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- D.Mont.: Delay of USPS Express Mail for dog sniff didn’t violate 4A
- S.D.W.Va.: Warrantless arrest at door for CSAM didn’t support plain view seizure of cell phone
- OH2: Parking on the grass justified stop
- CA11: NCMEC’s cybertips are reliable enough to support PC and the GFE
- MS: Execution style murder in public in broad daylight was exigency to get suspect’s CSLI
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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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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (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: Abandonment
M.D.Fla.: Driver of a borrowed vehicle may have standing
The driver of a borrowed vehicle may have standing. United States v. Reina, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106687 (M.D.Fla. August 13, 2015). Here, however, defendants’ possession of a borrowed pickup truck and then fleeing from it shows a lack of … Continue reading
NJ: The state has a difficult burden in showing justification for entry into a building it believes is abandoned
The state has a difficult burden in showing justification for entry into a building it believes is abandoned. Here, the place had only a couch and debris on the floor and defendant was dealing drugs from there, but there was … Continue reading
TN: Fleeing, crashing, and abandoning car, taking another, and fleeing to another state is abandonment of the first car
“By leaving his crashed vehicle in a position that was blocking the roadway and fleeing in another vehicle [to another state], the defendant manifested through his own actions an intent to abandon the truck and its contents. As a result, … Continue reading
OR: Seizure of cell phone was seizure of the person, but with RS
Seizure of defendant’s cell phone converted the consensual encounter into a stop, but it was with reasonable suspicion. State v. Hayes, 272 Ore. App. 1 (June 24, 2015). The defendant here tried to extrapolate the use of GPS on somebody … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Passenger’s unexplained flight from car was abandonment of his backpack
In a traffic stop, the passenger fled for no apparent reason. The backpack he left behind was abandoned property. Officers waited for his return before searching it. United States v. Nowak, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35351 (D.S.D. March 19, 2015), … Continue reading
WA: Leaving cell phone fleeing from a stolen car was abandonment; no SW required for abandoned property
Defendant was seen in a stolen car and the police gave chase. He bailed from the car and ran, leaving his cell phone behind. The cell phone was abandoned property, and it could be searched without a warrant. Here, the … Continue reading
Popular Science: Your DNA Can Now Be Used Against You in Court Without Your Consent [especially if you abandoned it]
Popular Science: Your DNA Can Now Be Used Against You in Court Without Your Consent By Lydia Ramsey A Recent Refusal by the Supreme Court Means That Involuntary DNA Collection Isn’t Unconstitutional Comment: No it doesn’t. This was DNA from … Continue reading
OH6: When the contents of a storage unit are sold at auction for nonpayment of rent, the defendant loses standing
When the contents of a storage unit are sold at auction for nonpayment of rent, the defendant loses his reasonable expectation of privacy in the unit. State v. Coopman, 2015-Ohio-457, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 414 (6th Dist. February 6, 2015):
MS: Throwing down car keys and running away from a car is abandonment
Throwing down car keys and running away from a car is abandonment. Green v. State, 2015 Miss. App. LEXIS 29 (January 20, 2015). In executing a search warrant for stolen goods on the premises of a convicted felon, the finding … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Abandonment during an illegal arrest is subject to suppression
In this dropsy case, the court first finds that defendant’s arrest was without probable cause. A bag of pills was found at his feet. No officer saw him drop it, but that’s the inference the government wants to draw. Abandonment … Continue reading
TN: Merely being on a cul-de-sac at 3:30 am where you don’t belong isn’t RS
A resident on a cul-de-sac called the police because a car that seemingly didn’t belong was driving around a few times. The police were called and stopped the car. Defendant was arrested for DUI. The stop lacked an objective basis … Continue reading