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Recent Posts
- CA8: Admission of anonymous tip that led to stop violated Confrontation Clause
- CO: Anonymous report of student smoking pot in school justified backpack search
- CA6: CI’s lie to get into def’s house to video him making a drug deal with the CI didn’t violate 4A
- TN: Def lived in a van left wide open in a public area, but it didn’t belong to him, so no REP as to interior
- VI: Despite ubiquity of cell phones, nexus has to be shown to alleged crime
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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)
--Outline of 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: Warrant requirement
TX2: Warrantless blood draw under TX statute still unconstitutional where no warrant exception applies
The nonconsensual and warrantless search and seizure of defendant’s blood, which the officer conducted under Tex. Transp. Code § 724.012 and without facts supporting an independent exception to the warrant requirement, violated the Fourth Amendment. State v. Swan, 2016 Tex. … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Where SW issued by video conference, lack of record of conference leaves gov’t with “four corners” of application; no suppression
The state officer here applied for a search warrant by video conference and either email or fax of the documents (the opinion doesn’t say how the judge had them) as permitted under Georgia statute. There was no recording made of … Continue reading
LA3: Typo in SW could be disregarded where the correct place was searched
The search warrant here used a form off a computer, and the officer forgot to put in the correct address, and the two were 2.69 miles apart. The officers went to the place they intended, not the place specified in … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Correcting a date in affidavit for SW in front of USMJ was hardly improper, particularly when the correct date was put in
Three month old information about an IP address in a child pornography case wasn’t stale. Also, the warrant wasn’t issued without probable cause just because the warrant was amended in handwriting before the magistrate, particularly because the correct date was … Continue reading
CA1: A search warrant presented to a magistrate may be modified before it issues; 4 yr delay in forensic analysis didn’t violate first warrant
A search warrant presented to a magistrate may be modified before it issues. [After all, isn’t that the quintessential “neutral and detached magistrate” providing truly independent review?] Here, electronics were seized, copied, and returned, and there was a four year … Continue reading
TechDirt: Law Enforcement And The Ongoing Inconvenience Of The Fourth Amendment
TechDirt: Law Enforcement And The Ongoing Inconvenience Of The Fourth Amendment by Tim Cushing: The Fourth Amendment somehow still survives, despite the government’s best efforts to dismantle it… or at the very least, ignore it. Law enforcement agencies seemingly have … Continue reading
D.Utah: Incorporation of affidavit into warrant made it complete
The application for the search warrant listed the statutes of offenses under investigation, but the search warrant did not. The warrant, however, incorporated the application, so the officers knew what they were searching for. “The search warrant here does not … Continue reading
OH3: A court order issued with PC and otherwise complying with the Fourth Amendment doesn’t have to be called a “search warrant” to be effective
A court ordered GPS device was placed on defendant’s vehicle. His movements watched online and facts the police had learned added up to reasonable suspicion for a stop. [If they had PC for a tracking warrant, why not for the … Continue reading
TN: A court order for GPS with PC doesn’t have to be a “search warrant” to be valid
The court order for a tracking device (GPS) was based on probable cause. There is no requirement that it be a “search warrant” as long is it is based on probable cause and is issued by a neutral and detached … Continue reading
NC: A broken window and screen off is not an exigency without a burglary call or more information
A broken window at a house and a screen leaning against the house without other objective evidence of a break in was not reasonable cause to believe that there was a recent or ongoing burglary to justify a police entry … Continue reading
S.D.W.Va.: Lost warrant could be proved by unexecuted copies from the officer’s file
The affidavit and search warrant were lost, but they could be recreated by unexecuted copies from the officer’s file and the associated materials used with them, such as the criminal complaint which used the same information. United States v. Richardson, … Continue reading
NJ: private search doctrine doesn’t give the police the opportunity to do a search of the home without a warrant
The private search doctrine doesn’t give the police the opportunity to do a search of the home without a warrant. State v. Wright, 2015 N.J. LEXIS 549 (May 19, 2015). Syllabus by the court: The third-party intervention or private search … Continue reading
IA: Search of guest’s backpack was reasonable when it wasn’t clear whose it was
Officers did not have actual authority to search a guest’s backpack during a consent search, but it wasn’t clear whose backpack it was, so the search here was lawful. State v. Jackson, 2015 Iowa App. LEXIS 400 (May 6, 2015). … Continue reading
MA: In a MMJ state, SW for a grow operation must plead PC that target wasn’t a licensed grower
In a medical marijuana state, a search warrant for a grow operation requires the state show that the target of the search is not a licensed grower. Grant of motion to suppress affirmed. Commonwealth v. Canning, SJC-11773 (April 28, 2015): … Continue reading
E.D.Wash.: SW for taking blood presumes that it will be tested, too, and the warrant doesn’t need to specify
A warrant for taking blood presumes that it will be tested, too, and the warrant doesn’t need to specify. A Washington state case saying otherwise is not followed. In any event, it would be in good faith to have tested … Continue reading
NJ: Smell of burnt MJ coming from house isn’t sufficient exigency for warrantless entry
Police received multiple calls, some anonymous, about shots fired, and they were ultimately directed to defendant’s house which they approached from the rear. One caller said a gun was kept in a doghouse, and there were pit bulls in the … Continue reading