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- MD: Hot pursuit can be days later, here exigent CSLI to find him
- D.D.C.: Alleged illegal arrest doesn’t void DNA SW
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- CA4: The fact that ptf charged with witness intimidation didn’t do it again wasn’t material for Franks
- CO: Not 4A or state constitutional violation for govt to access def’s computer via peer-to-peer sharing with BitTorrent software
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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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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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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)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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: Police misconduct
HuffPo: Michigan Cops Raid Wrong House, Shoot Beloved 15-Year-Old Dog
HuffPo: Michigan Cops Raid Wrong House, Shoot Beloved 15-Year-Old Dog by David Lohr: Authorities who went to the wrong house in search of a wanted fugitive and shot a beloved family pet are refusing to take responsibility for their actions, … Continue reading
WaPo: Another civil asset forfeiture outrage
WaPo: Another civil asset forfeiture outrage by Radley Balko: The Des Moines Register has the story of William “Bart” Davis and John Newmerzhycky, two gamblers who had more than $100,000 seized from them after they were pulled over by Iowa … Continue reading
HuffPo: Woman Spends A Month In Jail After Cops Mistake SpaghettiOs For Meth
HuffPo: Woman Spends A Month In Jail After Cops Mistake SpaghettiOs For Meth by Hilary Hanson: A Georgia woman was held in jail for one month after cops mistook sauce from a can of SpaghettiOs for methamphetamine, the Gainesville Times … Continue reading
WaPo: Jury awards $1.8 million to wrongly raided Denver family
WaPo: Jury awards $1.8 million to wrongly raided Denver family by Radley Balko: Not for the mistaken raid, but for decision to prosecute family members afterward: two kids for assaulting an officer. If Denver officials had simply left it at … Continue reading
On Point: Auditing America’s Police Force
On Point: Auditing America’s Police Force: Police shootings, cop culture, body cameras. And the big debate over how to protect the public and the police.
WaPo: Op-ed: Government self-interest corrupted a crime-fighting tool into an evil
WaPo: Op-ed: Government self-interest corrupted a crime-fighting tool into an evil by John Yoder and Brad Cates: Last week, The Post published a series of in-depth articles about the abuses spawned by the law enforcement practice known as civil asset … Continue reading
The Hill: Holder launches national review of racial bias among cops
The Hill: Holder launches national review of racial bias among cops by Ben Goad: Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday announced a review of racial bias within the nation’s law enforcement agencies, further expanding the federal response to last month’s … Continue reading
SW Times Record: iPhone Photo Leads To Settlement Against Sheriff’s Deputy
SW Times Record: iPhone Photo Leads To Settlement Against Sheriff’s Deputy by Jeff Arnold: Although the settlement language allows him to claim no fault, a Sebastian County sheriff’s deputy recently accepted an almost $40,000 judgment against him instead of going … Continue reading
WaPo: Stop and Seize (3 parts) — The drug war moves to cash
Part 1 Stop and seize Part 2 Police intelligence targets cash Part 3 They fought the law. Who won?
CA8: 20 mo. sentence for officer committing false arrest, beating, and perjury at state trial was unreasonably low
A 20 month sentence to a police officer for false arrest, pepper spraying, repeatedly and unjustifiably beating an arrestee into unconsciousness, writing a false police report about it, and then perjuring himself at the citizen’s trial which resulted in the … Continue reading
When did this …
(Frankly, all I can think about is what Freud would say about these things.)
NYTimes: The Scary, the Sad, and the Just Plain Bizarre
NYTimes: The Scary, the Sad, and the Just Plain Bizarre by Serge Schmenmann. Re: Ferguson, MO: A psychiatrist once told me that people tend to focus more on bad news because human beings are genetically wired to identify dangers they … Continue reading
NYTimes: In Wake of Clashes, Calls to Demilitarize Police
NYTimes: In Wake of Clashes, Calls to Demilitarize Police by Julie Bosman and Matt Apuzzo: FERGUSON, Mo. — For four nights in a row, they streamed onto West Florissant Avenue wearing camouflage, black helmets and vests with “POLICE” stamped on … Continue reading
WaPo: Police officers have no constitutional ‘right of privacy’ in records of their official misconduct
WaPo: Police officers have no constitutional ‘right of privacy’ in records of their official misconduct by Eugene Volokh.
CBS: Man beaten, three SAPD officers investigated for possible excessive force after case of ‘mistaken identity’
KENS (CBS San Antonio): Man beaten, three SAPD officers investigated for possible excessive force after case of ‘mistaken identity’ by Dillon Collier: Roger Carlos was in the 10600 block of Westover Hills Boulevard taking photos of a building that will … Continue reading
NYDN: Pregnant woman apparently put in chokehold by NYPD cop during dispute over illegal grilling
New York Daily News: Pregnant woman apparently put in chokehold by NYPD cop during dispute over illegal grilling by Tina Moore: Photos released Monday by an East New York advocacy group show Rosan Miller, 27, struggling with a cop who … Continue reading
CBS News: More police officers being outfitted with body cameras
CBS News: More police officers being outfitted with body cameras by Teri Okita Alleged police brutality caught on camera in New York and Los Angeles this month has prompted a public outcry for better officer training. But in some cases, … Continue reading
USA Today: Investigation: ATF drug stings targeted minorities
USA Today: Investigation: ATF drug stings targeted minorities by Brad Heath: The nation’s top gun-enforcement agency overwhelmingly targeted racial and ethnic minorities as it expanded its use of controversial drug sting operations, a USA TODAY investigation shows. The Bureau of … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko: Cops caught improperly seizing cars, then selling them off the books
WaPo: Radley Balko: Cops caught improperly seizing cars, then selling them off the books: Small-town cops caught improperly seizing cars for minor traffic violations, then selling them to junkyards. Most of the transactions were off the books, and a lot … Continue reading
WaPo: Daniel Chong is the entirely predictable result of dehumanizing drug offenders
WaPo: Daniel Chong is the entirely predictable result of dehumanizing drug offenders by Radley Balko: “Drug people are the very vermin of humanity.” – Myles Ambrose, director of the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement during the Nixon Administration. The … Continue reading