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- D.Minn.: Extending stop to run ALPR information on car was with RS
- 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
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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)
--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: Reasonableness
Lawfare: Fourth Amendment Reasonableness After Carpenter v. United States
Lawfare: Fourth Amendment Reasonableness After Carpenter v. United States by Alan Z. Rozenshtein.
W.D.N.Y.: Alleged state procedural errors in issuing SW is irrelevant under 4A in federal court
“As a threshold matter, defendant Nelson’s objection that the search warrant was per se invalid because no verbatim record of the informant’s testimony as required by N.Y.C.P.L. § 690.36 was preserved is mistaken. Whether the search warrant for the defendant’s … Continue reading
New law review article: Fourth Amendment Reasonableness After Carpenter
This brief essay is great insight into arguing the next steps of Carpenter, reasonableness, property rights, and whether the reasonable expectation of privacy test will be changed. We recommend you read all you can about Carpenter because the right reasonableness … Continue reading
W.D.Pa.: Court doesn’t find running away from a wrecked car was unequivocally an abandonment
Defendant was an accused bootlegger who knew he was being tailed and he wrecked his car and ran away. The court doesn’t find this to be unequivocally an abandonment because he knew he was being followed but not necessarily by … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: A reasonable but mistaken belief defendant’s car was just involved in a burglary justified its stop
A reasonable but mistaken belief defendant’s car was just involved in a burglary justified its stop. United States v. Morgan, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 208715 (W.D. Mo. Oct. 31, 2018), adopted, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 207735 (W.D. Mo. Dec. 10, … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Surreptitiously made recording invalid by Georgia statute is still admissible in federal court
A surreptitiously made recording invalid by Georgia statute is still admissible in federal court. United States v. Kilpatrick, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 208799 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 1, 2018), adopted, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 208223 (N.D. Ga. Dec. 10, 2018). At … Continue reading
D.Ore.: Where the detention was with RS, the fact it took an hour to get a free drug dog there wasn’t unreasonable
The officer had reasonable suspicion for detention for the dog sniff. Then it took an hour to get a drug dog there because the police were busy that night. It was not unreasonable on the totality. United States v. Krumwiede, … Continue reading
KS: State law not ambiguous and Heien doesn’t make this reasonable
Kansas law was settled a decade before, so the state can’t claim that the officer’s allegedly reasonable mistake of law makes this stop reasonable under Heien. State v. Lees, 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 64 (Nov. 16, 2018):
CA7: Using several garage door openers in def’s vehicle to locate his stash house was a reasonable search
Defendant’s vehicle was stopped and several garage door openers were found. Using them to try to find defendant’s stash house was a search and it was reasonable, although close to the edge. United States v. Correa, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Stop of wrong man on mistaken identity was objectively reasonable
Officers approached the defendant reasonably believing he was somebody else, and he ran. When they finally caught him and rolled him over, they realized they had the wrong person. Nevertheless, the stop was objectively reasonable despite mistaken identity. United States … Continue reading
MA: Delay in searching cell phones lawfully seized wasn’t unreasonable
There was evidence defendants coordinated their actions while in separate cars, and that provided a strong inference they were in communication by cell phone, thus providing probable cause to search them. Police promptly seized the phones and then obtained search … Continue reading
OH5: Stop became unreasonable where officer extended stop 13 minutes and never started on ticket for failure to signal
The trial court suppressed because the stop was overly extended. Defendant was stopped for alleged failure to signal, and it dragged on for 13 minutes without the officer ever starting on writing a ticket. Conceding the stop was likely valid, … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Reasonable to stop car driving off rural property as police arrive to execute a SW
Officers arrived with a search warrant for a house on rural property, and a vehicle was leaving. It was reasonable to stop the vehicle to determine whether it or an occupant belonged at the house and was covered by the … Continue reading
CA9: No QI for IRS agent insisting that she watch ptf pee in her own bathroom during execution of tax SW
During an IRS criminal search, an IRS supervisory officer insisted that she watch plaintiff urinate in plaintiff’s own bathroom. This was sufficient to show an unreasonable invasion of privacy and overcome qualified immunity. Ioane v. Hodges, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Whether the maintaining one’s lane statute was violated is subject to Heien and the reasonable mistake of law
The collective knowledge doctrine applies to reasonable suspicion, too. Here, there is argument whether defendant actually violated the requirement of staying in his lane by touching the lane marker or crossing it. Either way, the court finds that this qualifies … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: When they had PC for rural house, entry to freeze situation was reasonable when magistrate was two hours away
After police stopped a car suspected in drug deals, they learned that the drugs came from a particular address which was used as a distribution point. They developed probable cause for the house. They were two hours away from a … Continue reading
MA: Two day delay in getting SW for cell phone wasn’t unreasonable
Defendant’s cell phone was reasonably seized to preserve any evidence in it. The two day delay in getting a search warrant for it did not unreasonably interfere with defendant’s possessory interest in it. Commonwealth v. Cruzado, 2018 Mass. LEXIS 549 … Continue reading
MI: Policy to photograph and fingerprint detainees violated 4A and stated claim against city
The Grand Rapids Police Department has a policy permitting officers to photograph and fingerprint people who are stopped just because they want to. The plaintiffs stated a claim for relief against the city for its policy. Johnson v. Vanderkooi, 2018 … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: SW for Manafort’s house is upheld
(1) “In sum, the warrant here (i) identified the items to be seized in relation to specific Subject Offenses, (ii) included an illustrative list of records to limit the discretion of executing agents, and (iii) provided a sufficient description of … Continue reading
CA3: NJ bail reform act doesn’t violate 4A or 8A
New Jersey’s bail reform act which shifts emphasis away from money bail to other restraints and conditions to assure release and return to court does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Not all restraints are unreasonable, given a probable cause finding … Continue reading