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Recent Posts
- W.D.N.Y.: Civil discovery dispute denies access to other employees’ cell phones as 4A issue
- 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
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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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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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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: March 2026
Cal.2: Officers didn’t need to periodically reassess exigency
Exigency here did not need to be periodically reassessed. “Once inside, police were not required to interrupt their efforts to seek a warrant. Officers on the scene must be able to devote their full attention to the threat they face. … Continue reading
DE: Second warrant after first general warrant was independent source for search
The trial court held the warrant for defendant’s cell phone was a general warrant for overbreadth but the independent source doctrine saved the second search warrant after the first search. “All Delaware Superior Court cases addressing the instant issue support … Continue reading
CT: Exclusionary rule does not apply in animal welfare cases which are civil
The animal control officer did a welfare check on animals at a house and entered the curtilage to look in a window. The exclusionary rule does not apply in animal welfare cases. NE Conn. Council of Gov’ts Animal Servs. ex … Continue reading
ID: AW for suspected passenger allowed police to enter curtilage to look in parked car at night
Officers could enter defendant’s curtilage to look in his just parked car at night. They had an arrest warrant for a suspected passenger and they couldn’t tell whether she was in the car before it was parked under Payton. State … Continue reading
CO: Vague description in arrest warrant didn’t justify def’s stop
The description of an arrestee as a 30ish male with the last name starting in “Mc” didn’t justify defendant’s detention in a park. People v. McGee, 2026 CO 14 (Mar. 9, 2026):
NY3: Housing law that requires landlords to submit to premises and records searches is unconstitutional
Section 8 housing law that requires landlords to submit to premises and records searches is unconstitutional. Matter of People of the State of N.Y. v. Commons W., LLC, 2026 NY Slip Op 01253 (3d Dept. Mar. 5, 2026). Leave to … Continue reading
E.D.N.Y.: Inevitable discovery doesn’t cure errors
Defendant’s cell phone was unreasonably seized and the contents suppressed. Inevitable discovery isn’t as broad as the government argues. United States v. Patchiav, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47106 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 7, 2026)*:
TX6: Seizing thermometer’s protective sleeve from hospital waste for DNA was reasonable
The officer getting the protective sleeve from a hospital thermometer to test for defendant’s DNA wasn’t unreasonable. Mundt v. State, 2026 Tex. App. LEXIS 2126 (Tex. App. – Texarkana Mar. 6, 2026) (unpublished). After an initial inspection of this vessel, … Continue reading
CA6: PO’s information that def was probably at a house was enough to arrest him there on a warrant
Information from his PO justified defendant’s arrest on a warrant at his brother’s place. He’d been arrested there before, and he was seen there. Officers did not need to exclude other possible places he should have been first. United States … Continue reading
NYCo.: Arrests can’t be suppressed
“Defendant was charged with committing specific acts of violence against an identifiable person, who reported the incident. An arrest itself cannot be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree, and defendant himself was not a suppressible fruit. Nor was he … Continue reading
CA8: Police with arrest warrant could enter third-party premises to arrest defendant
Police with a warrant for defendant could enter a third party’s premises to arrest him on probable cause that he was present. Under Steagald, defendant had no more reasonable expectation of privacy in the third party’s premises than the owner … Continue reading
What happens when Flock ALPRs misread an LPN?
Arkansas police drew guns on a family, then blamed a license plate frame.
D.Neb.: Just because the state seizes a cell phone doesn’t mean they know the Brady implications of the contents
Just because the state seizes a cell phone doesn’t mean they know the Brady implications of the contents. Moss v. Jeffreys, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45716 (D. Neb. Mar. 4, 2026) (§ 60.58 n.2) 2255 petitioner’s claim that defense counsel … Continue reading
Two on qualified immunity
“The Anders point to no case holding that officers violated the Fourth Amendment in the process of levying property pursuant to a valid writ of execution. ‘For search and seizure claims, the Supreme Court has cautioned that “courts should define … Continue reading
N.D.Iowa: RS and PC for stop and then search, so justification for drug dog is irrelevant
Based on two bases of collective knowledge, the officer had justification for a stop and a search, so the justification for the drug dog isn’t even relevant. United States v. Carter, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45275 (N.D. Iowa Mar. 5, … Continue reading
D.Ariz.: Alleged perjury at state suppression hearing doesn’t overcome Stone bar
2254 petitioner’s claim the officer perjured himself during his suppression hearing doesn’t overcome the Stone bar. Soliven v. Thornell, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45209 (D. Ariz. Mar. 5, 2026). 2254 petitioner’s effort to include an “inadvertently omitted” Fourth Amendment claim … Continue reading
D.Md.: Claim for “constructive seizure” fails
Plaintiff doesn’t state a claim for a “constructive seizure” by telling someone else of a warrant being out. Gladden v. Bd. of Educ. of Harford Cty., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45075 (D. Md. Mar. 5, 2026).* Defendant’s ineffective assistance of … Continue reading
Reason: Controversial Geofence Warrants Face Supreme Court Challenge
Reason: Controversial Geofence Warrants Face Supreme Court Challenge by J.D. Tuccille (“It sometimes seems technology provides a moving target for the Fourth Amendment, evolving new means of snooping on people while courts struggle to keep up. That’s the case with … Continue reading