Archives
-
Recent Posts
- MO: When officers came with an arrest warrant, def’s admission he had a firearm justified the entry
- 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
-
-
ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
-
-
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) -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
U.S. Supreme Court (Home)
S.Ct. Shadow Docket Database
Federal Appellate Courts Opinions
First Circuit
Second Circuit
Third Circuit
Fourth Circuit
Fifth Circuit
Sixth Circuit
Seventh Circuit
Eighth Circuit
Ninth Circuit
Tenth Circuit
Eleventh Circuit
D.C. Circuit
Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
Advanced Google Scholar
Google search tips
LexisWeb
LII State Appellate Courts
LexisONE free caselaw
Findlaw Free Opinions
To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
-
General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
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)
-
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
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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)
-
“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
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
KS: Davis GFE applied to a blood draw process valid at time but later held unconstitutional
Defendant was involved in a head-on accident and was unconscious at the hospital when his blood was drawn. The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies because, at the time of the blood draw, it was lawful under state … Continue reading
CA2: Successive stops in two states within minutes are individually evaluated; performance records of dog discoverable
Defendant was a regular drug courier between NYC and Burlington VT. He was stopped first in Massachusetts and detained for 22 minutes because the paperwork on the rental car was suspect. The rental car company said there was no problem … Continue reading
DC: Feigning being a shooting victim made defendant’s clothes in ER reasonably subject to seizure
Defendants were convicted of a murder in D.C. When one defendant was in the hospital, he feigned that he was the shooting victim, and that made the seizure of his clothing in a red biohazard bag as reasonable and in … Continue reading
NE deals with this issue for the first time: Handcuffs do not automatically convert a stop on reasonable suspicion into an arrest
In Nebraska’s first case on the issue: Handcuffs do not automatically convert a stop on reasonable suspicion into an arrest. State v. Wells, 290 Neb. 186, 2015 Neb. LEXIS 34 (February 20, 2015):
IN: Walking drug dog through house as a probation search was reasonable
Probation searches in Indiana can be by any law enforcement officer on reasonable suspicion, and defendant was on electronic monitoring at home. Such searches are always governed by reasonableness, and the court does not find it unreasonable to walk a … Continue reading
D.V.I.: No reasonable expectation of privacy in a cell phone in a jail cell
A person in jail has no reasonable expectation of privacy in a cell phone found hidden in the cell, prison contraband, and a warrantless search of the cell phone is proper. United States v. Boyce, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23129 … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Entry to find teenage sex slave was on exigent circumstances
Defendant is charged with sex trafficking of a minor. The minor’s aunt called 911 to report that she was held for prostitution, and the police were working to find her. The entry into defendant’s apartment was on exigent circumstances to … Continue reading
CA11: Ptf’s motorcycle crash fleeing police was not excessive force
Plaintiff led officers on a high-speed chase on a motorcycle through two counties, at times reaching 110 mph. In a city, “[i]ndeed, the video shows that he covered the 4.8 miles between the intersections of Z-Horse Charters and South East … Continue reading