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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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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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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: Excessive force
Salon: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
Salon: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son by Alecia Phonesavanh: That’s right: Officers threw a flashbang grenade in my son’s crib — and left a hole in his chest. It gets worse.
WaPo: New ACLU report takes a snapshot of police militarization in the United States
WaPo: New ACLU report takes a snapshot of police militarization in the United States by Radley Balko: Civil rights group studies 800 raids among 20 police agencies.
WaPo: Aggressive police raids for thee, but not for me
WaPo: Aggressive police raids for thee, but not for me by Radley Balko: Former Utah AG Mark Shurtleff decries aggressive police tactics — but only after they were used on him.
D.C.Cir. finds good faith exception applies to warrant, and probable cause was not even considered
The reliability of the informant’s tale does not need to be decided here because the good faith exception applies [without a word of why]. United States v. Matthews, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 10522 (D.C. Cir. June 6, 2014). Defendant in … Continue reading
CA10: Not unreasonable to handcuff occupants during execution of SW for gun
In execution of a search warrant for a gun, it wasn’t unreasonable for the officers to handcuff people there for officer safety even through there was a suggestion that the gun had moved before the SW arrived. Wigley v. City … Continue reading
AR: Stop was without RS where it was to tell defendant his neighbors complained about him
Defendant’s stop was without any reasonable suspicion he had committed any kind of offense. The stop was to tell defendant that the neighbors were complaining about him. Dewitt v. State, 2014 Ark. App. 369 (June 4, 2014).* The use of … Continue reading
NYT: Book Guiding Border Agents on Force Is Released
NYT: Book Guiding Border Agents on Force Is Released by Julia Preston: The top official at the federal border agency released on Friday for the first time the full text of its handbook on the use of force by border … Continue reading
WaPo: Cleveland police indictment part of wider deadly force investigation
WaPo: Cleveland police indictment part of wider deadly force investigation: A police chase that ended in a schoolyard with two unarmed suspects dying in a hail of 137 bullets is part of a broad federal investigation of the Cleveland Police … Continue reading
PoliceOne: How to protect your career by writing better use-of-force reports
PoliceOne: How to protect your career by writing better use-of-force reports by Matt Stiehm: We must change our “less is more” mentality on UOF reports to a “more is more” mindset for the next generation of police officers Law enforcement … Continue reading
SCOTUS: Deadly force to stop this high-speed car chase was reasonable as a matter of law; alternatively, officers get qualified immunity
Deadly force used to stop this high-speed car chase was reasonable as a matter of law. The number of shots is not determinative (12) as long as the risk is apparent. Alternatively, the officers get qualified immunity because the law … Continue reading
CA9: Mistaken stop on Automatic License Plate Reader gets no qualified immunity
Plaintiff was subject to an erroneous felony stop because of a hit by an Automatic License Plate Reader. Summary judgment of her § 1983 claim on qualified immunity for false arrest and excessive force was reversed, and the case sent … Continue reading
WaPo: Morning Links: DEA launches nationwide synthetic drug sweep
WaPo: Morning Links: DEA launches nationwide synthetic drug sweep by Radley Balko: ● I’ve often seen my reporting co-opted by other publications without credit.* So I try to acknowledge the reporters who originally broke stories that later make national news. … Continue reading
The Atlantic: 23 Police Officers Fire 377 Bullets at Two Men With Zero Guns
The Atlantic: 23 Police Officers Fire 377 Bullets at Two Men With Zero Guns by Conor Friedersdorf: I’ve long proposed a simple rule: police officers who shoot unarmed innocents should have their guns taken away. They can work desk jobs … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Armed raid for campaign finance records leads to enjoining investigation for First Amendment violation
Plaintiffs showed enough to enjoin a criminal investigation punctuated by armed raids on plaintiff’s home for campaign finance records for interference with First Amendment political and free speech rights. O’Keefe v. Schlitz, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63066 (E.D. Wis. May … Continue reading
CA6: Computer search condition for supervised release was justified
The District Court gave specific reasons why it was subjecting defendant to a computer search condition on supervised release, and it is both valid and reasonable. (Distinguishing United States v. Inman, 666 F.3d 1001 (6th Cir. 2012) where there were … Continue reading