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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-25,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 500,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 47,000 posts since 2003 (30,000+ on WordPress as of 12/31/24) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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State courts (and some USDC opinions)
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
SCOTUSBlog
S. Ct. Docket
Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com
S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
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General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
LexisOne Legal Website Directory
Crimelynx
Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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) -
“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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew -
"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, Little Rock 
Monthly Archives: March 2015
CA2: Successive stops in two states within minutes are individually evaluated; performance records of dog discoverable
Defendant was a regular drug courier between NYC and Burlington VT. He was stopped first in Massachusetts and detained for 22 minutes because the paperwork on the rental car was suspect. The rental car company said there was no problem … Continue reading
Chicagoist: Are CTA Bag Checks Against Our Fourth Amendment Rights? [And NOBODY COMPLAINED?]
Chicagoist: Are CTA Bag Checks Against Our Fourth Amendment Rights? After four months of random bag checks at more than 40 CTA stations, the results are in: Officers checked 2,600 bags, found zero explosives and made only one arrest. The … Continue reading
TN: Dead body here subject to inevitable discovery
Just because the rent on an apartment hadn’t been paid and there had been no eviction process, his property was there and he was hiding after a murder, he did not abandon the home. The affidavit for search warrant was … Continue reading
DC: Feigning being a shooting victim made defendant’s clothes in ER reasonably subject to seizure
Defendants were convicted of a murder in D.C. When one defendant was in the hospital, he feigned that he was the shooting victim, and that made the seizure of his clothing in a red biohazard bag as reasonable and in … Continue reading
CA6: Good faith exception overcomes a nexus argument, which is a form of PC
The good faith applies to the nexus argument here [which is also a probable cause question], so the question of probable cause for issuance of the warrant doesn’t even have to be decided [and how lazy is that?]. Here, there … Continue reading
Marlin Finance: The rise of the cell phone ‘StingRay’
Marlin Finance: The rise of the cell phone ‘StingRay’ The one item an adult in 2015 never leaves home without is his or her cell phone. Pretty soon the same will be true for children as well. But a controversial … Continue reading
IA: That it was “strange” a car was parked with lights on on side of road wasn’t RS for a stop
Defendant’s car was parked on the side of the road as the officer passed from the other direction. He thought it strange, so he turned around and came back. After he pulled up behind the car, off the pavement, the … Continue reading
AP: Michigan State Police officials demonstrate aerial drone
AP: Michigan State Police officials demonstrate aerial drone: Michigan State Police officials have demonstrated the department’s first authorized aerial drone designed to aid in investigations.
AR: Investigating pot smell at motel, officers encountered man who reeked of marijuana; stop reasonable
Officers received a call from a motel complaining of the smell of marijuana. Walking up the stairs, they encountered defendant coming down the stairs who reeked of marijuana and stopped him, asked about marijuana, and he produced a bag from … Continue reading
CT: No guest standing in grow operation shown by defendant’s slim connection to property
Defendant did not show his own reasonable expectation of privacy in a grow operation he was arrested at in Northeast Connecticut out in the woods. The property belonged to another person, and defendant lived two hours away. There was some … Continue reading
Fierce Mobile Gov’t: ACLU: Gov’t getting cellphone records without a warrant can reveal where you sleep, pray, love
Fierce Mobile Gov’t: ACLU: Gov’t getting cellphone records without a warrant can reveal where you sleep, pray, love by Dibya Sarkar: A group of civil liberties, public interest and other groups are arguing that the government violated the Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
S.D.Tex. “constrained” to grant cell phone dump of records from seven providers to pinpoint one user captured on a video using his cell phone before committing a crime
Cell phone dump of records from seven providers to pinpoint one user captured on a video using his cell phone before committing a crime is granted. In re Cell Tower Records Under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d), 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
ACLU Stingray Report: Stingrays: The Most Common Surveillance Tool the Government Won’t Tell You About
Download: Stingrays: The Most Common Surveillance Tool the Government Won’t Tell You About Federal and state law enforcement entities across the country are using a powerful cell phone surveillance tool commonly referred to as a “StingRay.” These devices are capable … Continue reading
WaPo: Denver’s pilot program says very little about the effectiveness of police cameras
WaPo: Denver’s pilot program says very little about the effectiveness of police cameras by Radley Balko: From an Associated Press report: In a warning to law enforcement agencies rushing to equip officers with body cameras after killings by police nationwide, … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: Hotel room qualified as temporary residence for parole search
A parolee was staying in a hotel room between residences, and the officers had probable cause to believe that evidence of counterfeiting would be found there. Therefore, the hotel room qualified as a temporary residence subject to parole search. United … Continue reading
E.D.Cal.: Def failed to even attempt to show REP in driveway as curtilage for pre-Jones GPS installation
GPS trackers were placed on two cars in codefendant’s driveway in 2009 (pre-Jones). The defense doesn’t show enough about the driveway and a reasonable expectation of privacy in it to conclude that there was a violation of curtilage here. United … Continue reading
Beaufort Observer: How Osama Ben Laden repealed the Fourth Amendment
Beaufort Observer: How Osama Ben Laden repealed the Fourth Amendment: For most of America’s history the law in our nation held that the people were protected in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable search and seizure held that … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: Where parole search required RS, anonymous tip consistent with other violation information was enough
A parole search under Michigan law only requires reasonable suspicion. An anonymous tip in the past has been held not enough. Here, however, the anonymous telephone tip was consistent with some of defendant’s parole violations, so here it’s enough. United … Continue reading