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- CA3: Plain feel of apparent drugs supported seizure from his pocket
- C.D.Cal.: Habeas can’t be used in place of a pretrial motion to suppress
- W.D.Wis.: Code inspectors looking at ptf’s place from the street didn’t violate any REP
- E.D.Tex.: Gov’t divide-and-conquer RS effort rejected
- CA9: No REP in data in planted GPS device
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (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,
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Congressional Research Service:
--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) -
“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)
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Monthly Archives: March 2025
IN: State’s reliance on GFE not waived where it didn’t argue it but trial court decided it
“The totality of the evidence before the issuing judge was sufficient to establish probable cause. Detective Salley’s affidavit in support of the search warrant had outlined observations that law enforcement had made during surveillance of the Astro Drive Residence, which, … Continue reading
SD: Questions about carrying drugs without RS extended the stop in violation of Rodriquez
Questions about drugs during a traffic stop asked without reasonable suspicion extended the stop and made it unreasonable. State v. Holy, 2025 S.D. 19 (Mar. 26, 2025):
WSJ: The Five Things You Shouldn’t Tell ChatGPT
WSJ: The Five Things You Shouldn’t Tell ChatGPT by Nicole Nguyen (“Don’t let your mystery rash become AI training fodder—or turn up in a data breach”) Or a government subpoena or search warrant.
D.Kan.: Marion County Record retaliatory newspaper search case
In the Marion County Record case, the now infamous case of a search warrant for a newspaper’s servers and all electronic devices based on a First Amendment retaliation claim, the main Fourth Amendment claim survives the motions to dismiss. The … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: Suit over NYC DA’s subpoena for possession of a stolen antiquity is dismissed
The defendant here is Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney of New York County, NY (Manhattan). He’s sued in the Central District of California over his office’s investigation into antiquity art theft where plaintiff purchased a statue, the Bronze Male, for … Continue reading
W.D.La.: Request for consent during stop came after RS developed
Defendant’s traffic stop was reasonable because of a cracked windshield on his truck, and a question about consent to search near the end of the ticket writing process didn’t unlawfully extend it. United States v. Calderon, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
LATimes: ‘People should be worried’: 23andMe bankruptcy could expose customers’ genetic data
LATimes: ‘People should be worried’: 23andMe bankruptcy could expose customers’ genetic data by Caroline Petrow-Cohen and Stacy Perman (“Once a promising company briefly valued at $6 billion, 23andMe popularized at-home DNA test kits and spawned a cottage industry of ancestry … Continue reading
OH2: Officer could pursue across jurisdictional lines
The officer had territorial jurisdiction to stop and arrest defendant after he fled across jurisdictional lines. The officer was in hot pursuit. Also, a motion to dismiss isn’t the remedy. State v. Letts, 2025-Ohio-1085, 2025 Ohio App. LEXIS 1033 (2d … Continue reading
Cal.1st: Exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to DL suspensions
The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply to DL suspension proceedings. Kazelka v. Cal. Dep’t of Motor Vehicles, 2025 Cal. App. LEXIS 196 (1st Dist. Mar. 27, 2025). Officers responded to a shots fired call in a Bronx apartment and entered and … Continue reading
CA6: By testifying at trial searches were based on false evidence, def violated proffer agreement; govt should have objected, not violated it, too
Defendant’s trial testimony about his searches being based on falsities violated his proffer agreement, but, rather than objecting, the government’s putting in more evidence violated it, too. (But harmless error.) United States v. Grogan, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 7094 (6th … Continue reading
WA: Mandatory UAs valid on supervision despite not being related to crime of conviction
Even though mandatory UA for drug and alcohol don’t directly relate to defendant’s crimes of conviction, there still is a compelling interest in the state being able to test. State v. Nelson, 2025 Wash. LEXIS 150 (Mar. 27, 2025). The … Continue reading
CA9: “[E]vidence of dominion and control provision” sought in this CP SW made it overbroad
The “evidence of dominion and control provision” sought in this child pornography search warrant made it overbroad. United States v. Holcomb, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 7135 (9th Cir. Mar. 27, 2025). The first paragraph: This case raises a variation of … Continue reading
Goldwater Institute: Search Warrants in the Digital Age: Supreme Court Should Look to the States
Goldwater Institute: Search Warrants in the Digital Age: Supreme Court Should Look to the States by Timothy Sandefur:
W.D.Va.: No REP in non-legal jail mail from being scanned for tablet viewing
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in non-legal mail in jail. Here, mail was scanned and made into a pdf for viewing on a tablet. Cecil v. Keller, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56313 (W.D. Va. Mar. 25, 2025).* A … Continue reading
E.D.La.: Def’s presence at another SW execution admissible under 404(b)
Defendant’s presence at a drug house when another search warrant was served is admissible under 404(b). United States v. Holmes, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55926 (E.D. La. Mar. 26, 2025).* Defendant’s performance on SFSTs was probable cause for his arrest … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: A cell phone tower dump of a two-hour span is not a “Fourth Amendment event”
A cell phone tower dump of a two-hour span is not a “Fourth Amendment event.” Even if it was, the good faith exception applies. United States v. Pricop, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55939 (D. Ariz. Mar. 25, 2025):
D.Alaska: Motions in limine aren’t motions to suppress
Defendant filed a motion in limine in lieu of a motion to suppress which was otherwise out of time. A motion in limine isn’t a substitute for a motion to suppress. Nevertheless, the court goes to the merits of the … Continue reading