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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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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)
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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: Pretext
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
CA9: Administrative stop of tractor-trailer was pretext for criminal investigation lacking RS; suppressed
Commercial vehicles are subject to administrative stops for compliance inspections without reasonable suspicion. When, however, the use of the stop is predicated on pretext for criminal investigation, the stop and its continuation require reasonable suspicion. Here, that was lacking, and … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Bringing federal officers along on a cigarette tax search was not unreasonable; no duty to clean up after an otherwise reasonable search
(1) Under New York state law, cigarette retailers are pervasively regulated. Here, NY tax officials were checking on tax stamps. (2) While officers seemed to think they had authority to search defendant’s purse under the administrative search doctrine, they didn’t. … Continue reading
MO: Two week old information in call to child maltreatment hotline was not stale nor without exigency
A call to a child maltreatment hotline was made two weeks after the observation that motivated the phone call. The exigency still existed for a warrantless entry. State v. Prince, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 348 (April 25, 2017). Defendant’s vehicle … Continue reading
PA: Even though gun suppressed from unconsensual search, prior observation of gun by victim still admissible
Defendant was reported to have pointed a gun at a woman, and the police showed up. The gun was suppressed as far as his involuntary consent was concerned, but the state’s reference to the gun was not cause for a … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: Rejecting R&R, court finds stop pretextual and without RS
After USMJ sustained the stop (United States v. McLemore, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177419 (N.D.Iowa Dec. 21, 2016), posted here), the USDJ disagrees and disbelieves the officer’s testimony and finding the stop pretextual that the paper temporary tag couldn’t be … Continue reading
CA7 grants rehearing en banc in case described as “parking while black”
From How Appealing: Seventh Circuit grants rehearing en banc in a case the dissent criticized as “enabling police seizures for ‘parking while black’”: Thanks to a reader of the blog, I have learned that yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals … Continue reading
W.D.Ohio: Factual basis for stop overcomes pretext
There was a factual basis for the stop, so the pretext argument fails. United States v. Diaz-Cordova, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91591 (N.D.Ohio July 14, 2016). It appears that the U.S. Marshals had objectively reasonable belief that defendant was where … Continue reading
NPR: To Reduce Bias, Some Police Departments Are Rethinking Traffic Stops
NPR: To Reduce Bias, Some Police Departments Are Rethinking Traffic Stops by Jeff Cohen:
E.D.Wis.: Fact no ticket was issued for cause for stop doesn’t make stop unconstitutional
The stop was justified, and the fact the officers had a subjective motive to conduct a drug investigation and never issued a traffic ticket doesn’t make the stop and search unconstitutional. The search warrant for defendant’s home was based on … Continue reading
S.D.Ind.: Where factual basis for stop, pretext fails
Because there was a factual basis for defendant’s stop, defendant’s pretext argument that the officer was looking for his guns fails. United States v. Parker, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62140 (S.D.Ind. May 11, 2016).* Defendant’s unsafe lane change justified a … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Fleeing police, crashing car, and running away from it is abandonment
Defendant abandoned the car he was in: “after being pursued by officers at high speeds for several city blocks, Crenshaw drove the green Cadillac across a vacant lot, crashed it against the side of a private residence, exited the vehicle, … Continue reading
MT: Pretext or subjective intent in a parole search is irrelevant
The subjective intent of the officers conducting a parole search for whether it is really a criminal investigative search is irrelevant. State v. Crawford, 2016 MT 96, 2016 Mont. LEXIS 280 (April 26, 2016):
DE: No standing, no IAC for not moving to suppress
Defense counsel didn’t file an affidavit in this IAC case, so the court presumes that failure to file a motion to suppress was objectively unreasonable. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have succeeded because defendant didn’t have standing to challenge the search. State … Continue reading
HuffPo: How the Supreme Court Authorized Racial Profiling
HuffPo: How the Supreme Court Authorized Racial Profiling by Gunar Olsen: After the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s dismantled explicitly racist laws, racism became colorblind to survive. Today, although no law explicitly allows for racial profiling by … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Surrounding car on day old robbery report with no specific facts was without RS; suppressed
Officers approached defendant’s vehicle, completely without reasonable suspicion, looking for a robbery suspect from a robbery a day earlier. They surrounded the car, had their hands at their weapons at the ready, and told defendant to roll down the window. … Continue reading
Star-Ledger: “Extreme” racial disparity in local N.J. arrests, ACLU report finds
The Star-Ledger: “Extreme” racial disparity in local N.J. arrests, ACLU report finds by S.P. Sullivan: The New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is calling on the state attorney general to investigate racial disparities in low-level offense arrests … Continue reading