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- W.D.Ark.: Parole search waiver moots lack of PC argument
- AR: RS shown for boating while intoxicated stop
- W.D.Mo.: Wrong address in SW wasn’t fatal where right house was searched
- NY: Failure to show independent source for officer’s observation of def required reversal
- VA: Outline of a gun in def’s pocket was RS
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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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 -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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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) -
“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 -
"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)
Website design by Wally Waller, Little Rock 
Daily Archives: April 1, 2019
Courthouse News Service: Deportation Case Stirs Division in Ninth Circuit
Courthouse News Service: Deportation Case Stirs Division in Ninth Circuit by Maria Dinzeo:
InfoSecurity: Congress Stops NSAs Collecting Phone Records
InfoSecurity: Congress Stops NSAs Collecting Phone Records by Kacy Zurkus. It’s a bill, not an act: The US Congress has proposed an act that would repeal the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) authority to access basic business records and the phone … Continue reading
EFF: Faulty Court Ruling That Threatens to Gut Groundbreaking Privacy Statute CalECPA Must Be Reversed
EFF: Faulty Court Ruling That Threatens to Gut Groundbreaking Privacy Statute CalECPA Must Be Reversed by Karen Gullo: EFF and the ACLU of Northern California urged a California appeals court last week to reverse a judge’s wrongheaded and dangerous ruling … Continue reading
Cert. granted: Glover v. Kansas
Cert. granted: Glover v. Kansas, 18-556 Issue: Whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for an officer to suspect that the registered owner of a vehicle is the one driving the vehicle absent … Continue reading
The Future of Privacy Law, Yale Law Journal (collection)
The Future of Privacy Law, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 128 (Apr. 1, 2019): Rapid technological change has led some to question whether modern Fourth Amendment doctrine appropriately protects individual privacy. This Collection considers that question across four domains: warrantless electronic … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: The Common Law Endures in the Fourth Amendment
New Law Review Article: The Common Law Endures in the Fourth Amendment by George C. Thomas III: Abstract and Introduction:
IA: Multiple hand-to-hand transactions over time was RS
Reasonable suspicion came here from an officer “witnessing what he believed to be a hand-to-hand drug transaction,” and there were “other facts that supported the conclusion they had reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. First, Girsch saw Baker acting suspiciously near … Continue reading
TN: Riley would not be applied retroactively on post-conviction
In a post-conviction case, Riley wouldn’t be applied retroactively by statute to defendant’s cell phone search incident legal before it was decided. Sayles v. State, 2019 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 193 (Mar. 28, 2019). The stop was based on a … Continue reading
W.D.Va.: Proving the Heck bar requires defs to put copies of underlying documents into the record
Defendants don’t get the benefit of a Heck bar without putting the papers of the underlying case into evidence. “As stated, court records online indicate that two felony drug charges have been dismissed. Without copies of relevant court documents and … Continue reading
D.S.C.: Byrd on standing in a rental car not retroactively applied to search 7 months before
The officer was diligently pursuing the traffic stop albeit with a mixed motive about defendant being a drug suspect. Under Whren, this was reasonable. Byrd was decided seven months after the stop. Under pre-Byrd law, defendant had no standing, and … Continue reading
D.Neb.: A child locked in a basement while a party was going on upstairs was exigency
A concerned citizen called the police to report a small child was locked in his neighbor’s basement, and there was a party going on in the house. When police got there they entered without a warrant based on exigency. United … Continue reading