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Recent Posts
- CA6: Impeaching def’s trial testimony about the search of his property using his proffer agreement was prejudicial, but harmless
- D.S.D.: Tribal officers governed by 4A and Indian Civil Rights Act
- CA9: Knock-and-announce failure doesn’t lead to suppression
- D.Minn.: Rehashing 4A argument to USMJ isn’t a proper objection to the R&R
- OH5: Drug dog officer’s touching car to redirect dog wasn’t a search
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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 -
© 2003-25,
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 -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
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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
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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)
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Daily Archives: July 16, 2024
LA4: Being seen in a “drug hot spot” adds nothing to RS
Being seen in NOLA “drug hot spots” doesn’t add anything to reasonable suspicion. Suppression affirmed. State v. Tate, 2024 La. App. LEXIS 1107 (La. App. 4 Cir. July 11, 2024). The complainant’s telling the police of being drugged for sex … Continue reading
CA2: Excessive force claims are new under Bivens and can’t be brought
Excessive force claims are new for Bivens, and rejected. Here, it was his restraint in a courtroom by US Marshals and CSOs. Edwards v. Gizzi, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 17100 (2d Cir. July 12, 2024). Plaintiff was shot in the … Continue reading
CA11: No co-conspirator standing in two cars
Here there were two vehicles stopped. Defendant was a passenger in one, and he had no standing in either merely being a co-conspirator to a drug operation. United States v. Lewis, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 16803 (11th Cir. July 10, … Continue reading
E.D.N.C.: Military command authorized search for CP on electronics was valid; listing IP addresses of devices not required
Defendant was in the Marine Corps and a Command Authorized Search and Seizure (CASS) for his electronic devices was executed for child pornography. It was sufficiently particular to satisfy the Fourth Amendment. “In this case, the challenged warrant did not … Continue reading
D.P.R.: A cell phone found with drugs had its incriminating nature immediately apparent for plain view
A cell phone found with drugs had its incriminating nature immediately apparent for plain view. United States v. Fernandez-Santos, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121462 (D.P.R. July 8, 2024). In an illegal entry case, identification evidence allegedly illegally seized is not … Continue reading
NY3: SW for evidence of robbery (stolen property and mask) found def’s cell phone with image of him wearing the mask on its wallpaper
A search warrant in a robbery case looked for stolen property and the mask involved. When police executed the warrant, they found his cell phone with him wearing the mask as the wallpaper image on the phone. “We find without … Continue reading
CA2: Failure to leave SW attachment at scene of search doesn’t void the search
That searching officers didn’t leave behind Attachment B to the warrant after the search didn’t void the search. United States v. Whaley, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 16819 (2d Cir. July 10, 2024). Collective knowledge here fails: “Based on the evidence … Continue reading