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- 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)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (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. 
Monthly Archives: January 2022
OH11: 4A doesn’t require alternative arrangements to towing be offered
The Fourth Amendment does not require that a motorist who’s car is about to be towed and would be inventoried can make alternative arrangements to avoid the tow. State v. Patterson, 2021-Ohio-4617, 2021 Ohio App. LEXIS 4542 (11th Dist. Dec. … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Being “wide eyed” and evading police when seeing them isn’t RS
Defendant getting wide eyed on seeing police and then hiding from them understandably would get their attention, but it’s not reasonable suspicion. United States v. Winecoff, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 248279 (D.D.C. Dec. 30, 2021):
D.N.M.: Def in a make of car he was prone to steal one hour after its theft was RS
The officer had reasonable suspicion on the totality to detain defendant for car theft. Defendant had a general reputation for that in the community. United States v. Madrigal, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 247007 (D.N.M. Dec. 28, 2021)* [one of those … Continue reading
CA5: NCMEC not public actor, but its search didn’t exceed private search
NCMEC is not a government actor for Fourth Amendment purposes. Even if it was, its search did not exceed that of the private searcher that forwarded the information to it. “Because Meals has not carried his burden concerning NCMEC’s participation … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: Def’s psychotherapist reported he was viewing CP; 4A does not prohibit using it in SW application
The psychotherapist-patient privilege does not bar use of a report from defendant’s psychotherapist to law enforcement that defendant admitted viewing child pornography. The psychotherapist discussed with others and concluded that a report was necessary. Whatever the privilege for trial, it … Continue reading
N.D.Fla.: § 2241 habeas can’t be used to review another USDJ’s denial of a motion to suppress
A defendant can’t use a 2241 habeas as a way to appeal denial of a motion to suppress by another district judge. Butler v. Cook, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 247876 (N.D.Fla. Nov. 30, 2021). Controlled buys from defendant a few … Continue reading
D.Neb.: “Defendant’s own characteristics show his consent was voluntary.”
“Defendant’s own characteristics show his consent was voluntary. Defendant was an adult and conversed easily with officers prior to the search. He appeared to be at least of average intelligence. Defendant’s answers to the officer’s questions and his overall demeanor … Continue reading
D.N.M.: In Torres v. Madrid on remand, defs get QI; right not clearly established in 2014
Torres v. Madrid, 141 S. Ct. 989 (2021) on remand: Defendants get qualified immunity because it wasn’t clearly established in 2014 that a shooting was an arrest. Torres v. Madrid, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 248358 (D.N.M. Dec. 30, 2021). [Once … Continue reading
D.Mass.: SW for def’s old car and iPhone on two-year-old information they were maybe connected to a murder was stale and probative of little; no GFE either
There was no probable cause for the search of defendant’s house for evidence of a nearly two-year-old murder. Even if what was sought was there, it was highly unlikely it would prove anything. Finally, the probable cause was so lacking … Continue reading
MT: When def asserts right to a SW on curtilage, deputy should have left if no exigency
When a sheriff’s deputy came on the curtilage to talk to defendant, defendant asserted his right to a warrant and refused to talk to him. While there were no No Trespassing signs, defendant’s assertion was enough to manifest his reasonable … Continue reading