CA10: Officers get qualified immunity for SW that was not completely without particularity

In this § 1983 case over the particularity of a search warrant over stolen cars on his property, the officers had qualified immunity. The warrant was not so lacking in particularity that a reasonable officer couldn’t rely on it. Rathbun v. Montoya, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 17956 (10th Cir. Oct. 16, 2015):

The issue is not whether the magistrate erred in believing the search warrant he issued met the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, but instead whether the magistrate “so obviously erred that any reasonable officer would have recognized the error.” Messerschmidt, 132 S. Ct. at 1250. We conclude that the warrant in this case “was not so obviously lacking in [particularity] that the officers can be considered plainly incompetent for concluding otherwise.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). “Indeed, a contrary conclusion would mean not only that [the officers] were plainly incompetent, but that … the deputy district attorney[] and the magistrate were as well.” Id. at 1249 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The district court’s order denying the officers qualified immunity is reversed.