the trunk
Officers had probable cause to search defendant’s passenger compartment for a firearm. When the gun wasn’t found there, the officer searched the trunk, finding it. The probable cause, however, did not extend to the trunk. People v. Leal, 2023 Cal. … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: In a murder for hire case, a two year delay between the killing and the search didn’t make it presumably stale
In a murder for hire case, a two year delay between the homicide and the search warrant for defendant’s premises did not make the warrant presumably stale. The warrant sought digital evidence, and there were four conspirators and it spanned … Continue reading
NYT: Kansas Troopers ‘Waged War on Motorists,’ Federal Judge Finds
NYT: Kansas Troopers ‘Waged War on Motorists,’ Federal Judge Finds by Mitch Smith (“The judge said the Highway Patrol had made a habit of wrongly questioning out-of-state drivers in hopes of turning up drugs.”):
MI: Omission def was a CI was not material where SW was based on possession and sale of drugs
“Agent Merle’s failure to reveal that Brown was a CI for DTF was not a material omission. As discussed previously, the warrant affidavit was based on Brown’s possession and sale of illegal drugs, which did not fall within the scope … Continue reading
D.Md.: Surveillance and bodycam video supported officer’s contention def had a firearm in sweatshirt pocket
The court viewed the CCTV and body cam videos (included in the opinion) and it’s apparent defendant had a gun in his sweatshirt pocket. “Not every bulge is a weapon,” but this one apparently was. That justified the frisk. United … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Unsubstantiated rumor not RS
Defendant’s stop for being involved in a shooting which was based on nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor from an unsupported CI and the victim that he was involved was without reasonable suspicion. United States v. Cobbs, 2023 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Second thoughts about unobjected to Facebook posts in 1/6 trial doesn’t mean govt violated particularity
1/6 defendants didn’t object to Facebook materials obtained by search warrant. In their motion for new trial they’re concerned with one entry in 14,000 pages that the government must have exceeded the warrant. “Even if these underdeveloped allegations held water, … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Briefly asking about “illegal narcotics” during a traffic stop not unreasonable because of fentanyl
Asking a stopped motorist about whether there were illegal drugs in the car was a question of officer safety because of fentanyl. “The questions here primarily involved the presence of weapons, although Officer Ragusa very briefly mentioned ‘illegal narcotics.’ The … Continue reading
CA5: No REP in a video recorded by another of def committing a crime
While one can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in something he doesn’t own (as in bailment or contract), here it was a video recorded by another of him possessing firearms. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: SW for entire iCloud account limited by crime under investigation was particular
The fact the CI related information that was publicly known doesn’t support the story. “Although the Court concludes that the Apple/iCloud warrant was not supported by probable cause, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies.” The case was a … Continue reading
KS: Typo in date of GPS warrant was “technical irregularity” that could be overlooked
A typo in the date on a GPS tracking warrant was a technical irregularity that did not substantively prejudice him. State v. Campbell, 2023 Kan. LEXIS 49 (July 14, 2023). The fact defendant’s statement to the police that formed the … Continue reading
Cal.4: Prompt detour to drug investigation after traffic stop violated Rodriguez
This started as a lawful traffic stop, but the officer promptly detoured to a drug investigation and used a drug dog when defendant refused consent, and Rodriguez was violated. People v. Gyorgy, 2023 Cal. App. LEXIS 536 (4th Dist. July … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Rodriguez requires separate offense with RS
“Therefore, to extend the stop past this point to deploy his K9 partner, Frizko, even by mere minutes, Trooper Rauenhorst would have needed an additional, separate reasonably articulable factual basis upon which to believe a different offense was in need … Continue reading
CA8: Even if def’s Mexican confession was obtained by alleged torture, the UN Convention Against Torture doesn’t have a suppression remedy
Defendant was arrested in Mexico and subjected to searches and interrogation which he claimed amounted to torture. Relying on the United Nations Convention Against Torture, he contended it shocked the conscience. There is no authority for the CAT to apply … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Dismissal not the remedy for a 4A violation
“But in any event, even where Fourth Amendment violations have occurred—which, the Court takes pains to restate, is not the case here—a dismissal of an indictment is generally not the appropriate remedy. United States v. Morrison, 449 U.S. 361, 365-66, … Continue reading
E.D.La.: Leaving the wrong SW at the scene of the search is not a ground to suppress
Leaving the wrong search warrant at the scene of the search is not a ground to suppress. United States v. Major, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116569 (E.D. La. July 7, 2023). The CI had no track record, but his story … Continue reading
CADC: In the RS calculus, the officer’s experience has significant value
In the reasonable suspicion calculus, the officer’s experience has value. United States v. Douglas, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 17171 (D.C. Cir. July 7, 2023) (per curiam, but 2-1), Randolph, J., concurring: