Archives
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Recent Posts
- 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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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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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: Burden of proof
CA1: It was def’s burden to show guest standing and he failed
Defendant put on no proof of how long he was in another’s hotel room to claim standing in the room. The district court inferred, without much support, that he slept there for some brief period of time, and that’s not … Continue reading
E.D.Va.: Circuit authority doesn’t require SW for CSLI, so there’s no point in waiting for Carpenter
CSLI without a search warrant is permitted under the law of this circuit, so there’s no point in waiting for Carpenter to be decided. [Without explicitly saying it, Davis good faith exception will apply.] United States v. Simmons, 2017 U.S. … Continue reading
CA9: Failure to argue curtilage was violated in district court barred argument on appeal
Viewing photographs of the scene, the district court could conclude that the officers could see defendant with methamphetamine in his garage. “Tran did not argue below that the officers unlawfully entered the curtilage of Chong’s home and therefore waived this … Continue reading
KY: Confrontation clause doesn’t apply in suppression hearings
The Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause doesn’t apply to a suppression hearing to get the typical CI on the stand to attack his reliability. [Now, if the CI was a material witness to the case under Roviaro, likely so.] Hawkins v. … Continue reading
MO: Where 2 SWs authorize search, both have to be suppressed for def to prevail; challenging only one is moot
There were two search warrants authorizing the search of defendant’s computers for child pornography. He challenged the second but not the first, and that makes his argument moot. State v. Cato, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 1298 (Dec. 12, 2017). A … Continue reading
IL: When lack of PC for arrest is raised, the state can rely on hearsay to establish it
When the defendant challenges probable cause for arrest, hearsay is admissible to show it. People v. Horine, 2017 IL App (4th) 170128, 2017 Ill. App. LEXIS 743 (Dec. 5, 2017):
CA2: In a § 1983 case alleging lack of PC from omission of information to issuing magistrate, it’s ptf’s burden
In this § 1983 case there was probable cause for issuance of an animal abuse warrant. To argue the probable cause was tainted by omission of information, plaintiff carries the burden, and here she failed. Kanciper v. Lato, 2017 U.S. … Continue reading
MA: Search of vehicle outside territorial jurisdiction of officers was void; inevitable discovery rejected
The informant hearsay satisfied Aguilar-Spinneli and thus showed probable cause. The search incident of defendant’s person was thus justified. The search of a car in an adjoining town was unreasonable because there was no statutory authorization for it under state … Continue reading
MD: Def agreed to postpone suppression hearing until trial and then didn’t bring it up; invited error and not preserved
Defendant failed to preserve his Fourth Amendment claims for appeal. You don’t get a hearing just by asking. He didn’t make a proffer in his Franks motion which was enough to deny it. Then, whatever issue was left, the defense … Continue reading
AZ: State didn’t argue GFE and court gives it a pass
The state didn’t raise the good faith exception in the trial court, but the court applies the “we can affirm on any ground” rule to apply it anyway. State v. Weakland, 2017 Ariz. App. LEXIS 202 (Nov. 28, 2017):
OR: State has burden of pleading and proof on attenuation, and here it failed
The state had the burden and failed to prove attenuation between the stop and unreasonable search and finding the evidence. It did not raise the issue to preserve it. [This was submitted 33 months ago after remand from Oregon Supreme … Continue reading
NY1: Suppression of firearm in criminal case wasn’t collateral estoppel in civil case where ptf didn’t offer any evidence
Suppression of a firearm in the criminal court was not collateral estoppel to a civil case for false arrest, particularly where plaintiff offered no evidence at all. Davidson v. City of New York, 2017 NY Slip Op 08313, 2017 N.Y. … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Govt pinned its vehicle search on lack of standing and lost, so vehicle search suppressed; house search, however, shown to be by consent
Even though somebody else owned the van, defendant was a regular user and that gave him standing. At the time of the seizure, it had broken down, and he used it then for storage. The government failed to show any … Continue reading
CA3: Citation or summons is not an “arrest” in common usage or in the single arrest situations in application of the U.S.S.G.
A citation or summons is not an “arrest” in common usage or in the single arrest situations in application of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. United States v. Ley, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 23637 (3d Cir. Nov. 22, 2017). Defendant didn’t … Continue reading
CA8: Def failed to show omission of CI’s background would have vitiated PC
“Claybron argues that the omission of the confidential informant’s background information weighed so heavily on her credibility that, had it been considered, the warrant would not have issued. ‘We review the trial court’s findings of fact for clear error and … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Def’s claim the officer conducted a pre-search of all bags on a Greyhound bus was based on speculation
The court does not buy defendant’s argument that the officer here waited until all luggage was removed from a Greyhound bus to conduct a feel-up tactile search of the bags in such a way to avoid Greyhound’s surveillance cameras. That’s … Continue reading
CA10: Jury instruction that search issue was for the court and not the jury didn’t lessen the govt’s burden of proof
Defendant’s challenge to the investigative techniques in this child rape case led the district court to instruct the jury that the propriety of searches and seizures were questions for the court. The defense objected that the instruction lessened the government’s … Continue reading
IA: Dad can’t raise son’s rights when son was arrested and gave dad up as his source of drugs
Defendant’s juvenile son was selling from his dad’s stash. After the son’s arrest, he gave up his source. Defendant can’t raise violations of his son’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment or statutory rights as a juvenile to challenge the probable cause … Continue reading
VA: “You can’t do that. You can’t search my car.” not per se violation of 4A and it’s admissible to show possession [by the only person in possession]
There is no per se rule that “You can’t do that. You can’t search my car.” was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Under traditional 403 probative value v. prejudice balancing, the trial court did not err in admitting it … Continue reading
OH12: SW for text messages on a cell phone was not overbroad where it was limited to messages from one person
Defendant was a police officer who was suspected of sexual battery of a student ride along. There were text messages, and a search warrant was obtained for his cell phone. The lack of a time frame for the text messages … Continue reading