It is a matter of preserving rights whichall of us enjoy, and there is nobetter place to enforce those rights than in a court of law. Bias May be Implicit in Current Law on Search and Seizure Friday, March 1st, 2019 Beth Karp 48 latin woman opening the front door, white inside Over the past several years, questions about racial bias in law enforcement have commanded a great deal of public attention. . The People opposed, arguing that the search warrant was not restricted to the private dwelling, but authorized the search of the "entire premises," which includes the house located at the address as well as the surrounding curtilage, and that the search of the vehicles parked thereon was reasonable as they could and did contain contraband sought by the warrant. In this case, by comparison, the warrant application contained no mention whatsoever of the existence of the vehicles ultimately searched, much less evidence connecting them to any criminality. The touchstone of the constitutional protection for privacy, under Article 1, Section 12 of the State Constitution, is whether a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy (see Scott, 79 NY2d at 488). Applying Ross, I would likewise hold that, where a warrant authorizes a search of the entire premises for items that could be found in a vehicle on those premises, it is reasonable to search a vehicle parked thereon, just as it would be for other containers found on the premises. . Siegal. California v. Lee, California Court of Appeals 2019. We cannot accept the argument that the entry into the private garage was a permissible incident of the right to search pursuant to a warrant. In the appropriate case, Dumper may be relevant in assessing how we would decide that issue, but it is not relevant here. The Court held first that . Even were we to put aside the contrary reasoning of Hansen and Dumper, the dissent never addresses the fundamental tenets of our search warrant jurisprudence: it is the magistrate, and not the police officer, who determines the scope of the search conducted pursuant to a warrant (Hanlon, 36 NY2d at 559; P.J. The Appellate Division affirmed, concurring in Supreme Court's conclusion that "the search warrant did not particularize that a search of the vehicles was permitted" and "probable cause to search those vehicles had not been established in the application for the search warrant" (169 AD3d 714, 714-715 [2d Dept 2019] [internal citations omitted]). Discipline in this area benefits not only the Supreme Court in determining its own jurisdiction, but also this Court in establishing a respected body of state constitutional law. Nevertheless, the majority insists that vehicles are special containers, arbitrarily favoring vehicles over other transportable containers, such as backpacks and rollable luggage, and containers normally located outdoors, such as mailboxes. Our statement in that case, unrelated to specific facts before the Court, that "a warrant to search a building does not include authority to search vehicles at the premises" (id. Supreme Court explained that in New York, a search warrant must list "each specific area of the building, area or vehicle to be searched" and "[p]robable cause must be shown in each instance." From the search of the Nissan, the police retrieved quantities of heroin, cocaine, and assorted drug paraphernalia. That belief, in turn, appears to be grounded in a series of inapposite New York cases decided prior to the seminal Supreme Court case, United States v Ross (456 US 798 [1982]). . Posey was arrested after the Officer responded to a look out for Robbery suspects. In that case, police saw drugs in the home when they were investigating a burglary and later obtained a warrant for the home and the van (id. Additionally, in Dumper, we invalidated the search warrant based on the absence of probable cause of criminal activity to sustain any search. Indeed, we observed in Dumper thatpursuant to both constitutional and statutory directivesa "warrant must describe the premises to be searched" and "this warrant did not include the automobile" (Dumper, 28 NY2d at 299). A majority of this Court, however, answers that question in the negative. . Supreme Court granted the motion to suppress, and the Appellate Division affirmed. Disclaimer: Justia Annotations is a forum for attorneys to summarize, comment on, and analyze case law published on our site. As a repeat offender, a Passaic County judge sentenced him to consecutive prison terms totaling 25 years, and at. Mr. Gordon relies primarily on New York precedent; the People look instead to federal caselaw for guidance. We next addressed the search of a vehicle associated with a residence in People v Hansen. Radel pleaded guilty in August 2019 to two counts of illegal gun possession. As the Supreme Court has explained, "[e]ven though such a distinction perhaps could evolve in a series of cases in which paper bags, locked trunks, lunch buckets, and orange crates were placed on one side of the line or the other, the central purpose of the Fourth Amendment forecloses such a distinction" (id.). For the controlled and undercover buys, defendant agreed in advance to meet at his residence for the purpose of selling heroin. at 822 [emphasis added]). During the course of a narcotics