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Recent Posts
- CA3: In seeking arrest warrants, officers need not present all exculpatory evidence to issuing magistrate unless it’s “conclusive”
- D.Idaho: Trial references to SW not barred, but govt limited in what it can say
- D.D.C.: PO’s alleged violation of probation regulations doesn’t warrant suppression if a reasonable mistake
- E.D.N.C.: SW not required to look in def’s jail property bag and retrieve car keys
- D.N.M.: Consent attenuated unreasonable search
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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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FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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)
ACLU on privacy
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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: May 2025
OH1: “reasonable suspicion to stop a suspect is not necessarily reasonable suspicion to search them.”
“But reasonable suspicion to stop a suspect is not necessarily reasonable suspicion to search them.” State v. Hall, 2025-Ohio-1644, 2025 Ohio App. LEXIS 1640 (1st Dist. May 8, 2025). The home owner consented to a complete search, and the defendant … Continue reading
CA11: Punching subdued arrestee showed excessive force
Punching an arrestee in the head after he was subdued overcame qualified immunity. Jones v. Ceinski, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 11181 (11th Cir. May 8, 2025).* “In this case, undisputed facts support the conclusion that the officers used reasonable force … Continue reading
Phones, Files, and the Fourth: Border Searches and the Attorney-Client Privilege
NACDL Free Webinar for defense lawyers, 1-230 pm Eastern today.
LawFare: Tracing the Origins of a ‘New American Surveillance State’
LawFare: Tracing the Origins of a ‘New American Surveillance State’ by Sarah Lamdan (“A review of Byron Tau, ‘Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State’ (Crown, 2024)”)
TX: Fraudulently renting hotel room denies a REP
Fraudulently renting a hotel room means no reasonable expectation of privacy in it. And, it didn’t matter that the police didn’t learn that until later. Bluntson v. State, 2025 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 297 (May 7, 2025). At the oral … Continue reading
Reason: Updated draft: The Two Tests of Search Law by Orin S. Kerr
Reason: Updated draft: The Two Tests of Search Law by Orin S. Kerr: I have posted a revised draft of my forthcoming article, The Two Tests of Search Law: What is the Jones Test, and What Does That Say About … Continue reading
HPCWire: Do You Own Your Cloud Data? Third-Party Doctrine Says No
HPCWire: Do You Own Your Cloud Data? Third-Party Doctrine Says No by Alex Woodie (“Your data is yours, right? It seems like a simple question, but thanks to a little-known loophole in federal law, US regulators can access your private … Continue reading
IN: Stolen vehicles in yard doesn’t support SW for their records, and no GFE
Defendant was suspected of stealing trailers, and they were seen at his house. This did not justify a search warrant for documents in his house. In addition, the good faith exception did not apply. Thomas v. State, 2025 Ind. App. … Continue reading
W.D.Mo.: Use of stop sticks was a seizure
The use of stop sticks was a seizure, but here it was justified. United States v. Jordan, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86127 (W.D. Mo. Apr. 4, 2025).* There was nexus for defendant’s place, and the Franks claim isn’t material. United … Continue reading
CA4: Where materiality fails under Franks, falsity doesn’t matter
The district court concluded that there was no false statement for Franks purposes, but that doesn’t even have to be decided. It certainly wasn’t material. Hedgepeth v. Nash Cty., 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 10868 (4th Cir. May 6, 2025).* It … Continue reading
ProPublica: The DEA Once Touted Body Cameras for Their “Enhanced Transparency.” Now the Agency Is Abandoning Them.
ProPublica: The DEA Once Touted Body Cameras for Their “Enhanced Transparency.” Now the Agency Is Abandoning Them. by Mario Ariza (“An internal email obtained by ProPublica said the agency made the change to be ‘consistent’ with a Trump executive order. … Continue reading
CA1: Notable Bivens dismissal by its dissent: retired Justice Breyer
A Bivens claim, not specifically a Fourth Amendment claim, fails because of a different context from existing caselaw. The claim fails 2-1. What’s interesting is that retired Justice Breyer was on the panel, and he dissented that the claim should … Continue reading
M.D.Fla.: Being made to leave during search of premises is not a seizure
Defendant was made to leave the premises while a search occurred inside, and that was not a seizure of his person. United States v. Arcadipane, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82688 (M.D. Fla. May 1, 2025). Defendant, a sex offender on … Continue reading
DC: 2 am parking lot encounter was without RS
A radio dispatch of a suspicious vehicle on an apartment complex’s lot was so broad as to be meaningless. The trial court erred in relying on it. When the officer pulled up on the car, two occupants in the back … Continue reading
IL: Paperwork discrepancies permitted a truck safety inspection
Continuation of a commercial moving truck stop for a safety inspection was reasonable after there were “paperwork discrepancies.” People v. Ivanchuk, 2025 IL App (4th) 241230, 2025 Ill. App. LEXIS 856 (May 1, 2025). Mere negligent omissions for a Franks … Continue reading
AF: Military search authorization orally supplemented was subject to GFE
There were multiple military search authorizations, and the request here was orally supplemented before issuance expanding the particularity. Also, the good faith exception applies. United States v. Johnson, 2025 CCA LEXIS 193 (A.F. Ct. Crim. App. May 2, 2025). A … Continue reading
D.Neb.: First time CI was corroborated
This first time CI, arrested the day before, was corroborated and there was probable cause. United States v. Schelling, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83754 (D. Neb. May 2, 2025).* There was reasonable suspicion with collective knowledge, and the search warrant … Continue reading
E.D.Mo.: Carpenter does not protect ISP information
Carpenter creates no protection for ISP subscriber information. No Due Process rights were violated though a § 1509 summons. United States v. Meyrand, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 84060 (E.D. Mo. May 2, 2025).* This court declined to abandon the automobile … Continue reading
N.D.Ala.: Lack of a SW signature cured by GFE
“Defendant argues that the warrant is facially deficient because the affidavit lacked a signature, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit has considered and rejected this argument. See United States v. Gordon, 686 F. App’x 702, 704 (11th Cir. 2017) (holding … Continue reading