May 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Archives
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Recent Posts
- NY Columbia Co.: Alleged excessive nervousness when multiple police cars arrive at a traffic stop doesn’t add to RS
- CA4: Backpack dumped in flight in grandmother’s yard was abandoned
- GA: Virtually all-inclusive list of items to be seized wasn’t overbroad
- CA4: Dist.Ct. erred in applying search incident to arrest to suppress bag when inventory was inevitable
- OR: Even if original served warrant wasn’t the one returned, it doesn’t warrant suppression
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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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: § 1983 / Bivens
CA6: No QI for a baseless stop, strip search, and body cavity search and then tightening handcuffs for ptf’s complaining about his treatment
The officer gets no qualified immunity in his interlocutory appeal. On the complaint, plaintiff stated a claim that his stop was not objectively reasonable in the first place. A police dog was put into plaintiff’s vehicle, then it was searched … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: Govt had objective good faith belief def consented to search through his lawyer
The government had an objective good faith belief that the defendant in jail consented to a search of a storage unit through his lawyer. The lawyer was asked about whether the officers could have consent or get a search warrant, … Continue reading
CA7: § 1983 4A ptf doesn’t have to plead around qualified immunity; ptf clearly overcame it anyway
The district court erred in finding for officers who conducted a warrantless search of plaintiff’s house. It was not her burden to plead around qualified immunity—it was the defendant’s burden to show qualified immunity. “It was clearly established in October … Continue reading
Cert. granted: Hernández v. Mesa: Whether the cross-border murder of a Mexican citizen states a Bivens claim
Cert. granted: Hernández v. Mesa, No. 17-1678 (ScotusBlog) Issue: Whether, when the plaintiffs plausibly allege that a rogue federal law-enforcement officer violated clearly established Fourth and Fifth amendment rights for which there is no alternative legal remedy, the federal courts … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Nieves v. Bartlett: Probable cause to arrest defeats a First Amendment retaliation claim except where there otherwise would not have been an arrest
Nieves v. Bartlett, 17–1174 (May 28, 2019): Probable cause to arrest defeats a First Amendment retaliation claim except where there otherwise would not have been an arrest (maybe a really hard standard to meet). SCOTUSBlog: Opinion analysis: The First Amendment, … Continue reading
CA6: Summary judgment for Sheriff on a civil Franks claim is reversed because there’s an issue for a jury
Summary judgment for the Sheriff on a civil Franks claim that he could smell marijuana from a really long way away is reversed. Other officers couldn’t smell it until they were right upon it, and he professed in the past … Continue reading
Education Week (blog): Justices Decline to Review Case Involving Strip Search of 4-Year-Old at School
Education Week (blog): Justices Decline to Review Case Involving Strip Search of 4-Year-Old at School by Mark Walsh:
N.D.Cal.: 4A Bivens claims can’t be extended to corporations
“In sum, the Court finds that allowing corporations such as Life Savers to bring Bivens suits on behalf of employees is a new Bivens context, one for which there are other alternative remedial structures and one that implicates special factors … Continue reading
TX2: Def not entitled to name of CI to get SW
Defendant wasn’t entitled to the name of the CI because the CI was only used to get the search warrant and wasn’t a witness in the state’s case in chief. Coleman v. State, 2019 Tex. App. LEXIS 3802 (2d Dist. … Continue reading
D.Colo.: MMJ facility subject to IRS summons for back taxes can’t show summons was unreasonable
Petitioner is a medical marijuana facility under investigation by the IRS for selling product in violation of state law and not paying the taxes on it. (This was for tax years pre-recreational sales.) The IRS showed that the summonses were … Continue reading
CA10: QI properly granted in homeowner’s 4A claim against officer executing arrest warrant for another
The district court properly granted qualified immunity to a trailer resident’s Fourth Amendment claims against a deputy sheriff stemming from a search and seizure conducted while executing an arrest warrant for a guest staying in the trailer. The law was … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: Younger abstention bars a § 1983 case over the search of plaintiff while the state criminal case is pending
Younger abstention bars a § 1983 case over the search of plaintiff while the state criminal case is pending. Ford v. Brookins, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66694 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 19, 2019). Qualified immunity was properly denied based on the … Continue reading
CA5: QI granted officer who detained business owner for 4 hrs for civil violation
Detaining a business owner for four hours for civil violations and pulling a gun wasn’t clearly established as a Fourth Amendment violation, so the officer gets [away with it by getting] qualified immunity. Okorie v. Crawford, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
ScotusBlog: Argument preview: Searching for an accrual rule when the government fabricates evidence in a criminal proceeding
ScotusBlog: Argument preview: Searching for an accrual rule when the government fabricates evidence in a criminal proceeding by Howard M. Wasserman: McDonough v. Smith, to be argued on April 17, offers the Supreme Court another opportunity to clarify when civil-rights … Continue reading
Techdirt: Appeals Court Says It’s OK For Cops To Steal Stuff From Citizens
Techdirt: Appeals Court Says It’s OK For Cops To Steal Stuff From Citizens by Tim Cushing:
W.D.Va.: Proving the Heck bar requires defs to put copies of underlying documents into the record
Defendants don’t get the benefit of a Heck bar without putting the papers of the underlying case into evidence. “As stated, court records online indicate that two felony drug charges have been dismissed. Without copies of relevant court documents and … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Govt’s possession of cell phone for nine months waiting to decrypt password isn’t unreasonable
Defendant’s phone has been in the hands of the government for many months, but defendant refused to provide the password to access the phone. That justifies the delay in the government accessing the phone. The motion for return of property … Continue reading