TX: Totality of affidavit justified on totality SW for surveillance videos even though affidavit didn’t explicitly say so

While the affidavit for search warrant didn’t explicitly say that it wanted the DVR for surveillance cameras to prove a crime at the business, the totality of the affidavit leaves the impression from common knowledge that seizure and search was justified. Foreman v. State, 2020 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 959 (Nov. 25, 2020):

Like the court of appeals, we look upon the State’s “common knowledge” rubric with some skepticism. Our research has revealed scant support for the idea that a magistrate, contemplating a probable-cause affidavit articulating a limited set of facts to justify the issuance of a search warrant, may supplement the articulated facts with unarticulated facts that the magistrate deems so obvious or widespread as to constitute “common knowledge.” That is not to say that probable-cause magistrates lack any authority to take cognizance of “common knowledge” whenever they perceive it. It means only that it is not how established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence would generally frame the inquiry. Established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence would instead observe that a magistrate, contemplating a probable-cause affidavit articulating a discrete set of facts to justify the issuance of a warrant, is allowed to draw all reasonable inferences from the articulated facts. And that, we conclude, is the optimal way to address the probable-cause issue before us. So, rather than imposing upon the State’s scantly supported probable-cause rubric an even-less-well supported limiting principle, we will sidestep those inquiries altogether and focus instead on what we perceive to be the proper Fourth Amendment inquiry. We will simply decide whether it was reasonable for the magistrate to infer from the facts actually articulated in the probable-cause affidavit that the business described in that affidavit was equipped with surveillance cameras.

Considering the totality of circumstances presented to the magistrate, we conclude that such an inference was reasonable. To support this conclusion, we will discuss each specific, articulated fact that we believe reasonably contributed to the magistrate’s determination of probable cause. Though we will discuss each fact sequentially, we will analyze them in their totality.

. . .

This entry was posted in Particularity, Probable cause. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.