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Recent Posts
- TN: RS didn’t develop to continue stop; second stop based on first suppressed
- CA4: Traffic stop immediately became firearms investigation; suppressed
- CA10: Disagreement over spelling of street name didn’t make warrant fail particularity; GFE at least would apply
- VA: Statutory requirement to provide SW papers only applies to “places of abode”
- D.Idaho: Not unreasonable for PO to hand over def’s cell phone to LEO for extraction after RS developed from Snapchat app
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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)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (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] -
“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: September 2025
E.D.La.: AirBnb permittees have no REP in information already voluntarily provided to city
AirBnb and its permittees don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information that was already essentially turned over to the city in getting permits in the first place. Bodin v. City of New Orleans, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 174172 … Continue reading
LAT: You look Latino. You speak Spanish. You work hard. That’s now probable cause.
LAT: You look Latino. You speak Spanish. You work hard. That’s now probable cause. by Dean Florez (“When I was a young UCLA constitutional law major, we learned that the Constitution wasn’t just parchment behind glass: It was a living … Continue reading
404 Media: ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers
404 Media: ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers by Joseph Cox:
The Guardian: US Supreme Court ‘effectively legalized racial profiling’, immigration experts warn
The Guardian: US Supreme Court ‘effectively legalized racial profiling’, immigration experts warn:
NYT: Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops
NYT: Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops by Adam Liptak (“federal judge had ordered agents not to make indiscriminate stops relying on factors like a person’s ethnicity or that they speak Spanish.”) The order is here. Kavanaugh, J., … Continue reading
CA5: Bailing out and running away from open truck at a convenience store was abandonment
Bailing out of a truck on the sidewalk of a convenience store and running away leaving the windows open and it unlocked is an abandonment. United States v. Tsatenawa, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 23079 (5th Cir. Sep. 5, 2025). The … Continue reading
AP: Woman wrongly accused of carjacking loses lawsuit against Detroit police who used facial tech
AP: Woman wrongly accused of carjacking loses lawsuit against Detroit police who used facial tech by Ed White (“ A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Detroit police in the wrongful arrest of a pregnant woman who was charged in … Continue reading
Reason: Florida Deputies Jailed Her for 3 Days Even Though She Was Obviously Not the Suspect Described in a Warrant
Reason: Florida Deputies Jailed Her for 3 Days Even Though She Was Obviously Not the Suspect Described in a Warrant by Jacob Sullum (“A federal judge cleared the way for Jennifer Heath Box’s lawsuit against the cops who misidentified her … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Handcuffing def resisting patdown didn’t make it an arrest
Officers had reasonable suspicion for defendant’s stop and patdown. His resistance justified handcuffs, and it still did not become an arrest until the gun was found. United States v. Gatling, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 171825 (D.D.C. Sep. 2, 2025)*:
D.Mont.: Probationer’s GPS alert was RS
Defendant’s GPS tether alert was reasonable suspicion for a probation search. United States v. Moore, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 170428 (D. Mont. Sep. 2, 2025). The allegation that drug traffickers regularly use cell phones to communicate about the dealings is … Continue reading
CA7: No REP in an “out of order” restroom defendant slipped in to to hide a gun
Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a convenience store bathroom where, calling attention to himself, he ducked inside to hide a gun and didn’t lock the door. United States v. Scott, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 22618 (7th Cir. … Continue reading
A flashbang thrown into an occupied crib:
Reason: ‘Botched’ Drug Raids Show How Prohibition Invites Senseless Violence by Jacob Sullum (“The war on drugs authorizes police conduct that otherwise would be readily recognized as criminal.”)
MA: 123-day delay between cell phone seizure and SW was unreasonable here
Balancing the interests involved, the trial court found that the 123-day delay between seizure of defendant’s cell phone and seeking a search warrant for it was unreasonable. On de novo review, “That notwithstanding, there is no Massachusetts precedent upholding as … Continue reading
TX13: Even if hemp and MJ smell similar, smell is still PC
The Dallas Court of Appeals “concluded that the odor of marijuana emanating from a vehicle gave an officer probable cause to search the vehicle and its occupants, even though the odor of marijuana is indistinguishable from the odor of hemp.” … Continue reading
ID: Drug dog’s nose touching a car door handle was not a search
Drug dog’s nose touching a car door handle was not a search. State v. Pendleton, 2025 Ida. App. LEXIS 38 (Aug. 29, 2025). The defendant officer violated no reasonable expectation of privacy by accessing plaintiff’s public Facebook posts. Dicks v. … Continue reading
CA9: A successful Franks challenge means deletion of offending material and not addition of what was missing
“Welch successfully challenged five statements in the search warrant affidavit, and the district court did not clearly err in rejecting his challenge to several additional statements. Having found that Welch made the necessary showing with respect to the five statements, … Continue reading
Six on habeas
Petitioner’s habeas claims include a Fourth Amendment claim barred by Stone. Steward v. Napoli, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 169230 (S.D.N.Y. July 31, 2025).* Same: Bogan v. Christiansen, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 22218 (6th Cir. Aug. 27, 2025). The state court … Continue reading