investigation, police officers observed Mr. Gordon and at least one associate selling narcotics from a private residence; on several occasions, Mr. Gordon or an associate exited the residence, walked to the street and delivered an object to a waiting person in exchange for money. L. Rev. The trial court suppressed the evidence derived from the devices, relying on persuasive authority from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to find that the delay between the seizure of the devices and the issuance of the search warrants for the data contained in them was unreasonable and thus violated appellees rights under the Fourth Amendment and Georgia law. The Court of Appeals affirmed the Appellate Division's decision affirming Supreme Court's judgment ordering the suppression of physical evidence seized from two vehicles, holding that the search warrant materials failed to provide probable cause to search the vehicles. The Supreme Court has held that a passing parallel reference to the State and Federal Constitutions is insufficient to satisfy the plain-statement rulei.e., that a case was decided on a state-law ground (see e.g. . Here, no vehicle was designated or described in the warrant, and the People have not argued that the police had probable cause to engage in a search of anything outside of what was designated or described in the warrant. The factual allegations, Mr. Gordon contended, supported at most a search of Mr. Gordon's person and his residence and not the vehicles located outside the residence. One man, mature FBI agent working on a case in dark office. Our decision in Dumper rested on two grounds. This site is maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the Federal Judiciary. Washington CNN The Supreme Court on Monday wiped away a lower court decision that held that law enforcement could enter a Rhode Island man's home and seize his firearms without a warrant. 238453. Indeed, a parallel citation indicates a belief by the litigant (or the court) that the state and federal provisions at issue are coextensive. Prosecutors initially argued that the failure of listing an actual crime in the warrant was a typographical error. This case considers, for the first time in Georgia, the effect of the State's delay in obtaining search warrants for data contained in electronic devices when those devices were originally seized in a warrantless, but lawful, manner by police. Shield's allowed government prosecutors to submit their objections but they took a pass saying that they intended toreturn all of the records seized in the raid as well as destroy the electronic images it created as a result of the seized information. Prosecutors appealed, hoping to. This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports. the premises" (Percival, 756 F2d at 600; compare United States v Reivich, 793 F2d 957, 963 [8th Cir 1986] [exempting "vehicle(s) of a guest or other caller" from the permissible scope of a premises warrant] with United States v Cole, 628 F2d 897, 899-900 [5th Cir 1980] [upholding the search of a truck of a third party that arrived on the property during the execution of the premises warrant]). Adopting the People's position would lead to the incongruous result that proof that a vehicle had an ongoing connection with a property would be insufficient to justify a search, while a warrant application that makes no mention of the vehicle would somehow provide greater cause to search that vehicle. it is no less fixed than a suitcase or handbag found on the premises, both of which can readily be searched under Ross if capable of containing the object of the search"]). To address the continued viability of caselaw premised upon our interpretation of both the U.S. and the State Constitutions, we now clarify thatat the very leastthose cases accurately set forth our state constitutional law. Disclaimer: Justia Annotations is a forum for attorneys to summarize, comment on, and analyze case law published on our site. You can explore additional available newsletters here. The dissent offers an array of arguments for how probable cause to search the vehicles could be established by their proximity to alleged drug trafficking. The Justices Search help & Tips - Supreme Court of the United States more specific results. You can explore additional available newsletters here. In Dumper, the search warrant was similarly directed at discrete structures, including "a one story wood frame cottage with white sidewall, green roof" and a "cottage east of a main house" (id. Here, by contrast, the question is whether the officers exceeded the scope of a valid search warrant for evidence of an illicit drug business conducted from the premisesan issue not addressed by this Court in Hansen. The warrant authorized the police to search for, among other things, heroin, money as the proceeds of an illicit drug business, cell phones, computers, and drug paraphernalia. July 31, 2019. Authority to search a vehicle does not include authority to enter private premises to effect a search of a vehicle within those premises. People v Dumper (28 NY2d 296 [1971]), cited in Sciacca, is also unavailing. As we stated in Hansen, the mere presence of a vehicle seen at the sight of premises wherein the police suspect criminal activity to be occurring