September 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 Archives
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Recent Posts
- WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
- W.D.Tex.: What is the duty of the neutral and detached magistrate?
- D.Me.: Yes, more investigation could have been done, but there’s still PC on what there was
- CA3: Brady doesn’t apply to SW materials
- E.D.Mich.: Person a cell phone was given to as gift could consent to 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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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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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)
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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: Pretext
The Verge: A pioneer in predictive policing is starting a troubling new project
The Verge: A pioneer in predictive policing is starting a troubling new project By Ali Winston and Ingrid Burrington:
Cato: Pretextual Stops and the General Warrant: Stopping the March of the Whren Doctrine
Cato: Pretextual Stops and the General Warrant: Stopping the March of the Whren Doctrine by Jay Schweikert:
CA7: Ptfs allege enough to survive judgment on the pleadings of a race-based search
Plaintiffs alleged enough to get past motion for judgment on the pleadings that they were searched based on their race. “The complaint filed by Vanessa Enoch and Avery Corbin alleges that they were taking photographs and making video recordings at … Continue reading
CA8: The challenge to RS isn’t piece by piece; RS on totality
The police surveilled defendant’s garage where he was alleged to sell meth from his home in the early morning or at night when he was home. The totality of circumstances add up to reasonable suspicion, and defendant’s challenge was to … Continue reading
ACLU: New Data Reveals Milwaukee Police Stops Are About Race and Ethnicity
ACLU: New Data Reveals Milwaukee Police Stops Are About Race and Ethnicity by Nusrat Choudhury:
NPR: ACLU Sues Milwaukee Over Alleged Racial Profiling
NPR: ACLU Sues Milwaukee Over Alleged Racial Profiling by Latoya Dennis: The ACLU says Milwaukee police have made tens of thousands of traffic and pedestrian stops without cause because of racial profiling.
N.D.W.Va.: Officer’s admittedly pretextual stop for def’s driving on a suspended DL was still valid
Defendant’s car had a police placed GPS on it. When defendant traveled outside of his normal paths, an alert was sent to the officer’s phone. He conducted a traffic stop which he admitted was pretextual because he’d known for quite … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: Counsel admonished for false dilemma that not finding pretext means condoning racism
United States v. Green, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 212999 n.1 (W.D. N.C. Dec. 29, 2017):
OH3: Narc told patrol officer def was drug suspect, and patrol officer ran DL and found it was suspended; stop valid despite pretext claim
A patrol officer was told that defendant was a drug suspect. He was told because he had stopped defendant before and was familiar with him. He ran defendant’s name through the state computer and it showed that defendant had no … Continue reading
Legal Intelligencer: DOJ Asked Pa. Judge to Scrub Opinion of References to Cop’s Racial Profiling
Legal Intelligencer: DOJ Asked Pa. Judge to Scrub Opinion of References to Cop’s Racial Profiling by P.J. Dannunzio:
KS suppression statute permits pretext arguments; remanded
Kansas’s suppression statute permits the defense to make a challenge based on a race-based stop, if he can prove it. The trial court didn’t apply this test, and neither did the court of appeals, so remanded for reconsideration. State v. … Continue reading
D.N.M.: Def doesn’t make a sufficient showing of some discriminatory effect to get further discovery of selective enforcement
Defendant doesn’t make a sufficient showing of some discriminatory effect to get further discovery of selective enforcement against African-Americans. United States v. Laneham, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 176486 (D. N.M. Oct. 25, 2017):
Daily Beast: Opinion: The Racist Pot Prosecutions That Even Prosecutors Acknowledge Are Ridiculous
Daily Beast: Opinion: The Racist Pot Prosecutions That Even Prosecutors Acknowledge Are Ridiculous by Scott Hechinger: I was disheartened, but not at all surprised, to read the new report by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and Marijuana Arrest Research Project … Continue reading
ABAJ: Orlando cops pull over black state attorney, and the video goes viral
ABAJ: Orlando cops pull over black state attorney, and the video goes viral by Debra Cassens Weiss: Body cam video of Orlando police officers pulling over Florida’s only black state attorney has gone viral after some commentators suggested the stop … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: PC for search of def’s car didn’t dissipate just because another person came into the case
Defendant’s [creative] argument that the probable cause for search of defendant’s car dissipated when another person came into the equation is rejected. In fact, it appears contemplated. United States v. Henley, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105138 (N.D. Ga. May 19, … Continue reading
Grits for Breakfast Blog: Pretext stops subvert public trust, undermine rule of law
Grits for Breakfast Blog: Pretext stops subvert public trust, undermine rule of law A law that everyone routinely violates because of its arbitrariness and impracticality becomes a path for the government to bypass 4th Amendment protections. Police can simply follow … Continue reading
The Marshall Project: How to Cut Down on Searches in Traffic Stops: Legalize Pot
The Marshall Project: How to Cut Down on Searches in Traffic Stops: Legalize Pot by Justin George and Eric Sarara with additional reporting by Anna Flagg: The legalization of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado had at least one unanticipated … Continue reading
WaPo: How self-driving cars could determine the future of policing
WaPo: How self-driving cars could determine the future of policing by Orin Kerr