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- N.D.Tex.: AUSA can summarize what the gov’t knows for SW application
- S.D.N.Y.: No right to quash SCA warrant before execution; remedies are after
- S.D.N.Y.: SW not based on mere speculation
- D.Mont.: Officers had RS for stop; it wasn’t based on the race of the suspects
- M.D.Pa.: SW for phone 19 months after alleged crimes showed PC
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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)
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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: Plain view, feel, smell
E.D.Pa.: Two minute “roadblock” for GPS tracked stolen cell phone was reasonable
A two minute “roadblock” to stop robbery suspects with a stolen cell phone transmitting its GPS location was with reasonable suspicion. United States v. Jones, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185143 (E.D. Pa. Sep. 19, 2025). The limitation on search warrants … Continue reading
MA: 123-day delay between cell phone seizure and SW was unreasonable here
Balancing the interests involved, the trial court found that the 123-day delay between seizure of defendant’s cell phone and seeking a search warrant for it was unreasonable. On de novo review, “That notwithstanding, there is no Massachusetts precedent upholding as … Continue reading
CA11: Officers’ random drug stops on the jetbridge of departing passengers at ATL were unreasonable
Officers’ random drug stops on the jetbridge of departing passengers at ATL were unreasonable on the face of the pleadings. The officers get qualified immunity, but their employer does not. André v. Clayton County, Georgia, No. 23-13253 (11th Cir. Aug. … Continue reading
TX7: Odor of MJ is PC; that’s TX precedent, and out of state cases don’t carry any weight
The odor of cannabis is still probable cause in Texas. “Emerging case law” in other states doesn’t matter because of Texas precedent. Parras v. State, 2025 Tex. App. LEXIS 5954 (Tex. App. – Amarillo Aug. 8, 2025). Defendant had no … Continue reading
OH12: Adoption of suppression motion brief by reference on appeal is waiver
Adoption of his suppression motion brief by reference without briefing it was waiver. Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a conversation with his girlfriend in the presence of a CI. State v. Davis, 2025-Ohio-2382, 2025 Ohio App. LEXIS … Continue reading
OR: Use of a powerful zoom to show covered up marijuana plants violated state constitution
Officers were doing a marijuana flyover looking for another operation and saw what appeared to be a grow operation on defendant’s property. The affidavit for probable cause only said that the officer saw and photographed evidence that could indicate a … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Search of international letter in D.C. was valid as border search
Search of an international letter on arrival in D.C. was valid as a border search. United States v. Martin, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 123023 (D.D.C. June 27, 2025).* There was reasonable suspicion for the officer’s encounter with defendant who was … Continue reading
NE: Cell phone search in Belize was valid there, admissible here; no joint venture shown
Defendant was charged with murder and ultimately arrested in Belize and deported. His Belize cell phone was valid under their law, and he doesn’t show a joint venture in the phone search. State v. Scott, 319 Neb. 153 (June 13, … Continue reading
LA5: Off-duty officer feeling a bag was a search, but bag was abandoned
Defendant left a bag on the counter of a gym and went outside and acted suspicious. An off-duty officer was a customer. He felt the bag, feeling a gun. Then police were called. This qualified as a government search, but … Continue reading
S.D.Ohio: Casting state court’s failure to follow 4A precedent more closely as a due process violation still Stone barred
2254 petitioner’s due process claim that the state court denied due process by not following precedent was barred by Stone. Allen v. Warden, SE. Corr. Inst., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104131 (S.D. Ohio June 2, 2025). Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Lack of a recording for SW application in violation of state law didn’t violate 4A
There was no recording of the showing of probable cause for this state warrant that became a part of a federal prosecution. The lack of a recording isn’t fatal to the showing of probable cause found by the issuing magistrate … Continue reading
CA6: Affidavit about smell of MJ from house was not so bare bones GFE didn’t apply
“Even if the search-warrant affidavit at issue lacked probable cause, the district court did not err in denying Noble’s motion to suppress because the good-faith exception applies. The search-warrant affidavit is not bare bones.” The smell of marijuana coming from … Continue reading
NY3: Judge who issued SW not barred from handling trial
Defendant’s claim that the judge issuing the search warrant couldn’t preside at the trial was not preserved because there was no objection. It would have failed anyway. People v Coston, 2025 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3046 (3d Dept. May 15, … Continue reading
TX: Fraudulently renting hotel room denies a REP
Fraudulently renting a hotel room means no reasonable expectation of privacy in it. And, it didn’t matter that the police didn’t learn that until later. Bluntson v. State, 2025 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 297 (May 7, 2025). At the oral … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Lack of a SW signature cured by GFE
“Defendant argues that the warrant is facially deficient because the affidavit lacked a signature, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit has considered and rejected this argument. See United States v. Gordon, 686 F. App’x 702, 704 (11th Cir. 2017) (holding … Continue reading
CA3: Plain feel of apparent drugs supported seizure from def’s pocket
Defendant doesn’t challenge the stop or the frisk, just the seizure of the baggie of drugs that the officer felt in his “watch pocket.” The officer could tell what it was by its feel. Affirmed. United States v. Williams, 2025 … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: 15 months not too long to make cell phone search and review unreasonable
Fifteen months to review a cell phone search “was accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. Although a review period of fifteen months is ‘certainly not brief,’ it was not unreasonably long considering ‘the challenges of searching ESI from electronic … Continue reading
MO: Administrative subpoena to Planned Parenthood was not unreasonable
The AG’s civil investigative demand to Planned Parenthood wasn’t unreasonable as a subpoena. “To comply with the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement, a CID, which is an administrative subpoena, must (1) comply with the statute authorizing it, (2) seek information that … Continue reading
D.Nev.: There’s no 4A claim from officers running the serial number of a gun found in plain view
There is no Fourth Amendment claim for officers running the serial number of a gun after it was lawfully encountered, so no ineffective assistance of counsel. United States v. Hylton, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71338 (D. Nev. Apr. 14, 2025). … Continue reading
OH5: Rental property ordinance can be enforced by admin. SWs
The City of Canton, Ohio has safety and sanitary standards for rental property that are reasonable and can be enforced by a Camara search warrant on administrative probable cause. Dep’t of Dev. Servs. for the City of N. Canton Ohio … Continue reading