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Recent Posts
- PA: Shining flashlight into hole in a shoebox was a search; there was a REP in the closed box
- CA5: Accidentally shooting the man who disarmed the shooter from a residence was not a constitutional violation
- CA9: False evidence to arrest violates due process
- CA6: The SW affidavit here was thin, but it wasn’t completely bare bones, so GFE applies
- D.Minn.: Extending stop to run ALPR information on car was with RS
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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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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)
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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
NM: Opening car door that was too heavily tinted was reasonable for officer safety
It was reasonable for an officer in a DUI stop to open the defendant’s door for his own safety when the windows were tinted so darkly he couldn’t see inside. He also knocked on the window first. State v. Simpson, … Continue reading
AK: Seizure of luggage and shipping back to Anchorage for dog sniff violated U.S. v. Place
When defendant arrived by plane to Dillingham, Alaska, officers, tipped off by a CI, asked for consent to search defendant’s suitcases for marijuana. He refused. They seized the suitcases and applied to a magistrate for a warrant. The magistrate said … Continue reading
CA9: It was obvious by signs and longstanding practice that military bases are secure; having to lockup belongings before a consensual interview on the base wasn’t a seizure
Plaintiff was employed by the military, and NCIS had him come to a base for an interview about budgetary matters. The base was secure and everybody entering was subject to search and knew it from the signs. In the interview … Continue reading
AZ: When statute unambiguous, officer’s mistake of law a little hard to argue
The officer’s stop of defendant based on a mistake of law about the taillight being a backup light was not reasonable. The statute was unambiguous, and Heien provides no support. State v. Stoll, 2016 Ariz. App. LEXIS 89 (May 23, … Continue reading
D.Haw.: False alert package was opened didn’t nullify reasonable belief of exigent circumstances
The package had a GPS and a trigger “alarm” or alert for when it was opened. Here, however, the trigger alert was subject to failure if the package was dropped with sufficient force. Officers assembled outside the apartment, and the … Continue reading
CA3: Def’s complaint about how CP forensic search was done didn’t rise to “objective unreasonableness”
In a computer search for child pornography, the use of the “hashing” function rather than “gallery view function” is not constitutionally required. That was an issue in United States v. Burgess, 576 F.3d 1078 (10th Cir. 2009), which the court … Continue reading
CA6: Where def refused to provide combination to his safe during execution of a SW, it was reasonable to pry it open
Defendant showed the police that he had marijuana inside his home and the police obtained a warrant to search his home. Thus, suppression was not warranted because there was an outright certainty, not just a “fair probability,” that the house … Continue reading
Cal.3d: When stopping a car and a second one stops, too, it was reasonable to order occupants out of second car
One vehicle was being stopped in a driveway, but another was between the police car and the target car. The officers could reasonably get the occupants out of the car in between so they could know what they were dealing … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Checking criminal history doesn’t require probable cause
Checking criminal history doesn’t require probable cause, and defendant doesn’t cite any authority other than the Fourth and Fifth Amendment should be liberally construed. Motion in limine denied in one 711 word sentence. United States v. Green, 2016 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
WV: Consent search not void for lack of notification of rights under Art. 36 of Vienna Convention
Violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to advise defendant of his right to notify his consulate of his arrest and detention doesn’t lead to suppression of the consent search of his penis for … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Treaty request for financial information from Cayman Islands was not based on materially false information; based on employee search of computer
This case involves a Motion to Suppress Evidence Obtained Pursuant to the Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) between the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. The U.S. has to make an application to the Cayman Islands for information, including the justification, … Continue reading
FL5: Passenger can be detained with car; certifying conflict with FL4
“We affirm, and write to consider whether a police officer may, as a matter of course, detain a passenger who attempts to leave the scene of a lawful traffic stop without violating the passenger’s Fourth Amendment rights. … We hold … Continue reading
D.Haw.: The nature of Hawai’i being what it is, it was not unreasonable for Postal Inspectors to divert a package to Honolulu for search
Defendant was suspected of shipping meth from Oahu to Kauai, Hawai’i. He flew out one morning to Honolulu and was returning that night. Officers waited in the airport for his return. They had two warrants for his arrest. When he … Continue reading
CA2: Female inmate’s forced prison strip search for male guard to inspect genitalia stated a claim
Forced prison strip search of female inmate to have her genitalia inspected by a male guard stated a claim for relief on her Fourth Amendment claim. The inmate retained a limited right to bodily privacy, there were disputes of fact … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Police allowing hours-long exposure of ptf’s breasts stated 4A seizure claim that was clearly established
Plaintiff was involved in a bar brawl, and her shirt was torn and her breasts exposed. DC Metro police officers handcuffed her behind her back and took her to jail and failed to do anything to cover her breasts or … Continue reading
TN: Crime scene investigators arrived right behind the police to a shooting call; crime scene search was reasonable under Mincey
Police received a call to a shooting, and people at the scene were shouting “Officer Shaffer pulled into the driveway and blocked the car so that it could not leave. The driver of the car stopped, got out, and yelled … Continue reading
OH5: Not unreasonable to deny passenger permission to retrieve purse before dog sniff of car
The smell of burning marijuana was probable cause for a car search. The officer’s refusal to let the passenger retrieve her purse from the car before the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment. State v. Eiler, 2016-Ohio-224, 2016 Ohio … Continue reading
E.D.Tex.: Ulterior motive for stop irrelevant where there is objective cause
The stop had a factual basis for a traffic offense even though the officer omitted from his report that the real reason was the DEA requested him to come up with a reason. “That the officer may have had ulterior … Continue reading
CA6: SW for cell phone for video of def’s obstructing officer properly led to finding CP
Defendant was stopped by a police officer and became argumentative, and he refused to provide his license, insurance, and registration. He said he was attempting to record the officer on his cell phone but he was too busy with it … Continue reading