N.D.Cal.: 17 day delay in SW for firearm involved in alleged shooting isn’t stale

A search warrant based on a shooting 17 days earlier for the firearm wasn’t stale, and it was based on probable cause, despite a Franks challenge on part of it. United States v. Sembrano, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 211699 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 12, 2020):

Probable cause did not become stale or otherwise disappear between the March 22 incident and the April 9 search. Although “information offered to support a search warrant application becomes stale when enough time has elapsed such that there is no longer sufficient basis to believe … that the items to be seized are still on the premises,” United States v. Grant, 682 F.3d 827,835 (9th Cir. 2012) (quotations omitted), “[o]ne may infer that equipment acquired to accomplish a crime will be kept for some period of time,” Crews, 502 F.3d at 1140 (citation omitted). No Ninth Circuit case has held that probable cause to search for a firearm goes stale after seventeen days, and the case law suggests the opposite. In United States v. Collins, law enforcement searched Collins’s home six weeks after receiving a tip that placed illegal firearms there. 61 F.3d 1379,1384 (9th Cir. 1995). The tip, combined with older information regarding Collins’s possession of firearms, was enough for probable cause. See id. at 1384-85 (collecting cases). Crews held that evidence of Crews’s alleged firearm possession had not gone stale after twelve days, noted the absence of any known “case where staleness was found in such a short period of time,” and held that it was reasonable to believe evidence of firearm possession would still be present in his apartment. See Crews, 502 F.3d at 1140.