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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
S.D.Tex.: Inevitable discovery by inevitable SW obviated dispute over consent
Inevitable discovery also supports the consent search of defendant’s cell phone obtained at the Sarita, Texas checkpoint. The officers had probable cause and told him they’d get a search warrant and he consented instead. The matter was clearly under active … Continue reading
S.D.Tex.: Inevitable discovery applied to warrantless search of cell phone at immigration checkpoint
The fact the officers would have obtained a search warrant for defendant’s cell phone if one was sought here made the question of consent to search it moot. Inevitable discovery applies. This was at an immigration checkpoint. United States v. … Continue reading
CA2: Later search of bag was inevitable discovery overcoming objection to first search
Even if the search of defendant’s bag was invalid, he was taken to the police station and his bag was validly searched again an inventory. United States v. Ruffin, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 3351 (2d Cir. Feb. 8, 2021). Defendant’s … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Vaguely matching description except for race and wearing a hoodie wasn’t RS
“The Court finds that the articulable justification presented for initially stopping Defendant was that he was a black male wearing a black hoodie in the vicinity of Washington Park. Based on the totality of the circumstances, and considering the information … Continue reading
E.D.Wis.: Manipulating screen of locked cell phone to see calls was a search
Police manipulating the emergency function of a locked cell phone screen to attempt to see if a particular call came in was an impermissible search, but the government showed inevitable discovery applies. United States v. Jones, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
CA8: “where one draws the line between” independent source and inevitable discovery doctrines “is unimportant”
“Although the distinction between the independent-source and inevitable-discovery doctrines is not sharp …, where exactly one draws the line between the two doctrines is unimportant.” United States v. Baez, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 40551 (8th Cir. Dec. 29, 2020):
W.D.La.: Protective sweep for AK-47 was reasonable on knock-and-talk for weapon, denial of entry, and smelling MJ; one officer was to leave for SW
Police properly conducted a protective sweep for an AK-47 after a knock-and-talk did not gain entry. Police had an anonymous source, and defendant was an alleged felon in possession, and they went for a knock-and-talk. Defendant refused to consent, and … Continue reading
CA6: Pleading false information used to get SW overcame QI at this stage
Pleading that defendants used false information to get a search warrant for them. That was enough to get around qualified immunity, and the district court erred in dismissing at this stage. Marvaso v. Sanchez, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 26723 (6th … Continue reading
MA: When seizing digital devices under SW, looking at camera pictures didn’t require exclusion where not mentioned in SW for camera
During a search of defendant’s house under a warrant that included seizing digital devices, the officer turned on a camera and scrolled through the pictures. When the warrant was sought for the camera, no mention was made, and inevitable discovery … Continue reading
CA2: Second Tasing of nonresisting detainee was unreasonable
On this record, the second Tasing of plaintiff could be found unreasonable for lack of resistance, which the jury did. Jones v. Treubig, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 19883 (2d Cir. June 26, 2020). The search under defendant’s consent for “firearms/evidence” … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Is changing cell phone settings before SW issued a search? SW moots that issue
The court does not have to decide whether changing the settings on defendant’s cell phone prior to obtaining a search warrant for it was a search. The later issuance of a search warrant for the phone moots that point because … Continue reading
SD: Finding arrest warrant here was attenuated from the stop
On the totality, the finding of an arrest warrant curing an allegedly illegal stop favors the state on application of the exclusionary rule under Strieff. “Because the connection between Mousseaux’s detention and the subsequent search incident to her arrest was … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Inevitable discovery obviated def’s Franks challenge
A Franks hearing wasn’t required because the court finds that, even if Franks could be satisfied here, the evidence was inevitably found. United States v. Chapline, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104509 (W.D. N.Y. June 12, 2020). It was reasonable to … Continue reading
CA6: Alleged lack of nexus in showing of PC saved by GFE
Defendant challenges the lack of nexus of his alleged conduct to the premises, but it doesn’t matter because the good faith exception applies. United States v. Novak, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 17133 (6th Cir. May 29, 2020). Inconsistent and implausible … Continue reading
TN: DNA sample was subject to inevitable discovery where def was subjected to another one for a homicide two years later
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not objecting to a DNA sample where defendant claimed it exceeded his consent. The post-conviction court found that it didn’t. Moreover, discovery was inevitable because another DNA sample was validly taken two years later as … Continue reading
NC: Flipping off officer not disorderly conduct; stop suppressed
Flipping off the officer wasn’t disorderly conduct justifying the stop. The community caretaking function also does not apply. State v. Ellis, 2020 N.C. LEXIS 363 (May 1, 2020). The state could not show that defendant’s statements were inevitably discovered from … Continue reading
CA6: Asking about drugs in car during normal incidents of stop not unreasonable under Rodriguez
Defendant’s admission he possessed marijuana in his car was within the normal incidents of the traffic stop, Therefore, the officer could extend the stop under Rodriguez. United States v. Lott, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 10237 (6th Cir. Apr. 1, 2020). … Continue reading
D.Haw.: Def failed in her motion to reconsider overseizure by failure to specify exactly what was
Defendant’s motion to suppress was previously denied, but she was allowed to specify what documents were overseized. “[T]he court will consider a motion to suppress specific documents or other evidence based on proof that such items were seized and that … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Search of camper being lived in parked on the street in violation of ordinance was inevitable
The question of standing and alleged illegal search of defendant’s camper were moot. The camper was parked on an Albuquerque city street where it’s illegal to live in a camper. Given those facts, the camper would have otherwise been inventoried, … Continue reading