May 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Archives
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Recent Posts
- OR: Even if original served warrant wasn’t the one returned, it doesn’t warrant suppression
- Two on suicide calls as exigency
- W.D.N.Y.: Civil discovery dispute denies access to other employees’ cell phones as 4A issue
- Reason: All New Cars Could Have Mandatory Surveillance Tech Unless Congress Stops This Mandate
- CA3: In seeking arrest warrants, officers need not present all exculpatory evidence to issuing magistrate unless it’s “conclusive”
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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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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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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"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
LA5: PC developed in lengthy investigation excused lack of SW by inevitable discovery
It wasn’t reasonable for the police to believe that defendant’s father had apparent authority to consent to a search of locked box. However, inevitable discovery applies because the investigation was well underway, and there was probable cause for a search … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Frisk was without RS, but computer check showed outstanding arrest warrant, so inevitable discovery applies
“In sum, at the time Browning decided to conduct a Terry pat-down of James’ outer clothing, he was faced with a suspect that (1) was present in a high-crime area, (2) was, by his own admission, recently released from prison … Continue reading
A.F.Ct.Crim.App.: Seizing cell phone before search authorization was granted was inevitable discovery
Based on a female airman’s complaint, AFOSI developed information that defendant had sex with her when she was too intoxicated to consent. She believed that he had pictures on his cell phone. OSI was seeking a search authorization for his … Continue reading
OH5: SW for drug transaction evidence on computer reasonably led to finding CP
The computer search warrant in this case was for evidence of drug activity (as in pictures and Excel spreadsheets or other ledger information), and the officer stumbled upon child pornography. The fact files can be hidden or deliberately mislabeled necessarily … Continue reading
FL2: Fireman reported to LEO that he saw drugs in house; police entry couldn’t rely on inevitable discovery where no effort to get warrant
A fire happened at defendant’s house, and the firefighters put it out. They saw some drugs and drug paraphernalia in the garage and told the police. On resweeping the house yet a second time for no apparent reason other than … Continue reading
UT: State failed to prove inevitable discovery after warrantless entry into home investigating hit and run accident
Two police officers went to defendant’s home because the LPN on the car involved in a hit and run came back to that address. At the house, the housekeeper greeted them and said that defendant probably was driving the car. … Continue reading
D.N.J.: Inevitable discovery applied: (1) officers were drafting affidavit for warrant and (2) there was overwhelming PC
The government proved inevitable discovery applied because (1) they had already started drafting the warrant when the allegedly illegal search occurred and (2) there was overwhelming probable cause for the search. United States v. Restitullo, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144269 … Continue reading
DC: Inevitable discovery applied to cell phone search in 2002 rather than GFE
Inevitable discovery used to justify a search of a cell phone in 2002 because it might have been unreasonable under Riley from 2014 (no mention of good faith exception applied to pre-Riley searches). Logan v. United States, 2016 D.C. App. … Continue reading
CA7: Inevitable discovery doesn’t apply to DNA blood draw [via a habeas appeal]
The Seventh Circuit here dealt with a Fourth Amendment IAC claim. The court dealt with the Fourth Amendment merits, which was far easier, rather than get into the complexity of Stone v. Powell deterrence issue under a § 2254 claim. … Continue reading
DC: That govt could have gotten a SW isn’t enough for inevitable discovery
Defendant’s admission that she “trashed” defendant’s stuff and it was in her hotel room was probable cause to believe there was evidence of a crime, but there was no exigency for a warrantless entry. Simply arguing that the government could … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Detailed tip about def coupled with seeing bulge of a gun was RS
Aside from the detailed tip the police had about defendant, the officer saw the bulge of a gun, and that was reasonable suspicion. United States v. Bridges, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95367 (E.D.Mich. July 21, 2016).* Defendant’s patdown at the … Continue reading
CA6: The govt fails on its burden on independent source after an illegal search; deterrence rationale of exclusionary rule applies
The police conducted an illegal search then got a search warrant. The District Court suppressed, and the Sixth Circuit affirms finding the government did not satisfy the independent source rule. Moreover, it finds the deterrence rationale of the exclusionary rule … Continue reading
WI S.Ct. decides inevitable discovery for first time and it overcomes a statement obtained in bad faith
Wisconsin Supreme Court decides the inevitable discovery rule for the first time. Despite officer’s bad faith in obtaining a statement without proper Miranda warnings, the evidence is clear to the Supreme Court that the search would have occurred without statement. … Continue reading
IA: Def’s search may have violated “plain feel” when drugs removed, but search incident would have occurred shortly
The search of defendant may have violated “plain feel” because the drugs in his pocket obviously weren’t a weapon, it was inevitably discovered because it was the product of a search incident for finding drugs on the car. Stephen v. … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Arrest for avoiding subway fare led to inevitably finding gun; good explanation of analytical steps
Officers had probable cause to stop defendant for using the service gate at the Bronx 233d St. subway station without paying. He was a frequent flyer, as it were, and that led to a custodial arrest. He had a knife … Continue reading
AFCCA: “The constable blundered” so the court bails him out; 200,000 CP images come into evidence despite lack of search authorization
The Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals finds inevitable discovery by essentially doing the investigator’s work for him by saying, essentially, “if he asked for a proper search authorization, he would have got it.” Nothing, mind you, supports that it … Continue reading
LA2: It isn’t required that occurrence of a crime actually happened, but it is really important to PC
“Although certainty of knowledge of the commission of a particular crime is frequently an important factor in the determination of probable cause, probable cause may exist when the commission of a crime has not been definitely established, but is reasonably … Continue reading
N.D.W.Va.: Correcting a date in affidavit for SW in front of USMJ was hardly improper, particularly when the correct date was put in
Three month old information about an IP address in a child pornography case wasn’t stale. Also, the warrant wasn’t issued without probable cause just because the warrant was amended in handwriting before the magistrate, particularly because the correct date was … Continue reading