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- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
- Reason: No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules
- Reason: Flock’s Gunfire Alerts Raise a New Fourth Amendment Question
- N.D.Ohio: Car in driveway was on curtilage and plain view prohibited
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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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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)
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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: Excessive force
CA9: Use of force against autistic person posing no threat was excessive
Qualified immunity was properly denied the officer on plaintiff’s claim that the officer was alleged to have used excessive force. After seeing that plaintiff was holding only a string and certainly after learning that he was autistic, no officer of … Continue reading
CA8 dissent from rehearing en banc: Panel misapplied qualified immunity on use of Taser
Two judges of the Eighth Circuit dissented from denial of rehearing en banc of 944 F.3d 704 (8th Cir. Ark. Dec. 3, 2019) that the panel misapplied qualified immunity. Jackson v. Stair, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 9540 (8th Cir. Mar. … Continue reading
D.Md.: Matters not told to def counsel about search can’t form basis of IAC claim
Defendant asserts a basis for suppression of his search that apparently was never communicated to counsel during the representation. Defense counsel wasn’t deficient. Hill v. United States, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48664 (D. Md. Mar. 20, 2020). Plaintiff was shot … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Renter of car who loaned it out still had standing in the car
Defendant rented a car in his name two weeks before the search. He had standing in the car when somebody borrowed it and was stopped. The court declines to find that the dog handler cued the dog. Audio of a … Continue reading
Reason: Maryland Man Killed in No-Knock SWAT Raid Was Shot While Asleep, Family Says
Reason: Maryland Man Killed in No-Knock SWAT Raid Was Shot While Asleep, Family Says by C.J. Ciaramella (“Montgomery County police say Duncan Lemp ‘confronted’ a SWAT team executing a search warrant on his family’s house. His family says he was … Continue reading
TX4: School search was based on RS from info from known source
There was reasonable suspicion for a school search because the school authorities had information from a known source that provided it. In re J.A.M., 2020 Tex. App. LEXIS 2077 (Tex. App. – San Antonio Mar. 11, 2020). Defendant’s chokehold on … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: The clear potential for violence in a volatile domestic disturbance was a continuing exigency
The clear potential for violence in a volatile domestic disturbance was exigency. “As is evident from the video, the exigency did not terminate due to the passage of time or as a result of [Off.] Sosenko’s attempts to manage the … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: The triggering event in an anticipatory SW is subject to broad construction
The triggering event of an anticipatory warrant having occurred, the search warrant could be executed. The triggering event can be broadly construed. United States v. Santana, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38086 (M.D. Pa. Mar. 5, 2020). Plaintiff refused to get … Continue reading
CA10: Shooting a person fleeing a shooting scene without determining he was the shooter might have been unreasonable, but right not to be shot in this situation not clearly established (Really)
In a § 1983 Fourth Amendment excessive force suit, officers heard a gun shot and saw people running as a crowd left a concert. They shot and killed the decedent, and a jury could conclude that the officers unreasonably determined … Continue reading
CA4: Wrestling a passive misdemeanant to ground and Tasing him was excessive force and unreasonable
It was clearly established at the time of the incident that wrestling a passive misdemeanant to the grown and beating him up and tapering him was unreasonable and excessive force. Livingston v. Kehagias, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 5681 (4th Cir. … Continue reading
CA3: Border search exception applies to VI traveler, headed no matter which way
The border search exception applies to travel to and from the Virgin Islands, no matter which way the traveler is going. United States v. Baxter, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 5341 (3d Cir. Feb. 21, 2020). Detention center officer’s two-handed shove … Continue reading
SCOTUS: The estate of a young man shot and killed across the U.S.-Mexico border by a U.S. Border Patrol agent has no 4A or 5A Bivens claim.
The estate of a young man shot and killed across the U.S.-Mexico border by a U.S. Border Patrol agent for no reason has no Bivens claim for a Fourth or Fifth Amendment claim. Hernández v. Mesa, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 1361 … Continue reading
CA9: Conducting a frisk in such a way it inflicts pain can state a claim
“In this case, Borawick and Appellees have raised genuine disputes of material fact over whether there was an objective basis to believe that Borawick was a danger to the officers or to the public; whether a reasonable officer, having been … Continue reading
CA9: Sexual groping during a prison search states 4A excessive force claim
It was clearly established that groping a (transgender) woman during prison searches was unreasonable as excessive force. Goff v. Ramirez, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 4876 (9th Cir. Feb. 13, 2020). (The plaintiff being transgender had nothing to do with the … Continue reading
CA5: Unjustified pepper spraying inmate stated claim for relief
Pepper spraying a prison inmate for no apparent reason (maybe just throwing a wad of toilet paper at the guard and having thrown water at him before) stated a claim. McCoy v. Alamu, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 4188 (5th Cir. … Continue reading
CA7: Shooting at car fleeing recklessly from detention was reasonable
Shooting at plaintiff’s car was reasonable when he refused to respond to officers who showed up for a shots fired call and then plaintiff fled squealing his tires. Smith v. Adams, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 4066 (7th Cir. Feb. 11, … Continue reading
CA2: Whether ptf’s handcuffs were too tight and injured him was question of fact not to be resolved on summary judgment
Whether plaintiff’s handcuffs were too tight was a question to be resolved by a trial and not on summary judgment here. Horace v. Gibbs, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 3823 (2d Cir. Feb. 6, 2020). There was still probable cause for … Continue reading
TX14: It was clearly established standing on an arrestee’s face was excessive; here, causation for death not shown
“We conclude that controlling authority’ or ‘a robust “consensus of cases of persuasive authority”’ as of September 2010 make it sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would understand (as did those who testified) that stepping on the nose and mouth … Continue reading
CA9: Officers didn’t use excessive force in wrestling with and handcuffing strong woman having psychotic eposide
Plaintiff’s decedent was a large and strong woman who had an apparent psychotic break and six officers were trying to control her. She stopped breathing and died. Nothing contradicts the officer’s accounts of what happened. The police were called in … Continue reading