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- IN: Overdose call led to EMS telling police what they saw and that led to SW
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- MA: When a likely Franks violation comes out at trial, def gets to reopen the suppression issue
- RI: Challenge to one sentence of 8-page cell phone records SW fails; totality has to be considered
- WaPo: Subpoena bill would curtail secretive tool used to target government critics
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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: Inventory
MA recognizes lesser intrusive measures to impoundment; inventory here unreasonable
Lesser intrusive measures to impoundment were available and rejected by the police, and that made the inventory unreasonable. Defendant offered to have somebody come and immediately get the car, and he should have been able to. Commonwealth v. Oliveira, 2016 … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Arrest for avoiding subway fare led to inevitably finding gun; good explanation of analytical steps
Officers had probable cause to stop defendant for using the service gate at the Bronx 233d St. subway station without paying. He was a frequent flyer, as it were, and that led to a custodial arrest. He had a knife … Continue reading
MA: If arrest invalid, inventory based on it is too
Defendant’s arrest was invalid, so the inventory of his car was invalid. Commonwealth v. Williams, 2016 Mass. Super. LEXIS 19 (Wooster Feb. 18, 2016). The protective sweep here was invalid, but that did not require suppression of the search. Excising … Continue reading
IN: State failed to even attempt to justify inventory; reversed
Defendant was arrested with his car on a parking lot for driving on a suspended DL, and the car had a broken windshield and bumper. The state failed to prove justification for an inventory, and it had the burden. Wilford … Continue reading
FL4: State failed to prove inventory policy; def had standing in his own suitcase, albeit not the car
Defendant was neither the owner nor driver of the car he was riding in which had his suitcase in the trunk. He didn’t have standing as to a search of the car, but he did have standing as to the … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Arrest on warrant in car timed to facilitate pretextual inventory; suppressed
Officers had an arrest warrant for defendant, so they waited until he left his house, stopped him a half mile away and conducted an inventory of his car and had it towed. The court finds the inventory pretextual because it … Continue reading
IN: State failed to show standard inventory procedures were followed
“Officer Greathouse’s testimony was insufficient to prove the inventory search he performed of Rhodes’ vehicle complied with official police policy. Because the State did not present evidence of police procedure, the search violated Rhodes’ Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Car could have been left on residential street and not towed and inventoried
Defendant’s car would have been left on a residential street, but the officers impounded it for “caretaking.” The court finds the rationale presented by the officer and her evasive demeanor that the vehicle could have been vandalized or towed by … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Govt failed to prove legal basis for impoundment and inventory
Defendant had standing in his father’s car that he let defendant drive. The inventory of the car and impoundment was not for a legitimate inventory purpose. It was impounded because another police department asked for it. “The government has failed … Continue reading
Good faith as a part of inventory searches? In Ohio since at least 1992. Coming to a court near you. Is good faith being subsumed into the “reasonableness” inquiry?
In 2009’s Herring, “good faith” is referred to in the majority opinion seven times as a reason for not applying the exclusionary rule. There it was a search incident to a recalled arrest warrant, a Warrantless search. In Ohio, at … Continue reading
LA4: Protective sweep before def arrested in pajamas reentered to get dressed was reasonable
Defendant was arrested in his pajamas, and it was appropriate for the police to conduct a protective sweep for others before he was permitted to get dressed to leave. A shotgun was validly found propped against the wall in the … Continue reading
IN: Failure to follow the inventory procedures and stopping the inventory when contraband was found still didn’t make the inventory pretextual
The officer’s failure to follow the inventory procedures and stopping the inventory when contraband was found still didn’t make the inventory pretextual. Whitley v. State, 2015 Ind. App. LEXIS 739 (Dec. 7, 2015):
OH3: Impoundment of car for SW did not prohibit inventory before SW issued
The impoundment of defendant’s car was reasonable under the circumstances because officers intended to and did get a search warrant for it. The inventory before the search warrant wasn’t prejudicial because nothing from the inventory was even mentioned in the … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: No legal requirement to turn car over to third person rather than impound it
Officers are not required by law to turn a vehicle over to a third person rather than impound it. The impoundment was reasonable. Here, the impoundment decision was based in part on defendant’s claim to the officer that he’d had … Continue reading
CO: Collective knowledge doctrine applies to plain view seizure of laptop computer
The fellow officer (collective knowledge) rule applies to plain view seizure of a laptop computer that was seen in plain view that the fellow officer had probable cause to believe contained child pornography. People v. Swietlicki, 2015 CO 67, 2015 … Continue reading
CA11: Impoundment and inventory can happen with a vehicle parked on private property, too
A police officer has the discretion to impound a vehicle being left on private property too, not just on a public road. It is still subject to vandalism. [And why should the owner of the private property have to put … Continue reading
CO declines to give greater state const’l rights to closed container
Defendant was stopped for fictitious tags, and he had a revoked DL and no insurance, too. An inventory of the vehicle was conducted, and a closed cooler was searched. Conceding the search valid under the Fourth Amendment, he argued that … Continue reading
CA8: Air filter could be searched in inventory
Defendant argued that the search of the air filter container was excessive for an inventory because it was not an area where things were normally stored. The policy explicitly provided for search of that area, and the court has previously … Continue reading
MA: Inventory proved to be pretext for investigative search; suppressed
The DEA directed the state officer to stop defendant for a traffic offense to find an excuse for a vehicle impoundment and inventory. Here, it was failure to signal, and the officer testified he wouldn’t have stopped somebody for that. … Continue reading