{"id":4929,"date":"2011-03-31T23:27:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T06:36:34","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-26T06:36:34","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4929","title":{"rendered":"CA10: \u201c[T]here [is] no clearly established law holding that a theft of money during the execution of a valid search warrant violates the Fourth Amendment\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plaintiff claimed that IRS agents executing search warrant stole $2,000 from him between the seizure and turning it in. However, \u201cthere was no clearly established law holding that a theft of money during the execution of a valid search warrant violates the Fourth Amendment.\u201d Springer v. Albin<\/a>, 398 Fed. Appx. 427 (10th Cir. 2010)*:<\/p>\n

We conclude that there was no clearly established law holding that a theft of money during the execution of a valid search warrant violates the Fourth Amendment. \u201cThe relevant dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was lawful in the situation he confronted.\u201d Saucier v. Katz<\/a>, 533 U.S. 194, 202, 121 S. Ct. 2151, 150 L. Ed. 2d 272 (2001), overruled in part on other grounds by Pearson<\/a>, 129 S.Ct. at 818.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Furthermore, neither the Tenth Circuit nor the Supreme Court had case law on point in September 2005 establishing that a theft by federal agents of lawfully seized currency during the execution of a valid search warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. Other circuits, however, had considered a similar issue by September 2005. Those circuits split on the Fourth Amendment issue.<\/p>\n

Three of the four cases that had addressed the failure to return lawfully seized property had held that there was no Fourth Amendment violation. In Shaul v. Cherry Valley-Springfield Central School District<\/a>, 363 F.3d 177, 179 (2d Cir. 2004), a school teacher filed a \u00a7 1983 action against school officials for unreasonably searching his classroom and taking certain items. He contended that the failure to return the items was an unreasonable seizure of them. Id. at 187. Because the initial seizure was reasonable, the Second Circuit held that the defendants\u2019 failure to return property did \u201cnot, by itself, state a separate Fourth Amendment claim of unreasonable seizure.\u201d Id.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, theft by an officer during a seizure is not an \u201cunreasonable seizure\u201d? If not, is it then \u201creasonable\u201d? To just say it sounds idiotic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}