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- FL: Violation of knock-and-announce statute doesn’t require exclusion
- TX3: DUI blood draw while in restraint chair not 4A unreasonable
- TX1: Def has a duty to make his record on PC and the SW; missing affidavit was on him
- N.D.Ala.: SW not invalid because issuing judge previously represented the target
- The Guardian: ‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
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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)
--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: Plain view, feel, smell
GA joins jurisdictions finding smell of raw marijuana PC
“Based on the foregoing cases, it appears to be widely accepted in numerous jurisdictions that a trained police officer’s detection of the odor of raw marijuana can be the sole basis for the issuance of a search warrant, and we … Continue reading
IL: Officer staying on porch after completion of business was unauthorized, and def couldn’t be conviction of obstruction after that
Defendant’s obstructing a peace officer conviction had to be reversed because, while an officer could initially enter defendant’s porch, once he found no evidence of a crime, staying there was an unauthorized act which defendant could lawfully obstruct. People v. … Continue reading
DC: Feigning being a shooting victim made defendant’s clothes in ER reasonably subject to seizure
Defendants were convicted of a murder in D.C. When one defendant was in the hospital, he feigned that he was the shooting victim, and that made the seizure of his clothing in a red biohazard bag as reasonable and in … Continue reading
MA: Where possession of 1 oz of MJ is a civil infraction, seeing that much in a car doesn’t support a search
Seeing only enough marijuana to be a civil infraction is not probable cause for an automobile exception search of a car. Commonwealth v. Sheridan, 2015 Mass. LEXIS 102 (February 27, 2015):
CA11: 911 DV call led to entry and plain view of identify theft
Officers received a frantic domestic abuse call with an allegation of injury. They “authoritatively knocked on the door” and it was opened, and they could smell burning marijuana. They came in to the living room only, and evidence of identity … Continue reading
OH12: Plain smell came from patdown that squeezed bag of MJ that gave off odor
Plain feel supported seizure of marijuana baggie which gave off an odor when pressed during defendant’s otherwise valid patdown. Plain feel did not support seizure of cash in another pocket. However, it was not suppressed because discovery was inevitable by … Continue reading
CA3: Federal court can’t enjoin state court to re-seal a SW affidavit accidentally released in a federal case and published by press
John Dougherty was the target of a sealed search warrant and affidavit that led to no indictment. Later, Donald Dougherty (no relation) was indicted and, in his case, the John Dougherty search warrant and affidavit were accidentally filed of record. … Continue reading
CA11: Illegal vehicle search cured by inevitable inventory; owner of car was dead
Defendant was driving on a suspended license the truck of a man known to be dead. The search of the truck was clearly illegal, but inevitable discovery applied because it would have been impounded and inventoried. United States v. Johnson, … Continue reading
IA: Riley applied to a cell phone search from 2010
Defendant’s cell phone was searched in 2010, well before Riley, but a motion to suppress was filed and denied pre-Riley. The state concedes on appeal that Riley controls and attempts to get the contents of the phone in under exigent … Continue reading
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
OH2: Inconsistency between video and officer’s testimony didn’t alter fact heroin was in plain view
There was an inconsistency between the video and the testimony of the stop and defendant’s handcuffing and the officer’s seeing heroin in plain view, but it’s not material. The officer could order defendant out of the vehicle on a stop. … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Generally, absent owner of a car loaned to somebody else doesn’t have standing to challenge the stop and then search of the car
Generally, the absent owner of a car loaned to somebody else doesn’t have standing to challenge the stop and then search of the car. United States v. Gonzalez, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162121 (E.D. Mich. November 19, 2014). Because of … Continue reading
HuffPo: Apparent Drug Deal Goes Down During Live Local News Broadcast
HuffPo: Apparent Drug Deal Goes Down During Live Local News Broadcast by Jackson Connor
DE: No RS for this probation search based on unverified tip
Delaware requires that there be reasonable suspicion for a probation search. Here, a police officer passed on an unverified tip from an informant that defendant was selling drugs, and that was used for a home visit. Defendant had a couple … Continue reading
AR: Talking about drug deal on phone in convenience store overheard by officer led to plain view
“Arkansas State Police Trooper Stephen Briggs was inside the Valero convenience store on Colonel Glenn Road in Little Rock to get something to drink when he overheard a man on his cell phone say that he had lost $3200. The … Continue reading
IL: 5-7 minute delay before dog sniff wasn’t unreasonable
The court of appeals thinks that the officer having the driver close the windows and turn on the heater for a dog sniff is a search, but the state supreme court disagrees, and the court is bound by it. Also, … Continue reading