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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
WSJ: Viral Videos Shape Views of Police Conduct
WSJ: Viral Videos Shape Views of Police Conduct by Scott Calvert and Valerie Bauerlein As citizen footage sharpens a debate, states work to ensure transparency The article also mentions seizures of cell phones and iPads to delete the videos, which … Continue reading
CA8: Tasering suspected armed and dangerous arrestee was subject to qualified immunity, even when it turned out officers were reasonably mistaken as to ID of suspect
U.S. Marshals reasonably believed the plaintiff was a wanted armed and dangerous felon. He backed away and refused to submit to arrest and was Tasered. “We have since confirmed that ‘non-violent, non-fleeing subjects have a clearly established right to be … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko’s “The Watch” Blog: Morning links: Half the victims of Georgia police shootings were unarmed or shot in the back
WaPo: Radley Balko’s “The Watch” Blog: Morning links: Half the victims of Georgia police shootings were unarmed or shot in the back: … Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of 184 Georgia police shootings since 2010 finds that nearly half the victims were … Continue reading
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: When the ‘reasonable police officer’ standard isn’t reasonable at all
WaPo: Radley Balko’s ‘The Watch’ Blog: When the ‘reasonable police officer’ standard isn’t reasonable at all: Accountability shouldn’t be the only tool for changing the more troubling aspects of police culture, but it’s an important one.
OH11: Conflict of laws: Recording of def in CA which violated CA law but not Fourth Amendment nor OH law was admissible in OH prosecution
Where a recording of defendant was made in California in violation of California law but being used in a prosecution in Ohio, the exclusionary rule would not be applied. The recording violated neither the Fourth Amendment nor Ohio law, and … Continue reading
HuffPo: Two Innocent Black Men Shot By Police, Then Falsely Accused Of Murder
HuffPo: Two Innocent Black Men Shot By Police, Then Falsely Accused Of Murder by Mike Heuer: The alleged murder victim was actually hit and killed by a police vehicle.
WaPo: Improper techniques, increased risks / Deaths have raised questions about the risk of excessive or improper deployment of Tasers
WaPo: Improper techniques, increased risks / Deaths have raised questions about the risk of excessive or improper deployment of Tasers by Cheryl W. Thompson & Mark Berman:
NJLJ: Lawyer Couple Gets $1.15M Settlement in Suit Against Police
NJLJ: Lawyer Couple Gets $1.15M Settlement in Suit Against Police: The town of Westfield has agreed to pay $1.15 million to settle a federal civil rights suit by a Lowenstein Sandler attorney and his wife, also an attorney, who claimed … Continue reading
WaPo: Editorial: Another senseless death in police custody
WaPo: Editorial: Another senseless death in police custody: Video footage of the incident, released recently by a judge’s order and reported in depth by MSNBC, suggests it is a case study in abuse by police ignorant of best practices in … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Not clearly established deadly force could not be used on suspect fleeing at high speed who threatened to shoot officers; Sotomayor: “By sanctioning a ‘shoot first, think later’ approach to policing, the Court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow.”
It was not clearly established at the time (2010) that deadly force could not be used on a suspect fleeing in a car at 85-100 mph who threatened to shoot police officers. Thus, the separate Fourth Amendment question doesn’t matter … Continue reading
NPR: In A First, Border Agent Indicted For Killing Mexican Teen Across Fence
NPR: In A First, Border Agent Indicted For Killing Mexican Teen Across Fence by John Burnett: On Friday, in a federal courtroom in Tucson, Ariz., an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol for the first time will be arraigned on … Continue reading
Connecticut Law Tribune: Norm Pattis: Police Departments Should Be Held Liable for Shootings
Connecticut Law Tribune: Norm Pattis: Police Departments Should Be Held Liable for Shootings: As of Oct. 5, 754 people, or almost three people per day, were shot to death by police officers in the United States in 2015. This information … Continue reading
NYTimes: New York Police Will Document Virtually All Instances of Force
NYTimes: New York Police Will Document Virtually All Instances of Force by Al Baker and J. Dadvid Goodman: For the first time in its modern history, the New York Police Department is establishing explicit guidelines — backed by a sweeping … Continue reading
CA5: Shooting suicidal person in back so he wouldn’t turn was objectively unreasonable; framing him for assault on an officer violates due process
It was objectively unreasonable to shoot a young man with a gun to his own head when his back was to the officers. Plaintiff also made a prima facie due process claim for being framed by the police for assaulting … Continue reading
AOL Autoblog (from NWI Times): Dash cam shows cops pulling gun on couple and pregnant woman in labor during traffic stop
AOL Autoblog (from NWI Times): Dash cam shows cops pulling gun on couple and pregnant woman in labor during traffic stop by Sarah Reese. This was three years ago, and the video was just released.
CA6: During a long standoff, police sent for coffee and granola bars but no warrant before a sniper killed the suicidal defendant before he could kill himself
Police engaged in a long standoff with a suicidal subject whose only alleged crime was to fire a gun into the woods which he thought were unoccupied. Every window in the house was broken by tear gas canisters, and he … Continue reading
CA8: Qualified immunity because it was not clearly established in 2009 use of a Taser was unreasonable
It was not clearly established in 2009 that use of a Taser was unreasonable so the officers get qualified immunity. Here, it happened in jail when plaintiff refused to change into a jail uniform. Hollingsworth v. City of St. Ann, … Continue reading
NPR: Why Utah Is The Only State Trying To Track And Limit SWAT-Style Tactics
NPR: Why Utah Is The Only State Trying To Track And Limit SWAT-Style Tactics by Martin Kaste: The phrase police militarization conjures up an image of cops wrapped in Kevlar, barging into homes with semi-automatic weapons. But familiar as that … Continue reading
CA5: Using a Taser on a person no longer resisting is excessive force
Using a Taser on a person no longer resisting is excessive force. The mentally ill plaintiff was at first resisting but then stopped. At that point, it became excessive. Carroll v. Ellington, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 15098 (5th Cir. August … Continue reading