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- VA: 12 second question about drugs didn’t unreasonably prolong the stop that was going to take a while anyway
- E.D.Tenn.: Application for SW was considered in detention ruling
- TN: RS didn’t develop to continue stop; second stop based on first suppressed
- CA4: Traffic stop immediately became firearms investigation; suppressed
- CA10: Disagreement over spelling of street name didn’t make warrant fail particularity; GFE at least would apply
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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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--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) -
“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: Burden of proof
TX14: Argument that arrest violated 4A wasn’t specific enough to preserve lack of PC
Arguing that one’s arrest violated the Fourth Amendment didn’t preserve his lack of probable cause claim on appeal. Doremus v. State, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS 7702 (Tex. App. – Houston (14th Dist.) Aug. 15, 2017). The affidavits in support of … Continue reading
OH2: Particularity and scope of search have to be raised and litigated to preserve for review
Claims of particularity and scope of search have to be raised and litigated in the trial court to appeal them. State v. Terrell, 2017-Ohio-7097, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 3224 (2d Dist. Aug. 4, 2017). Tossing a gun in flight from … Continue reading
ME: SW not needed to photograph def’s facial injuries
Police didn’t need a search warrant to photograph injuries on defendant’s face. State v. McNaughton, 2017 ME 173, 2017 Me. LEXIS 193 (Aug. 1, 2017). There was neither reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop nor his patdown. No facts were put … Continue reading
OR: Three on preservation of search issues at the suppression hearing
Defendant preserved his argument that officer safety was not a valid justification in his memorandum of law, and that put the state and the trial court on notice that was an issue the state had to address, and didn’t. State … Continue reading
NH: SW jurisdictional argument has to be presented to trial court first
Defendant’s jurisdictional argument that AOL’s emails were in Virginia and not amenable to a New Hampshire search warrant wasn’t presented to the trial court, so it’s waived. State v. Bergeron, 2017 N.H. LEXIS 143 (June 30, 2017). [Note: Jurisdiction of … Continue reading
M.D.Ala.: Supposition isn’t enough to discredit officer’s testimony about the stop
The court finds the officer’s testimony credible: “The court is likewise unpersuaded by the defendants’ arguments that Arwood’s testimony regarding the events of the day and his reason for stopping defendants’ vehicle lacks credibility. Defendants raise a litany of concerns … Continue reading
NY4: Not granting a continuance of suppression hearing for unavailable witnesses was an abuse of discretion
The trial court erred in granting the motion to suppress for the nonattendance of its police witnesses after they were subpoenaed but didn’t show. The state sought an adjournment which the trial court denied. It was the first request for … Continue reading
ND unconstitutionally shifts burden of proof to def to show she was not seized
A car with two passengers was pulled over for a headlight violaiton, and the driver gave a false name and had a warrant. She was arrested. A drug dog was called. The defendant passenger was free to leave at the … Continue reading
LA: “Defendant thus was in the difficult position of having to both distance himself from the barbeque grill, if he hoped to be found not guilty of possession of the cocaine found inside it, and tie himself more closely to the grill, if he hoped to obtain a favorable ruling on the motion to suppress. Trying to do both, he succeeded at neither.”
Showing a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched but denying possession is a fine line indeed. Show too much of an expectation of privacy just to challenge the search [always a risky proposition] and you might put yourself … Continue reading
MT: Admission at a game checkpoint wasn’t “in custody”
Defendant was stopped at a game checkpoint and admitted to placing his daughter’s tag on a deer he shot. He was not “in custody” when he confessed. State v. Maile, 2017 MT 154, 2017 Mont. LEXIS 350 (June 23, 2017). … Continue reading
IA: Consent valid based on testimony despite bodycam not picking up voices
The bodycam didn’t pick up the officer’s voice, which is “troubling,” but the trial court credited the officers’ testimony defendant consented, and that’s enough to have to affirm on consent. State v. Klinger, 2017 Iowa App. LEXIS 633 (June 21, … Continue reading
OH9: Potential working meth lab was exigency for entry
Officer’s seeing meth through window and then bottles used for making meth suggested making methamphetamine which is recognized as an exigency. State v. Secriskey, 2017-Ohio-4169, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 2217 (9th Dist. June 7, 2017). Defendant gets limited discovery of … Continue reading
MI: Search of def’s car was harmless compared to uncontested search of house
Even if the search of defendant’s car violated the Fourth Amendment, the uncontested search of his house did not, and that provides overwhelming evidence of guilt. Thus, the car search is harmless at best. Johnson v. State, 2017 Miss. App. … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Gov’t didn’t show abandonment of package by sender because of error in address where recipient refused it
The USPS Postal Inspector did not act reasonably in determining that the package with methamphetamine was abandoned. The recipient disclaimed any interest in it, and the investigation into the sender, who would still have an interest in it, was woefully … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Def’s version in pro se motion to suppress used against him in third on credibility
Defendant files three motions to suppress. The first one was pro se and never mentioned that his stop was pretextual, that the headlights were actually on, and the stop was without reasonable suspicion. A later motion to suppress challenged the … Continue reading
WA: Implied consent law now includes testing for THC influenced driving, and it’s constitutional
The implied consent law includes testing for THC concentration, and it is constitutional. Kandler v. City of Kent, 2017 Wash. App. LEXIS 1176 (May 15, 2017). Officers adequately explained date discrepancies in the paperwork and use of a search warrant … Continue reading
CA9: Where there are two grounds to support the search, appeal of only one means affirmance
There were two grounds on which defendant’s suppression motion could have been denied. The fact the court didn’t give defendant an opportunity to respond to one was a moot point. In addition, even if the motion had been granted, the … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Issue preclusion: Same search litigated in NJ state courts in 2014 and def lost; can’t relitigate here. Besides, he’d lose on merits, too
Defendant was charged in New Jersey as a result of the same search as here. He fully litigated in state court and lost, and appealed and lost. That qualifies for issue preclusion in federal court in NYC because he had … Continue reading
TN: Police passing “no trespassing” signs on rural land doesn’t prevent a knock-and-talk
Citing numerous cases, the Tennessee Supreme Court holds that officers passing “no trespassing” signs has no talismanic authority to make a knock-and-talk unreasonable. The overwhelming weight of authority so holds. Police came to defendant’s front door, knocked, and he opened … Continue reading