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- D.Mont.: Delay of USPS Express Mail for dog sniff didn’t violate 4A
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- CA11: NCMEC’s cybertips are reliable enough to support PC and the GFE
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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)
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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
GA: Police directive to a man to show his hands was not a seizure
A police directive to a man coming from between two buildings to show his hands was not a seizure. Defendant immediately fled and abandoned items as he ran. State v. Walker, 2014 Ga. LEXIS 805 (October 20, 2014), rev’g 323 … Continue reading
TN: One controlled buy 3 days ago without ID’g source person was not PC to search; could have been a visitor
A CI’s statement that a controlled buy occurred out of defendant’s apartment failed to show probable cause where there was no connection to the sale and the owner or tenant shown. It could have been a mere visitor. State v. … Continue reading
NC: ABC license permitted search of attached residence accessible directly by a door
Defendant’s home was attached to his liquor store, and ABC officers were permitted under their inspection power to inspect the residence as well which was accessible merely through a door. Inside the residence they could smell marijuana. One room of … Continue reading
CA10: Defendant abandoned carry-on luggage by disclaiming ownership
In a case involving use of a drug dog on a Greyhound bus in Utah, a drug dog alerted on a bag in the luggage compartment. In the passenger compartment, the defendant disclaimed ownership of a bag in the overhead … Continue reading
FL3: SI of defendant’s cell phone in 2011 already violated established law in Florida
The search incident of defendant’s cell phone was in violation of settled law in Florida at the time it happened in 2011, and the search is suppressed. Saint-Hilaire v. State, 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 12039 (Fla. 3d DCA August 6, … Continue reading
NM adopts Greenwood dissents and finds a reasonable expectation of privacy in trash out for collection
New Mexico adopts the Greenwood dissent and holds that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in trash left out for collection in an opaque bag, even in a communal dumpster. City ordinances on trash collection help create the expectation … Continue reading
GA: Defendant’s effort to distance himself from drugs led to no standing
Defendant’s effort to distance himself from drugs led to no standing. “Barlow testified that only his mother, stepfather, and brother lived at the Sherbrooke Way residence, and he denied currently living at the residence or having a bedroom there. Barlow … Continue reading
TX: There is standing in a borrowed vehicle
One who legitimately borrows a vehicle has standing to challenge its stop and search. Here, however, defendant fled from the van thereby abandoning it. The stop was reasonable, and flight added to the reasonable suspicion. Matthews v. State, 2014 Tex. … Continue reading
VI: Dropped gun during flight was abandoned
Defendant was suspected of a hand-to-hand drug transaction, and the police followed and called out to him, and he fled and his gun and magazine fell to the ground. It was in plain view when seen or abandoned. “The gun … Continue reading
ID: Statuette of patron saint of drug dealers on dashboard was a factor in reasonable suspicion
Defendant was parked vehicle on a rural gravel road with bloodshot eyes and the presence of a statuette of the patron saint for drug traffickers, and that was reasonable suspicion. “The officer also noticed a Santa Muerte statuette on the … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Throwing a bag over a fence to hide it from the police was not an abandonment
Throwing a bag over a fence to hide it from the police was not an abandonment. United States v. Curran, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68634 (M.D. Pa. May 19, 2014): Although Defendant obviously endeavored to hide the bags from police, … Continue reading
IL: That police “dropsy” testimony is common doesn’t mean that all of it is fabricated
That police “dropsy” testimony is common doesn’t mean that all of it is fabricated. People v. Moore, 2014 IL App (1st) 110793-B, 2014 Ill. App. LEXIS 262 (April 25, 2014): [*P12] Defendant further contends police officers frequently fabricate stories (referred … Continue reading