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- CA6: Knowing passcode to cell phone shows common authority over it to consent
- VI: Smell of MJ no longer PC in VI since legalization
- Reason: 3 Charlotte Cops Resign After Group Chat Reveals Competition To Arrest the Most Black People
- E.D.Mich.: Second SW for cell phone data retained by govt was valid
- S.D.W.Va.: “Shocking” nature of immigration raid on a Mexican restaurant at lunchtime didn’t warrant suppression
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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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General (many free):
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www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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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)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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: Scope of search
E.D.Tenn.: Frisk of bag was reasonable, too
On the totality, there was reasonable suspicion for defendant’s Terry stop and then a frisk of his bag. United States v. Brooks, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 231135 (E.D. Tenn. Oct. 8, 2026).* “The Court finds that Cruz’s claim fails because, … Continue reading
VA: NC tracking warrant validly led to conviction in VA
North Carolina officers put a warrant approved tracker on defendant’s vehicle. That out-of-state warrant led to defendant’s conviction in Virginia. The out-of-state warrant was issued on probable cause, and it didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment tracking him in Virginia. A … Continue reading
DC: Def on supervision before sentencing had no REP in GPS monitoring
Defendant was on high intensity supervision with GPS for his current conviction, but he hadn’t yet been sentenced. Officers didn’t need a warrant to obtain his GPS data. “This case involves a defendant who had been adjudicated guilty, and PSA … Continue reading
CA3: Officers made reasonable effort to determine whether house was multi-use
Defendant lived on the second floor of a house that was not zoned as an apartment building and had no outward appearance there were separate residences. The warrant was for the whole place. The downstairs resident wasn’t the person they … Continue reading
IL5: Community caretaking exception doesn’t support home searches
“Given the above precedent, we disagree with the State that the community caretaking doctrine remains a viable purpose for a warrantless entry into a home. Instead, we believe that the Caniglia decision clearly rejected the community caretaking exception outside of … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
Defendant was stopped for speeding, and he was arrested for drugs based on unidentified pills found in his lap when the officer looked in. That might have been reasonable suspicion, but it wasn’t probable cause. Therefore, the arrest and car … Continue reading
D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery. A mistaken description of the location of the car in the warrant was neither intentional nor … Continue reading
CA6: SW in drug case led to finding CSAM, SW was still particular
Defendant was a suspect in a drug investigation, and they got search warrants for his place and cell phones, not knowing even how many there were or what they looked like. The warrants were with probable cause. The search for … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: A safe could be searched under a child porn SW
On a child pornography search warrant, search of a locked safe was reasonable. United States v. Villarreal-Resendiz, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174690 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 5, 2026). Stopping over the stop line was reasonable suspicion for this stop. United States … Continue reading
D.P.R.: A shed on the curtilage was within scope of SW
It was reasonable for officers to search a shed on the curtilage; it was within the scope of the search warrant. United States v. Torres-Benitez, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165162 (D.P.R. July 24, 2026). The CI said he could get … Continue reading
VA: SW that included “evidence of occupancy” could peruse def’s journals; that led to SW for them
In executing a search warrant in a murder case, officers looking for evidence of occupancy authorized by the warrant perused defendant’s journals. Not finding evidence of occupancy, they found other potential leads and applied for a warrant to read the … Continue reading
S.D.Fla.: SW for def’s house included his tent outside
The search warrant for defendant’s house included his tent outside. Gardner v. Miranda, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 153610 (S.D. Fla. May 27, 2026). The officer had reasonable suspicion for a stop, so the “new crime” rationale the court of appeals … Continue reading
FL: Violation of knock-and-announce statute doesn’t require exclusion
A violation of the knock-and-announce statute for serving search warrants doesn’t require exclusion of the evidence under Hudson, which is followed. State v. Times, 2026 Fla. LEXIS 982 (June 25, 2026). “Idling” is not a crime for a passenger vehicle … Continue reading
MD: Under Bruen, mere possession of a handgun outside the home is no longer RS; Terry stop doesn’t include looking in a bag
Bruen changed the law, and possession of a firearm outside the home is no longer reasonable suspicion for an investigative stop. Also, a Terry stop is a patdown of clothing, not looking into a bag being carried. Hicks v. State, … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Officer’s adhering to particularity wasn’t a failure to uncover Brady information
“To the contrary, this testimony confirms only that Agent Evans’s forensic examination was circumscribed by the legal boundaries of the search warrant. Cox’s attempt to equate the examiner’s adherence to those boundaries with a failure to uncover exculpatory evidence is … Continue reading
OH3: Cell phone search can extend to cloud storage it’s connected to
Defendant gave consent to search his cell phone, and the court notes, without deciding, that other courts have held that such consent would reach his data stored on the cloud or another server. That issue doesn’t, however, have to be … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Walker stopped on street by three officers was without RS
Defendant was stopped walking and surrounded by three officers shining flashlights in his face, and all without reasonable suspicion. Only then did they discover a telling bulge from a weapon. Suppressed. United States v. Wilson, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69861 … Continue reading
W.D.Wis.: Failure to cross a trial witness about a search claim isn’t IAC
Failure to cross-examine a trial witness about a potential Fourth Amendment violation is not ineffective assistance of counsel because a jury trial is not the place to resolve a search claim. Kawleski v. United States, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70540 … Continue reading