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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
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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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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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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: Excessive force
Reason.com: Shackling Elementary School Kids Above Elbow Found to Violate the Fourth Amendment
Reason.com: Shackling Elementary School Kids Above Elbow Found to Violate the Fourth Amendment by Brian Doherty:
OH follows Hudson on knock-and-announce under state constitution
The Ohio Supreme Court follows Hudson under the state constitution and holds that a violation of knock-and-announce does not justify suppression of the search. The state constitution has been applied more broadly than the Fourth Amendment on occasion, but not … Continue reading
CA1: QI for excessive force doesn’t require a case exactly on point; Garner is close enough for a jury to find liability
The district court denied qualified immunity to an officer who shot the victim in the head with an AR-15 without warning for allegedly brandishing a firearm. The victim had been wandering in and out of his house with a gun … Continue reading
WaPo: An innocent man lost his spleen after police shot him during a drug raid. The courts and city government say tough luck.
WaPo: An innocent man lost his spleen after police shot him during a drug raid. The courts and city government say tough luck by Radley Balko:
D.Md.: Private extradition company’s employees could be sued under § 1983 and due process clauses but not 4A since he’s a pretrial detainee
Plaintiff sued an extradition company, Prisoner Transport Services of America (PTS) under § 1983 as a state actor and the Fourth Amendment and due process clauses for inmate abuse in a transport van, describing ugly conditions of transport. “While Plaintiff … Continue reading
WaPo: Cross-border slaying: Can dead teen’s family sue US agent? — Reargument in CA5
WaPo: Cross-border slaying: Can dead teen’s family sue US agent? by Kevin McGill:
Natl.L.Rev.: The Utah Blood Draw Story: Drawing Unwarranted Conclusions
Natl.L.Rev.: The Utah Blood Draw Story: Drawing Unwarranted Conclusions by David J. Edquist & Aaron M. Smith:
CA7: Plainclothes officers have to ID themselves when making a stop
“The jury instructions on Terry stops, however, were inadequate. Over Doornbos’s objection, the court instructed the jury only on investigatory stops but not frisks. Yet Officer Williamson’s own testimony indicates that he was starting a frisk when he first approached … Continue reading
CA5: Bodycam video showed that this fatal shooting was apparently justified, and that essentially made credibility of the officer irrelevant
In this § 1983 action against a former deputy sheriff, which alleged excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the factual issues identified by the district court on summary judgment were immaterial in light of undisputed filmed facts of … Continue reading
CA10: Not clearly established that even minimal force can be used to resist alleged unlawful search
Plaintiffs were involved in a domestic dispute outside their trailer that had started to cool down, or so they said. One wanted to go into the house to retrieve shoes, but the officer insisted on following to be sure there … Continue reading
WaPo Editorial: Police brutality is no joke, Mr. President
WaPo Editorial: Police brutality is no joke, Mr. President:
WaPo: U.S. police chiefs blast Trump for endorsing ‘police brutality’
WaPo: U.S. police chiefs blast Trump for endorsing ‘police brutality’ by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. & Mark Berman:
WaPo: Trump’s speech encouraging police to be ‘rough,’ annotated
WaPo: Trump’s speech encouraging police to be ‘rough,’ annotated by Philip Bump:
WaPo: 10th Circuit grants narrow victory to family raided by a SWAT team over loose leaf tea
WaPo: 10th Circuit grants narrow victory to family raided by a SWAT team over loose leaf tea by Radley Balko. The case is Harte v. Bd. of Commissioners, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 13399 (10th Cir. July 25, 2017), over a … Continue reading
UPI: Mississippi police kill man while serving warrant at wrong house
UPI: Mississippi police kill man while serving warrant at wrong house by Ray Downs: Close to midnight on Sunday, Southaven, Miss., police arrived at the wrong house to serve an arrest warrant and shot a man dead in his own … Continue reading
CA10: Where one in car flashed gun in a bar, it was reasonable to order occupants to ground when stopped
Defendant was seen flashing a gun in a bar in Colorado, and police got a specific description including hair braids and dress from the wait staff. When the car was seen, officers ordered the occupants out and to the ground … Continue reading
Boston Globe: His parents said he just needed to sleep. A SWAT team came instead
Boston Globe: His parents said he just needed to sleep. A SWAT team came instead. by Jenna Russell: Reeling as the sun rose higher in the summer sky, Austin’s parents tried to understand how a simple police check on their … Continue reading
CA5: Ptf doesn’t show that city’s alleged failure to use SWAT teams “threat matrix” properly led to any constitutional violation
Plaintiff failed to show a pattern of unconstitutional actions or that the SWAT teams’ use of a “threat matrix” to determine when they would be called out was unconstitutional. Plaintiff doesn’t show that the failure to implement that matrix properly … Continue reading
CA11: Punching ptf in the face because of apparent threat to officer was QI
Punching plaintiff in the face was objectively reasonable on these facts, and the officer is entitled to qualified immunity. “Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Avery, Davis saw a brawl break out between two groups of young … Continue reading
CA5: Video of police shooting shows it was justified, so QI shown
Parents alleged Fourth Amendment violations under § 1983 in the fatal shooting of their son by a police officer. Based upon a bystander’s video of the incident, a reasonable officer in defendant’s position could have concluded that the son posed … Continue reading