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- CA3: Ptf was arrested on an apparent but recalled warrant, then officers confirmed it and let him go; the arrest was reasonable
- N.D.Ohio: Failure to serve state SW within state mandated time not 4A violation
- NY1: Gunshot through floor from apartment above was exigency
- Reason: Most Civil Forfeiture Victims Never See the Inside of a Courtroom
- CA8: Admission of anonymous tip that led to stop violated Confrontation Clause
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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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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: Reasonableness
PA: DUI with agg. assault was sufficiently exigent to dispense with SW for BAC
Defendant was accused of DUI and aggravated assault, and the officer decided that the additional complexity of investigating the assault charge made a warrantless blood draw exigent. It didn’t matter that the state charged him with the assault two months … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Inevitable discovery by inevitable SW obviated dispute over consent
Inevitable discovery also supports the consent search of defendant’s cell phone obtained at the Sarita, Texas checkpoint. The officers had probable cause and told him they’d get a search warrant and he consented instead. The matter was clearly under active … Continue reading
AZ: Even if NCMEC was not private actor, it didn’t expand the prior private search
In Arizona, Fourth Amendment claims are decided first, then state constitutional claims. Google+, acting completely on its own, searched defendant’s photos folder stored with there. Moreover, it was only shown to be protecting its private business interests, not aid the … Continue reading
KS: Officer’s two calls to dispatch telling him there was a warrant was reasonable under Herring
Defendant’s arrest based on the officer’s two calls to dispatch insisting there was a warrant for defendant was reasonable reliance on a mistake of another under Herring. State v. Gilliland, 2021 Kan. App. LEXIS 21 (May 14, 2021). The French … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Stop and detention wasn’t unreasonable, at least in part, because the officer was maskless.
The stop and search of defendant’s person was not constitutionally unreasonable, including the fact the officer wasn’t wearing a mask. United States v. Wright, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83603 (D. Kan. Apr. 30, 2021). Defendant’s submissions in this excessive force … Continue reading
AR: One can’t change 4A argument from trial court to appeal
Defendant’s oral motion to suppress was presented and denied. On appeal, defendant changed the specifics of the argument, and it’s not considered as presented. Saffel v. State, 2021 Ark. App. LEXIS 176 (Apr. 14, 2021). The officer’s stop of defendant’s … Continue reading
S.D.W.Va.: Single question about possession of firearm reasonable under Rodriguez
Defendant was stopped for riding a bicycle with no helmet. The single question about possessing firearms didn’t unreasonably extend the stop. “Because the question asked here, whether Defendant had any firearms, is perhaps the most basic of inquiries related to … Continue reading
CA11: Stop for not having license on bicycle in violation of city code was reasonable
The officer’s stop of defendant for not having a license on his bike per local ordinance was reasonable. Defendant’s flight justified his detention and seizure of his backpack. CoA denied. Thomas v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
ND: Warrantless entry of child protective services to remove a child was unreasonable
State child services officers came to defendant’s door to take her child away. She refused and ran back into the house with officers in pursuit. This warrantless entry and a second entry to collect clothes for the child were unreasonable. … Continue reading
DE: Exclusionary rule not designed to prohibit extra-territorial GPS tracking with warrant
In this post-conviction case, defense counsel didn’t raise the question of extraterritorial monitoring of a warrant installed GPS device. It was installed in 2015 [post-Jones] to track defendant who was an accomplished [except for getting caught] burglar. The court doesn’t … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: 25 min. wait for tint meter was related to stop and didn’t unreasonably extend it
A 25 minute wait for a tint meter to arrive at the scene of the stop was directly related to the purpose of the traffic stop: overtinted windows. “Johnson acknowledges that the police officers lawfully stopped him. A person who … Continue reading
W.D.Ark.: Officer acting outside his local jurisdiction isn’t 4A issue
“Mr. van Leeuwen also claims that Boone County officers were without jurisdiction when they arrested him in his Marion County home, in alleged violation of Arkansas Code § 14-15-501. However, ‘[a] police violation of state law does not establish a … Continue reading
FL1: Sheriff’s Office failed to show TV and PlayStation were lawfully seized during drug search
The Bay County SO executed a drug search warrant at claimant’s father’s house and seized a flat screen TV and PlayStation. Claimant sought return, and the state claimed it was lawfully taken and became county property by operation of law. … Continue reading
C.D.Ill.: Prison strip searches are always permitted, unless done unreasonably
Inmates seen naked in prison is not a constitutional claim unless it was all done in an unreasonable manner. The limited facts here fail to show that. Danuk v. Downey, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45383 (C.D. Ill. Mar. 11, 2021):
WA: Uncorroborated CI’s story not RS or PC
CI was not shown to be sufficiently reliable by an attempt to corroborate her to justify defendant’s stop and subsequent search. “Unlike a citizen informant calling 911, a criminal informant is not presumed to be acting out of civic responsibility. … Continue reading
D.N.M.: A vehicle could be stopped just because there was a warrant on the passenger
A vehicle could be stopped just because there was a warrant on the passenger. Here, ICE made the stop, and it was reasonably related to its justification. United States v. Murillo-Gonzalez, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38494 (D. N.M. Mar. 1, … Continue reading
OH12: State’s “reasonable mistake of fact” justification for stop has to be raised in trial court first
The state didn’t rely on a “reasonable mistake of fact” justification for the stop in the trial court, so it can’t for appeal. State v. Turner, 2021-Ohio-541, 2021 Ohio App. LEXIS 564 (12th Dist. Mar. 1, 2021). Defendant had some … Continue reading
N.D.Ind.: Officer’s having to radio in information for wants and warrants check didn’t unreasonably extend stop
The officer observed defendant swerve over the double yellow line and made a stop to issue a warning. A dog was called and arrived in ten minutes. The stop took longer than normal because the officer had to go “old … Continue reading
FL5: Valid stop can be based on mistaken facts and still be reasonable
The question for validity of a stop is probable cause, not the defendant’s ultimate guilt. Fourth Amendment reasonableness allows for reasonable mistakes of fact. The trial court erred in granting the motion to suppress where the stop was still reasonable. … Continue reading