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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)
--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
NY4: Summary judgment on false arrest and excessive force claim without considering officers’ testimony in underlying criminal trial was error
Summary judgment against the defendants for false arrest and excessive force was improperly granted without considering the transcript of plaintiff’s criminal trial and the officers’ testimony there. Hernandez v Denny’s Corp., 2019 NY Slip Op 08302, 2019 N.Y. App. Div. … Continue reading
E.D.Tenn.: Facebook photo of def felon with a firearm apparently taken in a home justified a SW for his home
Defendant’s alleged threat on Facebook involving use of firearms, along with a picture of a firearm suggested it was in a home. The search warrant of defendant’s home was with probable cause. Defendant’s effort to “dissect” the affidavit paragraph by … Continue reading
TN: Failure to include the search warrant and affidavit in the record on appeal waives the search issue
Failure to include the search warrant and affidavit in the record on appeal waives the search issue. State v. Parks, 2019 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 740 (Nov. 13, 2019). The officer gets qualified immunity because there was probable cause for … Continue reading
WV: Exclusionary rule does not apply in civil cases
DHHR obtained information about the parents from an alleged illegal stop. The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply in civil cases. In re N.R., 2019 W. Va. LEXIS 524 (Nov. 7, 2019). A game warden approached plaintiff sitting in his truck in … Continue reading
CA4: Ptf shot and paralyzed during no-knock raid states a claim and survives QI
During a no-knock entry with a battering ram by plain-clothes officers for marijuana, plaintiff heard a commotion from the back of his house, reached for a gun, and was shot at 29 times, hit 9 times, and paralyzed. The officer … Continue reading
KY declines to reject Hodari D. under state constitution
Kentucky’s state constitution’s search provision is based on Pennsylvania’s. Pennsylvania has rejected Hodari D. under state law. Kentucky declines to do so, too. Hunter v. Commonwealth, 2019 Ky. LEXIS 434 (Oct. 31, 2019). Post-conviction petitioner’s cell phone search issue had … Continue reading
CA11: Factual dispute as to where misd arrest occurred, in the house or out, denies QI; it appears force used was excessive
Arguable probable cause supported plaintiff’s misdemeanor arrest, but there is a factual dispute denying qualified immunity to the officers of where exactly the arrest started and how it ended up indoors. That remains for trial. The complaint also survives on … Continue reading
CA2: Not clearly established for QI that a warrantless body cavity search required exigency and a particularized suspicion
A police officer was entitled to qualified immunity because the right to be free from a warrantless manual body cavity search in the absence of exigent circumstances and a particularized suspicion that evidence of a crime was secreted inside the … Continue reading
CA7: Police officers who obtained def’s blood work from a hospital under an Indiana statute didn’t violate the 4A
Plaintiff sued under § 1983 because police got his blood work from the hospital albeit under Indiana statute. “We turn next to Stewart’s Fourth Amendment claim. The district court entered summary judgment for the defendant police officers on the basis … Continue reading
CA11: PC or not, the warrantless entry to arrest ptf violated the 4A
The parties got into an argument, and plaintiff went back into his house. The defendant came in after him. “Without deciding whether Bailey’s arrest was supported by probable cause—or, as it goes in the qualified-immunity context, ‘arguable probable cause’—we reverse. … Continue reading
D.Idaho: US Probation may enlist LEOs in conducting supervision search of cell phone
U.S. Probation was supervising defendant and they suspected child pornography on his cell phone. They enlisted HSI to search the phone. This did not violate federal law; USPO can get assistance to conduct a search. United States v. Johnson, 2019 … Continue reading
CA3: A threat to violate the 4A is not a 4A violation; it is contingent for Art. III
“The Probation Department employees’ alleged threat to send Repotski back to jail does not state a constitutional violation cognizable under § 1983. See McFadden v. Lucas, 713 F.2d 143, 146 (5th Cir. 1983) (noting that mere threats do not amount … Continue reading
CA10: Remanded again on QI because the court admittedly wasn’t perfectly clear
Appellate courts can’t always speak with one voice or opinion. The panel in this case previously issued three opinions. Harte v. Bd. of Comm’rs of the Cty. of Johnson, 864 F.3d 1154 (10th Cir. 2017). On remand, then, everybody had … Continue reading
CA6: Police get QI for coming to take ptf in for a mental exam but electing instead to arrest
Police were called to plaintiff’s house because he was barricaded in a closet with a gun threatening to kill himself. When police arrived, he was ultimately taken in for alleged crimes, for which he was later acquitted. The officers get … Continue reading
CA11: Ptf arrested on incorrect computer entry had 4A rights violated, but defs get QI
Plaintiff paid his fine for a speeding ticket and that was to avoid probation. The probation officer was in court and heard all that. Some clerk, however, entered into the computer system that he was on probation. Plaintiff was later … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Federal Officials Should Be Accountable for Their Wrongdoing
The Atlantic: Federal Officials Should Be Accountable for Their Wrongdoing by Leah Litman (“And judges need to be the ones to make them pay.”)
Reason: A License for Outrageous Police Conduct
Reason: A License for Outrageous Police Conduct by Jacob Sullum (“Qualified immunity protects cops from liability for actions that would land ordinary people in jail.”)
CA9: QI: without a case almost on point, you lose
A typical Fourth Amendment qualified immunity outcome on appeal: You need a case that’s obvious or a case substantially on point. Without it, you lose. Sightler v. Nisleit, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 28702 (9th Cir. Sept. 23, 2019)*:
W.D.Ark.: Whether windshield was cracked enough to be a violation of traffic laws doesn’t matter, it was still cracked which was enough for a stop
Defendant was stopped because of a crack in the windshield. He argued it wasn’t sufficiently cracked to be a violation of law. The point is, however, that the stop was at least justified by the crack. “To summarize, Officer Johnson … Continue reading
CA9: IRS agent’s need to watch ptf pee during SW was unreasonable; they didn’t do that to her husband when he did
Plaintiff’s claim that an IRS CID investigator had to watch her go to the bathroom just in case she was hiding evidence survived a qualified immunity challenge. The right to bodily privacy was established at the time, and the officer’s … Continue reading