Wyoming concludes that a telephonic or other remotely applied for search warrant [via Skype, for example?] is valid if there is a recording made that can be transcribed for preservation of the showing of probable cause. Smith v. State, 2013 WY 122, 2013 Wyo. LEXIS 127 (October 4, 2013):
[*P25] Historically, an affidavit was a “written” instrument. We do not believe that the statute or this opinion changes that fact. What has changed over time, because of technological advances, is the meaning of the word “written.” Recorded sworn testimony, which if preserved, and from which a transcript may be produced, is as much a “writing” in today’s world as was a quill-penned line on a piece of parchment two centuries ago. To conclude otherwise would ignore today’s technological realities, and would place form over substance. We decline to view the law in so restrictive a fashion.
[*P26] We answer the first certified question in the affirmative. That is, the procedures set forth in Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 31-6-102(d) do comply with the affidavit requirements of Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 4.
W.R.Cr.P. 41(c)
[*P27] A remotely communicated search warrant issued pursuant to Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 31-6-102(d) is distinguishable from other search warrants in that it is limited to a particular type of evidence gathering in a particular type of crime. By its own language, it is “valid only for purposes specified in this subsection.” At the same time, there is nothing about the context in which it is issued that requires it to be treated differently than any other search warrant in the particulars governed by W.R.Cr.P. 41(c). A close reading of W.R.Cr.P. 41(c) reveals that it contains no provision that cannot be met in the issuance of a remotely communicated search warrant under the statute. Paraphrasing the rule, we note that, in addition to the affidavit requirement, which has been discussed above, W.R.Cr.P. 41(c) provides that (1) the issuing officer may require the affiant to appear personally; (2) the warrant must with particularity identify the property or person to be seized and or searched; (3) a record of the proceedings be made by a court reporter or recording equipment; (4) the warrant be directed to an officer authorized to enforce or assist in enforcing state law; (5) the grounds for probable cause for the warrant’s issuance and the names of the persons supplying affidavits be stated in the warrant; (6) the search of the named person or place be conducted within a specific period of time not to exceed ten days; (7) the warrant be served between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., unless the issuing authority provides otherwise in the warrant based upon reasonable cause; and (8) the warrant shall designate the judicial officer to whom the warrant shall be returned.
[*P28] Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 31-6-102(d) and W.R.Cr.P. 41(c) complement, rather than contradict, one another. There is no reason that an officer seeking a remotely communicated search warrant under the statute cannot also comply with the rule. The same is true of the issuing judicial officer. In fact, there are procedural protections in W.R.Cr.P. 41(c) that would seem to have particular application in the context of a telephonically obtained search warrant. For instance, inasmuch as the record is being made electronically, rather than on paper, it is likely that no transcription thereof will be available at the time the warrant is served, meaning that the subject of the warrant would not know the reasons for the judicial officer’s finding, or the scope of the warrant, unless the probable cause finding is contained within the warrant.
[*P29] We answer the second certified question in the affirmative. That is, a remotely communicated search warrant issued pursuant to Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 31-6-102(d) must comply with the provisions of W.R.Cr.P. 41(c).
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
