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- IN: Overdose call led to EMS telling police what they saw and that led to SW
- NY1: A mental health defense waives REP in the medical records about it
- MA: When a likely Franks violation comes out at trial, def gets to reopen the suppression issue
- RI: Challenge to one sentence of 8-page cell phone records SW fails; totality has to be considered
- WaPo: Subpoena bill would curtail secretive tool used to target government critics
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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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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (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: December 2023
Kansas City Star: Kansas police searched their car without a warrant, and they lost custody of their son
Kansas City Star: Kansas police searched their car without a warrant, and they lost custody of their son by Katie Moore & Katie Bernard (“It’s been more than two years since Claudia Astudillo Aguirre lost custody of her child. [¶] … Continue reading
CA7: Surveillance cameras covering courthouse lockup toilets are reasonable
The use of surveillance cameras viewing the toilet areas of the Cook County Courthouse lockups are, on balance of the interests involved, reasonable. Alicea v. Cty. of Cook, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 33401 (7th Cir. Dec. 18, 2023):
ProPublica: Body Cameras Were Sold as a Tool of Police Reform. Ten Years Later, Most of the Footage Is Kept From Public View.
ProPublica: Body Cameras Were Sold as a Tool of Police Reform. Ten Years Later, Most of the Footage Is Kept From Public View. by Umar Farooq (“There were 101 people killed at the hands of police in June 2022. More … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Cut-and-paste errors and delay in execution and discovery results in suppression of cell phone
A Franks violation from cut-and-paste of another cell phone search affidavit resulted in serious factual errors in this one. Coupled with the government’s late disclosure of the phone’s contents despite a date certain trial, the court concludes the exclusionary rule … Continue reading
OH2: Pinging cell phone of suspect shortly after homicide was exigent
Pinging defendant’s cell phone to try to find him after he had shot three people seven hours apart was with exigent circumstances. This is already settled in this state. State v. Smith, 2023-Ohio-4565, 2023 Ohio App. LEXIS 4389 (2d Dist. … Continue reading
CA4: 2255 pet’r gets discovery and evidentiary hearing on “dirty cop” the govt both embraced and disavowed at its convenience
2255 petitioner gets an evidentiary hearing on his motion to withdraw his guilty plea after he discovered the affiant, who he’d previously complained to all was a “dirty cop,” actually lied on the search warrant affidavit back in 2015. At … Continue reading
CA8: Truly bare bones affidavit for SW fails on GFE
Defendant here actually showed that the affidavit for search warrant was completely lacking in even an inference that defendant might have stolen property on his property. He was located nearby the primary offender, and his criminal history said nothing about … Continue reading
NC: Where def drove on grass approaching 4A violating checkpoint, there was RS
Because defendant’s stop at a checkpoint was already with reasonable suspicion, the court does not have to decide on the constitutionality of the roadblock [that appears to have caused it]. State v. Alvarez, 2023 N.C. LEXIS 940 (Dec. 15, 2023). … Continue reading
CA10: Inventory fails circuit’s standards, and seizure of machine gun reversed
Defendant didn’t have to show an investigative pretext for the impoundment of his vehicle and the finding of the machine gun. He prevails on the Tenth Circuit’s Sanders standard. “United States v. Sanders, 796 F.3d 1241, 1243 (10th Cir. 2015) … Continue reading
D.Haw.: Def’s use of known alias to rent property gave standing
Rental of storage unit in one of defendant’s known aliases gave him standing. United States v. Eberhart, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 222575 (D. Haw. Dec. 14, 2023). Defendant’s Franks challenge fails for lack of the proffer of good reason. Aside … Continue reading
OH7: No standing in package with assumed names
Defendant lacked standing in a package shipped under and to assumed names, neither of which could be linked to him as a known alias. State v. Herbert, 2023-Ohio-4490, 2023 Ohio App. LEXIS 4311 (7th Dist. Dec. 11, 2023). “We think … Continue reading
CA6: Def’s getting CI’s call and driving to controlled buy and home was nexus for SW
Defendant’s being in his home when he received a call from the CI for a controlled buy and then his driving to the buy and back was sufficient nexus. United States v. Badley, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 33031 (6th Cir. … Continue reading
CA8: Def’s condition (“rotting teeth, quick speaking, profuse sweating, and rapid, shallow breathing”) plus odd travel plans was RS
Defendant’s condition (“Baltes had observed Betts’s symptoms of drug use: rotting teeth, quick speaking, profuse sweating, and rapid, shallow breathing.”), a torch lighter, and unusual travel plans added up to reasonable suspicion to extend the stop. United States v. Betts, … Continue reading
WaPo: It’s time to end the third-party doctrine (opinion)
WaPo: It’s time to end the third-party doctrine by Robert Frommer:
UT: Prosecutor’s trial comment on def’s refusal to give passcode to phone violated 5A
Defendant refused to reveal the passcode to his cell phone, and the police never got into it. He was charged with kidnapping, and he claimed that there was no kidnapping and that she consented to come with him. At trial, … Continue reading
OH7: Taking backpack of arrestee to handcuff doesn’t make it not subject to search incident
“Appellant had the bag on her back at the time the officer arrested her for obstructing official business. The officer’s removal of the bag from the arrestee in order to handcuff her did not eliminate his ability to search the … Continue reading
D.N.J.: Expert saying drug dog not reliable not a Franks issue
Defendant’s expert report that the drug dog here wasn’t reliable doesn’t make a Franks challenge. Besides, there was good faith as to it. United States v. Estevez-Castillo, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 221601 (D.N.J. Dec. 13, 2023). That officers created the … Continue reading
Today is Bill of Rights Day
December 15, 1791
Reason: Congress Renews Warrantless Digital Spying Program until April
Reason: Congress Renews Warrantless Digital Spying Program as Part of $886 Billion Spending Bill (“Section 702 will continue until April, when Congress will have another shot at seriously reforming a program that desperately needs it.”)