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Recent Posts
- OH7: Magistrate signing SW for something outside of territorial jurisdiction not a 4A violation
- OH2: Stop outside the officer’s jurisdiction doesn’t violate 4A
- RawStory Opinion: Trump just declared these parts of America are outside the Constitution (within 100 miles of any border)
- CA1: SW for iPhone 6S didn’t permit search of iPhone 13 despite same phone number
- CA7: It wasn’t a 4A violation to place a pole camera to look over def’s fence he built knowing he was under surveillance
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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
LA4: Def’s entering and leaving a drug house wasn’t RS on its own
“Turning to the facts of this case, we also find the officer’s observation of defendant entering and exiting a residence that was reasonably suspected as being used for narcotics transactions to be insufficient to support a reasonable suspicion of participation … Continue reading
CA6: There was already RS to detain the occupants of the car when def fled from it
“In total, we find that there was reasonable suspicion to block the white Saturn into the driveway. Taking together the smell of marijuana in an area known for drug violations, the person leaning into the car, and the car’s backing … Continue reading
OH5: RS ended when the driver turned out not to be the wanted owner, and further detention was without RS
When reasonable suspicion evaporated with the fact that the driver of the vehicle was not the owner for whom there was a warrant out, the stop should have ended. State v. Brentlinger, 2019-Ohio-4989, 2019 Ohio App. LEXIS 5073 (5th Dist. … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Criminal history and gang affiliation alone isn’t RS
Defendants were riding in the back of a pickup truck after getting a ride from an acquaintance. The officer stopped the truck and extended the stop about 90 minutes without any reasonable suspicion at all. Their criminal histories and alleged … Continue reading
WA: Arrestee’s right to advice of right to counsel doesn’t require stopping execution of SW to tell him
While an arrestee is entitled to a prompt notice of his right to counsel, police do not have to interrupt execution of a search warrant to do it. State v. Ackerman, 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 3023 (Dec. 2, 2019). Officers … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Def could be transported to precinct for lineup on RS alone
Defendant was handcuffed as a part of his stop for officer safety and to secure the scene. They could also put him in a police car handcuffed. Finally, transporting him to the precinct for a lineup wasn’t an unreasonable seizure … Continue reading
CA5: Heien objective reasonableness applies to a stop for driving too slow even though it was just def’s car in traffic
Driving too slow for too long justifies a stop, at least Heien makes it reasonable: “Given the dearth of authority on whether a single vehicle constitutes traffic …, the ambiguity in the statute, and the danger observed by the officer, … Continue reading
N.D.Tex.: Not material to not mention def’s state of mind hours before the occurrence
Defendant claimed a Franks violation from the officer’s failure to include things that were true about defendant before things went south that night. It wasn’t material to defendant’s state of mind at the time of the occurrence. United States v. … Continue reading
CA8: Dist.Ct. erred in finding no RS for extending stop; there was, and it ripened to PC
The district court erred in finding there was no reasonable suspicion for extending the stop. “We have found a combination of nervous behavior and suspicious travel plans creates a reasonable suspicion justifying a traffic stop’s extension. … In the protective … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: “[R]easonable suspicion need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct.” Navarette
A brief meeting for what could only be described by the officer, in his experience, was likely a hand-to-hand sale in a high crime area reasonable suspicion for a stop. “Other suggested explanations by defendant, such as that defendant may … Continue reading
Reason: Volokh Conspiracy: What is “individualized” suspicion?
Reason: Volokh Conspiracy: What is “individualized” suspicion? by Orin S. Kerr:
N.D.Miss.: Uncontradicted testimony that a DL checkpoint was validly set up makes checkpoint valid; plain view sustained
The state set up a driver’s license and safety checkpoint, and defendant was stopped there. He doesn’t contradict the officer’s testimony that it was set up by supervisory persons and was limited in time and scope. The stop was thus … Continue reading
D.Conn.: Arrest by bathroom door permits look into bathroom under protective sweep
Defendant was arrested in his apartment, right at the bathroom door, and looking in the bathroom was permitted by the protective sweep doctrine. In there, powder from drugs was visible in plain view. United States v. Ovalle, 2019 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Putting def in the back seat of a police car wasn’t unreasonable during a basic traffic stop
“Ward also argues that the traffic stop was extended by placing him in the back of the police cruiser. … However, the officer(s) needed to walk back to the police cruiser in order to complete the mission of issuing a … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: That some NYPD cops are known to lie doesn’t mean these two are because the bodycams and physical evidence make them credible
“The circumstances of the stop, search, and seizure of Defendant demonstrate that there was a strong reasonable suspicion to support a stop and search of Defendant, and then probable cause to arrest him. [¶] Defendant’s main argument is that the … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: NC law requires RS for a supervision search, and here it’s lacking
North Carolina law requires reasonable suspicion for a supervision search, and here it was completely lacking. The motion to suppress is granted. United States v. Fuller, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 202240 (E.D. N.C. Oct. 1, 2019).* State statute discusses concealed … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Def’s car’s impoundment wasn’t justified by community caretaking function or need for inventory
The impoundment of defendant’s car wasn’t justified by either the community caretaking function or need for inventory. Whether the vehicle was even involved in a crime was inconclusive at best. United States v. Trujillo, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 201024 (D. … Continue reading
MO: Exigency was shown at the motion to suppress, and more was shown at trial
The trial court denied the motion to suppress because the entry was by exigent circumstances. The trial testimony confirms it. State v. Bolden, 2019 Mo. App. LEXIS 1823 (Nov. 19, 2019).* The traffic stop was justified under state law, and, … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: The encounter started as consensual because the officer approached from the side to a parked car; RS developed
The encounter with the officer was not a seizure. She was parked five spaces away from defendant’s car and off to the side. When talking to defendant she saw a meth pipe in plain view. “The parties do not dispute … Continue reading
OR: During the “unavoidable lull” in a traffic stop, state constitution prohibits asking for consent without justification
During the “unavoidable lull” in a traffic stop, the state constitution prohibits asking for consent without further justification. State v. Arreola-Botello, 365 Ore. 695, 2019 Ore. LEXIS 794 (Nov. 15, 2019), aff’g 292 Ore. App. 214, 418 P.3d 785 (2018) … Continue reading