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- CA3: In seeking arrest warrants, officers need not present all exculpatory evidence to issuing magistrate unless it’s “conclusive”
- D.Idaho: Trial references to SW not barred, but govt limited in what it can say
- D.D.C.: PO’s alleged violation of probation regulations doesn’t warrant suppression if a reasonable mistake
- E.D.N.C.: SW not required to look in def’s jail property bag and retrieve car keys
- D.N.M.: Consent attenuated unreasonable search
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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)
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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: Inevitable discovery
MA: State law requires PC for pole camera surveillance, and officers had it
Pole camera surveillance in Massachusetts requires probable cause to set it up. Officers had it in defendant’s case, and his front door and left side of his house were watched for 15 days. Commonwealth v. Comenzo, 2022 Mass. LEXIS 54 … Continue reading
CA6 explains inevitable discovery and how it was confused here with attenuation
The district court erred by analyzing the search as attenuation when it should have been inevitable discovery, and that’s on the lawyers for not having filed adequate briefs. The court gives a thorough and helpful explanation of both and how … Continue reading
NY1: Routine of leaving out of affidavit for SW that protective sweep saw drugs first revealed during trial required hearing
During the trial, NYPD officers revealed they were in the premises and conducted plain views during a walk around as a protective sweep and then sought a search warrant . It was also revealed that they routinely left information about … Continue reading
AL: When DEA adopts a seizure for forfeiture, state courts lose jurisdiction to return property
When there’s a seizure for forfeiture and the DEA adopts it, the state court loses jurisdiction to return it. Hare v. Mack, 2022 Ala. LEXIS 8 (Jan. 21, 2022). Police responded to a shots fired call at an apartment where … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: No 5A protection on phone pass code, and inevitable discovery applies
The foregone conclusion rationale for access to passcodes for cell phones. There was no Fifth Amendment privilege to providing the passcodes. Inevitable discovery applies. United States v. Zhengdong Cheng, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6437 (S.D.Tex. Jan. 12, 2022):
MA: A computer check during a traffic stop would dispel any RS, and failure to do so was unreasonable
Defendant’s car had an inspection rejection sticker for safety defects, but state law grants a 60 day grace period for correction. A computer check would have answered any questions. “Accordingly, we conclude that whether the troopers’ suspicion was reasonable in … Continue reading
MT: When def asserts right to a SW on curtilage, deputy should have left if no exigency
When a sheriff’s deputy came on the curtilage to talk to defendant, defendant asserted his right to a warrant and refused to talk to him. While there were no No Trespassing signs, defendant’s assertion was enough to manifest his reasonable … Continue reading
TX1: Commercial truck driver had standing to challenge seizure of cell phone from truck after his arrest
Defendant retained a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell phone that was left in the semi he was driving for a commercial carrier when he was arrested. The owner of the truck retrieved the phone and sent it to … Continue reading
ID: Officer taking DL and handing it to another officer to check was a seizure requiring RS; anonymous CI was not corroborated
Reasonable suspicion was required when the officer retained defendant’s driver’s license by taking it, leaving her presence, and giving it to another officer to run a license check. Defendant was thus detained because a reasonable person in her position would … Continue reading
D.Utah: Officer finding an arrest warrant led to inevitable discovery
“As outlined above, Smith has put forth no evidence that he could have made a successful Fourth Amendment challenge to the stop and search of his vehicle. Even if he did, Smith could not demonstrate prejudice. As noted above, Trooper … Continue reading
NC: Calling for drug dog right away here didn’t extend time, but the sniff became reasonable by RS otherwise developing
The officer here preemptively called for a drug dog before running the DL information on the occupants. That did not measurably extend the time. After calling for the dog, the officer found out there were warrants on one, and then … Continue reading
CA11: Govt proved inevitable discovery despite const’l violation
The government showed that the investigation would have revealed the evidence despite the constitutional violation of tracking a package inside a house without a warrant. United States v. Watkins, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 27797 (11th Cir. Sept. 16, 2021):
CA9: Govt proved inevitable discovery of victims despite suppressing search of motel room
The officers’ investigation had progressed enough to have embarked on a course to readily identify defendant’s victims before the illegal search of the motel room. The government proved inevitable discovery. In addition, this wasn’t so flagrant, despite the granting of … Continue reading
CA11 (en banc): Preponderance standard required for inevitable discovery
“We granted rehearing en banc in this case to decide what standard of proof the government must satisfy to show that the evidence would ultimately have been discovered through lawful means without the constitutional violation. Must it show there was … Continue reading
OH4: Automatic frisk of anyone officer got out of a car violates Terry
The officer’s policy to frisk anybody he gets out a vehicle, without regard to reasonable suspicioin they are armed, is unreasonable under Terry. However, “the totality of the circumstances present in the case sub judice supports the application of the … Continue reading
S.D.Ga.: Inevitable discovery explained in a Rodriguez violation
The government established that inevitable discovery applied here despite a Rodriguez violation. United States v. Henderson, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134131 (S.D.Ga. July 19, 2021). The court explains:
N.D.Cal.: Failure to comply with state mental health hold law voids inventory occurring with it
An inventory following a mental health hold didn’t even come close to complying with state law to justify it, so the inventory was invalid. Inevitable discovery fails for lack of proof from the government. United States v. Rapada, 2021 U.S. … Continue reading
CA5: The fact more information could have been gathered didn’t make what had been learned false
The fact the affiant officer could have checked other sources to determine the validity of his probable cause didn’t mean that the information in hand was false. Davis v. City of Andrews, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 17845 (5th Cir. June … Continue reading