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- CA3: Ptf was arrested on an apparent but recalled warrant, then officers confirmed it and let him go; the arrest was reasonable
- N.D.Ohio: Failure to serve state SW within state mandated time not 4A violation
- NY1: Gunshot through floor from apartment above was exigency
- Reason: Most Civil Forfeiture Victims Never See the Inside of a Courtroom
- CA8: Admission of anonymous tip that led to stop violated Confrontation Clause
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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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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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Section 1983 Blog -
"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: Qualified immunity
CA11: Tasing grand mal seizure sufferer held down by four men was excessive on its face; no QI
The officer’s repeated Tasings of the teenager who was suffering a grand mal seizure amounted to excessive force. The district court properly denied qualified immunity, because the constitutional violation was clearly established based on both materially similar case law and … Continue reading
CA5: Police accidentally shooting a hostage isn’t an intentional seizure
“Here, the only plausible reading of the allegations is that Doe accidentally shot Ulises while trying to help him by ending the hostage situation. Such accidental conduct does not result in a Fourth Amendment seizure. See Brower, 489 U.S. at … Continue reading
CA9: Violent take down of traffic detainee not resisting could be found excessive; no QI
Qualified immunity is denied officers for excessive force in a violent take down on a passively resisting plaintiff in a traffic stop without there being any exigency justifying it. “Viewing the facts, as we must, in the light most favorable … Continue reading
CA2: A mere hunch there was an arrest warrant made stop unreasonable
It was clearly established law in January 2015 that an officer’s unconfirmed hunch that an arrest warrant might possibly exist, coupled with nothing more than the officer’s recognition of a suspect from prior arrests, did not constitute reasonable suspicion justifying … Continue reading
CA1: Breaking the excessive force claim into parts for analysis results in a denial of QI
The officers do not get qualified immunity in this 1983 case. “Certainly, this was not an ‘obvious case’ where the officers so blatantly violated the Fourth Amendment that recourse to factually analogous case law is unnecessary. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: HomeAway and AirBnb prevailing parties in their data collection suit v. NYC
HomeAway.com and AirBnb.com were prevailing parties in their Fourth Amendment claims against the City of New York for sweeping data production, and they are awarded $595,000 in attorneys fees. HomeAway.com, Inc. v. City of New York, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA8: Presenting def with DNA SW after he lawyers up wasn’t attempt to reopen interrogation
Presenting defendant with a search warrant for DNA swabs during an interrogation after he lawyered up was a statement of fact and not an attempt to get him to talk again. Thus, Miranda not violated. United States v. Zephier, 2021 … Continue reading
Reason: A Prison Guard Who Pepper-Sprayed an Inmate Without Provocation Got Qualified Immunity. SCOTUS Disagreed.
Reason: A Prison Guard Who Pepper-Sprayed an Inmate Without Provocation Got Qualified Immunity. SCOTUS Disagreed. By Billy Binion (“An encouraging sign from the Supreme Court.”)
CA5: Tasering a man threatening suicide who doused himself in gasoline was subject to qualified immunity when the Taser set him on fire
Plaintiff’s decedent doused himself in gasoline and threatened to burn the house down with six people inside. He had a lighter in hand. The officers used their Tasers on him as a last resort, and that caused him to burst … Continue reading
SD: Inverse condemnation doesn’t lie for damage caused by execution of SW
Surveying cases from other jurisdictions, the South Dakota Supreme Court decides that inverse condemnation claims do not lie under the state’s eminent domain provision ( “[p]rivate property shall not be taken for public use, or damaged, without just compensation[.]”) for damage to … Continue reading
CA3: Warrant for roving wiretap didn’t have to call device a “cell site simulator” when it fully described it
The government obtained a roving wiretap for defendant’s cell phone with a cell site simulator. In the warrant application, they described in detail what a cell site simulator was, but it never said the words “cell site simulator.” It doesn’t … Continue reading
CA3: Failure to factually plead lack of PC or malice for a 4A malicious prosecution claim makes it fail
Karkalas v. Marks, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 3868 (3d Cir. Feb. 11, 2021):
IN: Cell phone seized under SW could be searched later than the deadline in the warrant
The state had the forfeiture claimant’s cell phone in hand, but didn’t actually search it within the limit of the warrant. This was reasonable, following Wolf v. State, 266 P.3d 1169, 1174 (Idaho Ct. App. 2011). Brown v. Eaton, 2021 … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Smell of MJ in a car in California isn’t PC
“[T]he mere presence of marijuana or the commission of a marijuana-related vehicle infraction in a state where adults may legally possess and transport it does not give officers probable cause to suspect that a vehicle contains contraband.” United States v. … Continue reading
CA4: No RS to detain ptf to require him to ID himself; no QI
The officer here lacked reasonable suspicion to refuse to release plaintiff without plaintiff identifying himself under Hiibel and Brown. Moreover, there was enough case law on the subject to put him on notice to deny qualified immunity. Wingate v. Fulford, … Continue reading
CA6: Excessive force and qualified immunity; officer responding to threat of force
“The record here demonstrates the defendant officers’ use of deadly force was objectively reasonable. Three of the four officers surrounding McShann’s vehicle testified that when McShann woke, he was compliant or mostly compliant with their order that he put his … Continue reading
CA2: The officer’s perceptions were reasonable that entry into defendant’s backyard was necessary
“Nor can we say that Galligan’s enforcement action was clearly unlawful. The undisputed facts of this case demonstrate that Plaintiffs kept a variety of unusual objects in their backyard, causing it to resemble a junkyard. The question is not whether … Continue reading
OH8: Traffic offense overcomes pretext claim
An actual traffic offense overcomes defense claims the stop was actually a motive for searching for drugs. Defendant didn’t produce current proof of insurance, and that led to extension of the stop. The officer wasn’t just obliged to have noted … Continue reading
CA9: ICE warrant authorized knocking at appellant’s door, and co-occupant consented to entry
ICE officers could approach appellant’s door under Jardines with an immigration arrest warrant even though it is not a judicial warrant. “The immigration warrant licensed the officers to solicit consent to entry for the limited purpose of enforcing the civil … Continue reading
CA9: Passenger also shot in effort to stop vehicle was seized under 4A; SJ denied on reasonableness of force
A vehicle passenger who was not intentionally targeted by the officers had a cognizable Fourth Amendment interest under Brower v. County of Inyo and Brendlin v. California. His freedom of movement was terminated when the officers intentionally shot at the … Continue reading