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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: Qualified immunity
CA9: 911 call about two black male teenagers involved in a crime didn’t give PC to arrest three Samoan teenagers; immediately recognizing a toy gun as such wasn’t RS
The court of appeals had jurisdiction to consider defendant officers’ appeal from denial of qualified immunity on plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment unlawful arrest and search claims, but the court’s jurisdiction was limited to deciding whether the officers were entitled to qualified … Continue reading
CA5: Violation of policy against hogtying arrestee isn’t a constitutional violation
Decedent was Tasered when he was fighting officers and wouldn’t comply with repeated requests. He was finally hogtied, too, and he stopped breathing. Paramedics were called, and he ultimately died. Viewing the undisputed facts most favorably to the estate, the … Continue reading
CA11: Deputy sheriff arresting people working for foreclosure company’s agents on his house gets no immunity
Defendant deputy sheriff arrested the agents of the company foreclosing on his house, and they spent the night in jail. No immunity. “Being a law-enforcement officer is not a license to break the law. And it is certainly not a … Continue reading
Police One: Protecting cops from frivolous lawsuits: Qualified immunity, explained
Police One: Protecting cops from frivolous lawsuits: Qualified immunity, explained by Mike Callahan: The value of the qualified immunity defense to law enforcement officers in use of deadly force cases cannot be understated
CA11: Officers’ reasonable explanation for shooting ptf’s decedent in back was unrebutted and supports qualified immunity
Plaintiff’s decedent was shot in the back six times, and the officers’ version was that they told him to get on the ground, and he quickly turned into his house and they thought he was going for a weapon. On … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Denying ownership of phone and knowledge of password was a lack of REP
There were exigent circumstances for seizure of defendant’s cell phone because of the possibility of the phone being remotely erased or thrown away. Then defendant denied knowledge of the password or ownership of the phone, and that showed a lack … Continue reading
WV: Consent search not void for lack of notification of rights under Art. 36 of Vienna Convention
Violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to advise defendant of his right to notify his consulate of his arrest and detention doesn’t lead to suppression of the consent search of his penis for … Continue reading
CA9: It was not clearly established at the time that Tasing a noncompliant detainee was excessive
“Responding to a possible domestic violence call, officer Dillard demanded that plaintiff submit to a Terry frisk for a search of weapons. When plaintiff refused to be searched, officer Dillard tased him. The panel held that although the domestic violence … Continue reading
IL: Lost page of affidavit for SW can be proved without resort to formality of Court Records Restoration Act
When page two of the original complaint for search warrant disappeared, the state was not required to comply with the Court Records Restoration Act to prove up the search warrant at the suppression hearing. A normally authenticated copy would do. … Continue reading
ID: “There is no constitutional right not to be mistaken for a criminal. ‘The Constitution does not guarantee that only the guilty will be arrested.'”
Plaintiff was a sublessee of a dental office laboratory but was seen breaking in through a window by a neighbor who called 911. Police arrived and the reporter said the woman appeared drunk or on drugs. The first officer to … Continue reading
WV: State failed to show factual basis for community caretaking function stop
“In other words, there is simply no evidence from the suppression hearing that would lead us to conclude that ‘citizens [might have been] in peril’ or that the petitioner himself might have been ‘in need of some form of assistance’ … Continue reading
CA5: Excessive force ptf has to show how clearly established law was violated; here, they did not
A search for business records was done with force and guns drawn because of officers’ fear of retaliation because the business owner didn’t like the ordinance he was to pay sales taxes under. When police entered, the owner drew his … Continue reading
LA4: Custodial arrest for pedestrian offense was unreasonable and violation of statute
The state’s petition for a supervisory writ is denied. Defendant was stopped for a pedestrian offense, and arresting him was unreasonable and a violation of statute. He should have been cited, and the trial court’s suppression order was correct. State … Continue reading
CA4: Repeatedly tasering mentally ill man for refusing to release a pole was excessive force, but officers get QI
Decedent suffered from bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, and his sister convinced him to go to a hospital. However, he ended up in the street dodging traffic and behaving bizarrely, eating grass and putting his cigarette out on his tongue. … Continue reading
CA11: Unarmed, compliant, and nonresisting arrestee shot in the back while lying on the ground was excessive force and violates clearly established law
Unarmed, compliant, and nonresisting arrestee shot in the back while lying on the ground was excessive force and violates clearly established law. Denial of qualified immunity denied. The officer’s subjective belief that force was necessary doesn’t carry any weight when … Continue reading
CA7: Not a Fourth Amendment violation to physically arrest for a fine only traffic infraction
It is not a Fourth Amendment violation to physically arrest for a fine only traffic infraction. Williams v. Brooks, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 68 (7th Cir. Jan. 5, 2016):
CA8: Tasering suspected armed and dangerous arrestee was subject to qualified immunity, even when it turned out officers were reasonably mistaken as to ID of suspect
U.S. Marshals reasonably believed the plaintiff was a wanted armed and dangerous felon. He backed away and refused to submit to arrest and was Tasered. “We have since confirmed that ‘non-violent, non-fleeing subjects have a clearly established right to be … Continue reading
W.D.La.: Passenger had standing to challenge the stop and the length of detention, but not the search
Defendant passenger had standing to challenge the stop and the length of detention, but not the search. Here, the stop was continued on reasonable suspicion. United States v. Garcia, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166581 (W.D.La. Sept. 23, 2015). [Note: But … Continue reading
CA5: Shooting a dog is a seizure; if reasonable, QI applies
Killing a dog is a Fourth Amendment seizure. Here, the owner testified that the dog was not aggressive, although it did come at the officer. The officer had a split second to respond and shot the dog when it was … Continue reading