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- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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: Stop and frisk
W.D.N.Y.: Not cooperating with an illegal detention under Terry doesn’t add to reasonable suspicion
On night patrol, a Rochester officer and a probation officer decided to stop defendant because he had a paper bag in his hand that conceivably could have had an open container in it. The stop was without reasonable suspicion because … Continue reading
NYTimes: Editorial: Keeping Track: … Stop-and-Frisk
NYTimes: Editorial: Keeping Track: … Stop-and-Frisk:
Law.com: Police Unions’ Motion Denied in NYC Stop/Frisk
Law.com: Police Unions’ Motion Denied in Stop/Frisk by Andrew Keshner: Southern District Judge Analisa Torres said police unions’ intervenor bids opposing the settlement between New York City and plaintiffs in stop-and-frisk litigation were untimely and the unions had “no significant … Continue reading
IN: Refuses to find any reasonable expectation of privacy in telephone records under state constitution
Defendant didn’t pursue an interlocutory appeal of his suppression motion on telephone records being seized in violation of the state constitution. Therefore, he waived it by objecting at trial. Nevertheless, the court finds that he would lose on the state … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Danger not defused, so officer could conduct frisk; it’s “akin to the doctrine of a ‘protective sweep'”
I’ve analogized a frisk of a car authorized under Long as a ‘protective sweep,’ which is usually of a dwelling. Here, a court does too: Officers responded to a use of force report that had been not completely defused. When … Continue reading
D.Nev.: Effort to show no PC for defendant at the premises only showed a lack of standing
Defendant conflates the probable cause requirement for a search and the standing question. In his effort to show that the government lacked probable cause to connect him to the premises, he succeeded in only showing that he lacked standing to … Continue reading
NPR: Top NYPD Cop: Stop-And-Frisk Is Not ‘The Problem Or The Solution’
NPR: Top NYPD Cop: Stop-And-Frisk Is Not ‘The Problem Or The Solution’: It’s been nearly a year since a court ruling curtailed the New York Police Department’s controversial practice known as stop-and-frisk, but NYPD Commissioner William Bratton says the city … Continue reading
FL2: Order to truant to empty pockets was a full search that was unreasonable here
While an officer can patdown a truant before putting him in the police car, a full search is unauthorized without probable cause. Order to empty pockets was a full search. R.A.S. v. State, 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 9575 (Fla. 2d … Continue reading
OR: Ordering defendant out of his house for an FST was a “stop” and detention as a show of authority
Ordering defendant out of his house for a FST was a “stop” and detention under the state constitution because it was a show of authority. State v. Charles, 263 Or. App. ___, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 804 (June 18, 2014). … Continue reading
NYLJ: Judge Rejects Suit by Police, Upholds Anti-Profiling Law
NYLJ: Judge Rejects Suit by Police, Upholds Anti-Profiling Law: The ruling is a victory for the de Blasio Administration, a defeat for the former Bloomberg Administration, a triumph for civil rights groups and a setback for police unions and law … Continue reading
W.D.Tenn.: Seeing a split of authorities, the court concludes lifting a suspect’s shirt is a search requiring PC
Defendant’s shirt was lifted by the officer to look for a potential weapon. The court finds here that it was without reasonable suspicion. Considering various federal cases from circuit and district courts, there is a split of authority. The court … Continue reading
NYLJ: Parties Ask Judge to Resolve Stop/Frisk Motions
NYLJ: Parties Ask Judge to Resolve Stop/Frisk Motions by Mark Hemblett: The parties in the stop-and-frisk litigation have asked Southern District Judge Analisa Torres (See Profile) to resolve motions to intervene by police unions who oppose a settlement between the … Continue reading
OR: Police encouraging housekeeper to seize child’s underwear was state action
Defendant’s housekeeper called child protective services to report that defendant’s minor daughter had discharge in her underwear consistent with sexual intercourse and that defendant was the suspected abuser. They had her seize the underwear and turn it over to the … Continue reading
HuffPo: Prosecutor Tells Black Congressmembers The War On Drugs Isn’t Racist
HuffPo: Prosecutor Tells Black Congressmembers The War On Drugs Isn’t Racist by Matt Sledge: McGruff the Crime Dog and Nancy Reagan must have been busy. Two former federal prosecutors testifying at a House Judiciary hearing on Friday said the U.S. … Continue reading
The Atlantic: The City Where Blacks Suffer Under ‘Stop and Frisk on Steroids’
The Atlantic: The City Where Blacks Suffer Under ‘Stop and Frisk on Steroids’ by Conor Friedsdorf Police abuses in Miami Gardens, Florida, are staggering, but few Americans seem to care. Last year, police in Miami Gardens, Florida briefly made headlines … Continue reading
M.D.La.: Drawing a Taser on a suspect and ordering him to move his hands is a seizure
Drawing a Taser on a suspect and ordering him to move his hands is a seizure. United States v. Coleman, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70867 (M.D. La. May 23, 2014). This defendant’s effort to adopt another defendant’s motion to suppress … Continue reading
CA5: Frisking rousted man who denied having gun was without reasonable suspicion
A convoy of police arrive in an apartment complex because it’s a high crime area, and one walks up to defendant’s car and talks to him asking “where’s your gun?” He says he doesn’t have one. Then the officer asks … Continue reading