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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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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
D.Kan.: Heien relieves a federal court of having to make fine distinctions about whether state traffic law was validated
Heien relieves a federal court of having to make fine distinctions about whether state traffic law was validated: The question is whether the officer’s view was reasonable. [Again, close enough for government work.] United States v. Morales, 2015 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
MA: Order for fraternal twin to give up DNA to eliminate him here was unreasonable for an inadequate showing; contempt reversed
“This court concluded that a Superior Court judge, in entering a judgment of contempt in a criminal case due to the refusal, by a third party who was not a suspect, to comply with an order compelling him to provide … Continue reading
CA4 notes conflict in circuits in applying “egregious Fourth Amendment violation” for immigration removal cases
The Fourth Circuit wrestles with the appropriate standard for an “egregious Fourth Amendment violation” for immigration removal cases, and confirms and analyzes a conflict in the circuits and how to interpret SCOTUS’s Lopez-Mendoza. Here, the Fourth Amendment violations were not … Continue reading
IA: Officer’s even reasonable mistake of fact makes stop unreasonable
A mistake of fact about the existence of a stop sign (down because of construction) denies reasonable suspicion for the stop. This is not a mistake of law under Heien, a question reserved for another day. State v. Schueman, 2015 … Continue reading
TX1: A police officer contemplating a blood draw by search warrant is not obligated to inquire into the medical history of the suspect to predetermine reasonableness
A police officer contemplating a blood draw by search warrant is not obligated to inquire into the medical history of the suspect to predetermine reasonableness. Dromgoole v. State, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 5662 (Tex. App. – Houston (1st Dist.) June … Continue reading
OH9: Where the car in which defendant was a passenger was going to be inventoried, def’s detention for officer safety was reasonable
The continued detention of the defendant passenger in a car, incidental to the stop of the driver, pending the inventory of the car was reasonable. The trial court resolved a fact dispute and concluded that defendant consented to a search … Continue reading
D.Neb.: Defendant was clearly not free to leave and his 30 minute questioning was unreasonable and not even de minimus as in Rodriguez
The stop here was overlong under Rodriguez, but, of course, happened before. Here, however, the defendant was told he was free to leave, but the court finds that “There is no doubt that the defendant did not feel he was … Continue reading
KS: Reasonable mistake of fact found from speeding stop where defendant wasn’t actually speeding
Defendant was stopped for going 28 in what the officer fairly believed was a 20 zone, “‘more years than anyone knew.’” The officer was a life long resident of the city. In reality, the speed limit had been raised to … Continue reading
IL follows Heien in a stop under an ambiguous traffic code section; it was a reasonable mistake of law
The court grapples at length with whether a trailer hitch blocking a LPN is an offense and concludes that the statute is ambiguous, and the defendant can’t be convicted for that traffic offense. On the larger question, however, the court … Continue reading
CA8: Circuit authority authorized dog sniff at door before Jardines so good faith applies
A pre-Jardines dog sniff outside the door was valid in this circuit, and the court has already sustained on good faith such a sniff in United States v. Davis, 760 F.3d 901, 903, 905 (8th Cir. 2014). United States v. … Continue reading
FL4: Parole searches not limited by time of day, but must be reasonable; this one at 5:45 am with 8 officers
Florida case law long has recognized warrantless probation and parole searches on reasonable suspicion, and statute is not required. Here, there wasn’t even a parole condition to submit to parole searches. This search started at 5:45 am and was reasonable, … Continue reading
D.Mont.: 27 minute stop not overlong on these facts; applying Rodriguez
Two days after Rodriguez, the District of Montana applies it finding a 27 minute traffic stop reasonable under the facts of that case. United States v. Iturbe-Gonzalez, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53536 (D.Mont. April 23, 2015):
W.D.Mo.: Officer’s subjective belief of “reasonable mistake of law” irrelevant under Heien
The stop was based on a municipal ordinance that prohibited obstructions “upon” the windshield or windows. The government relied on reasonable mistake of law under Heien v. North Carolina, but the court disagrees. An air freshener was not “upon” and … Continue reading
Big win for individual liberty: SCOTUS: Bringing out the drug dog as a matter of course during a traffic stop is unreasonable; CA8’s “de minimus” extension of stop rule violates Fourth Amendment
Rodriguez v. United States, 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2807 (April 21, 2015). The syllabus: Officer Struble, a K–9 officer, stopped petitioner Rodriguez for driving on a highway shoulder, a violation of Nebraska law. After Struble attended to everything relating to the … Continue reading
CA3: Officers confronted with an unknown call of a screaming woman were not unreasonable in waiting to sort it out, even though it resulted in a delay of getting a woman to the hospital where she died
In a “tragic” case of a young woman dying from lock of oxygen to the brain from an asthma attack, police responded to a 911 call of a “woman screaming” and didn’t know what they had. When they arrived, the … Continue reading
CA3: Use of a police baton on legs to subdue struggling suspect was reasonable; SI of fleeing suspect reasonable and based on fact
Defendant was pulled over for possible speeding in a 25 mph zone, and he fled the car, tugging at his pants as he was running, strongly suggesting a gun in his pocket or waistband. One officer tackled him and had … Continue reading
Slate: Ignorance of the Law [is a complete defense, if you’re a cop]
Slate: Ignorance of the Law [is a complete defense, if you’re a cop] by Cristian Farias: So why did Slager pull over Scott? If what he said, as captured on the dashcam account, is to be believed, Slager made a … Continue reading
CA10: Roadblock to capture bank robber that stopped 20 cars and resulted in 17 people being handcuffed was reasonable under all the circumstances
Defendant robbed a Denver bank on a Saturday wearing a beekeeper’s gear and mask, so nobody got a look at him. In the stolen money was a GPS tracker effective to a 60′ radius. Police tracked it to an intersection, … Continue reading
NY adopts “objectively reasonable mistake of law” for stops
“In this appeal, we are asked to decide whether there is probable cause to make a traffic stop for a suspected violation of law in accordance with article I, § 12 of the New York State Constitution and the Fourth … Continue reading