Search warrant for forensic evidence that might be found in a murder suspect’s car was reasonable. The trial court erred in ascribing a hypertechnical reading to the warrant’s particularity requirement and the application for the warrant. People v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County (Nasmeh), 151 Cal. App. 4th 85, 59 Cal. Rptr. 3d 633 (6th Dist. 2007):<\/p>\n
Moreover, even if a search for constituent parts of an item did present Fourth Amendment problems because the warrant did not mention such parts, here the warrant authorized the search and seizure of “any part” of the listed items. The question before us is the adequacy of this particular warrant’s language, which referred to “part[s],” but did not recite a list of such possible further descriptive terms as fractions, pieces, components, particles, elements, flecks, filaments, films, specks, strands, shards, residues, remnants, samples, subsets, trace amounts, or the like.<\/p>\n
“[T]he requirement that a search warrant describe its objects with particularity is a standard of ‘practical accuracy’ rather than a hypertechnical one.” (U.S. v. Peters<\/em> (8th Cir. 1996) 92 F.3d 768, 769-770; accord, People v. Amador, supra,<\/em> 24 Cal.4th at p. 393.) The rule against excessive parsing of the language used in a warrant (while retaining the rule that items to be seized be identified in a warrant with constitutionally required specificity, so that the police do not engage in unfettered rummaging through a person’s effects) militates in favor of truthfinding in criminal investigations, a value of significant importance to the public safety and societal order. Nasmeh argues that the warrant’s “‘any part thereof'” specification refers only to “any subset of the named items on the list,” e.g.,<\/em> a single credit card or one sofa cushion, rather than a constituent part of a single identified item. This kind of linguistic scrutiny might be warranted in a case construing a contract negotiated and signed by sophisticated parties whose counsel examined the placement of each comma and semicolon and who included language to cover any conceivable eventuality. A warrant’s language involves different considerations and requires less absolute certainty of linguistic meaning. “‘[T]he purpose of the exclusionary rule is “… to deter illegal police conduct, not deficient police draftsmanship.”‘” (People v. Amador,<\/em> supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 392.) Moreover, the draftsmanship here was not deficient, just not as exhaustive as Nasmeh would prefer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Statement of probable cause plus incorporation of a list of things to be seized permitted seizure of a computer not on the incorporated list when reading the papers as a whole. United States v. Payton, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37277 (E.D. Cal. May 4, 2007).*<\/p>\n
Removing a Fed Ex package from a conveyor belt because it was suspicious and then subjecting it and others to a dog sniff 30 minutes later was not an unreasonable seizure. United States v. Terrell, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37264 (W.D. La. May 2, 2007).*<\/p>\n
Officers surrounding house attempted to take a mentally ill man in on a commitment order. He came out of the house with a shotgun in hand and shot himself in front of the officers. The officers were also accused of causing unnecessary damage to the house immediately prior. On the pleadings, the court declines to dismiss an inartfully pled Fourth Amendment claim because it was at least implied in the seizure and excessive force claims. Heckensweiler v. McLaughlin, 517 F. Supp. 2d 707 (E.D. Pa. 2007).*<\/p>\n
In a false arrest case under \u00a7 1983, federal courts look to state law to determine the legality of the arrest and then to the Fourth Amendment to see if it was violated by a violation of state law. Plaintiff stated enough to survive summary judgment on the Fourth Amendment claim because the arrest was apparently in violation of state law. Brunner v. McKillip, 488 F. Supp. 2d 775 (W.D. Wis. 2007).*<\/p>\n
Identified citizen informer calling 311, the police non-emergency line, was entitled to more credibility than a confidential informant, and the information did not have to be corroborated to act upon it. United States v. Roberts, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36991 (D. Nev. May 9, 2007).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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