does not by itself provide probable cause to search the vehicle (see id. Federal authorities believed that Drago's business was not paying itsfair share of taxes payments that were insufficient and documentation that was incomplete. Defendant did not support that argument with any state constitutional analysis. We concluded that there was probable cause to search the target residence for the drugs observed by the police, as the information in the warrant was not stale, but there was no probable cause to search the van, as the presence of the drugs in the house was not indicative of more than possessionin other words, no evidence of narcotics trafficking (see id. The majority seems primarily concerned about the possibility that vehicles parked on a target's premises might belong to a visiting friend or acquaintance (majority op at 15, 16 n 2)a possibility I view as quite remote where, for example, the vehicle is found in an enclosed structure (such as a garage), in a backyard, or behind a gate, or when no visiting friend or acquaintance is in fact present at the premises. During the search of the passenger compartment, the police discovered an open pouch containing marijuana and seized it. Yet that statement represents our Court's understanding of the meaning of our prior decisions in Hansen and Dumper, one that, as we noted in Sciacca, accords with the legislature's prescription of "what and who" are subject to search pursuant to a New York warrant (see CPL 690.15 [1] ["A search warrant must direct a search of one or more of the following: (a) A designated or described place or premises; (b) A designated or described vehicle . About; License; Lawyer Directory; Projects. Siegal represents John Drago who owned and operated a check cashing business, Kayla Companies. There is no "constitutional distinction between 'worthy' and 'unworthy' containers" (id.). In reply, Mr. Gordon specifically rejected the importation of the federal circuit court law into this context and contended that the People's position would amount to a "detour from established precedent." So important is the role of the neutral and detached magistrate that we have in the past parted ways from federal constitutional jurisprudence when we believed that an emerging rule of federal constitutional law "dilute[s] . InAugust 2013,Special Agent Michael Snedekerprovided an affidavit to an Eastern District of NYmagistrate judge to request a search of Kayla. Seventh Circuit Holds that Evidence Gathered Through an Unlawful Search of a Home May Be Admissible Under the Independent Source Doctrine Even if Tainted Evidence Is Described in the Warrant Application. In the context of Article 1, Section 12, we have done so when, among other considerations, "the aims of predictability and precision in judicial review of search and seizure cases . The reason the warrant did not describe the vehicles in this case, as in Dumper, is that the warrant application materials failed to mention the vehicles, which consequently fell beyond the scope of the warrant. "This rule applies equally to all containers" (id. On appeal, the Appellate Division affirmed, and we now do so as well. A Judge of this Court granted the People's motion for leave to appeal (33 NY3d 976 [2019]), and we now affirm. 2021 NY Slip Op 01093 For reasons explained above, Mr. Gordon is correct that adopting the People's position would amount to a substantial deviation from the rule to which we have adhered under both the Fourth Amendment and Article 1, Section 12 of the State Constitution, requiring warrants to provide particularization between vehicles and real property, even when a vehicle is located on real property.[FN3]. Defendant's [*7]expectation of privacy in the vehicles is not disputed. We then concluded that even if the affidavit had been sufficient to support a search of the residence, the warrant failed "in any event [to] justify a search of the automobile which had just been driven into the driveway" (id. Case Summary: 08-cv-04373 This case involves claims by numerous citizens that their constitutional rights were violated by the United States government through unauthorized surveillance of their telephone and internet activity by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government actors under the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" or TSP. Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. Search and Seizure Latest Search Biden Administration Asks Congress to Reauthorize Warrantless Surveillance Law Facing steeper political headwinds than past cycles, the executive branch is. However, Siegal struck back with a letter to Judge Feuerstein regarding the prosecutor's intentions to pursue criminal action against Drago: In its letter, the Government has asserted that, notwithstanding the suppression of theevidence, it intends to proceed with prosecuting John [Drago]. The garage had a structural and functional existence distinct from defendant's van which should have been recognized by the investigators" (id. Section 690.15 (1) of the CPL states: "1. The majority's "clarif[ication]" of the cases (which comes nearly a half century later), transforming them into state constitutional decisions, is nothing short of judicial legerdemain (majority op at 19). In the Nissan, which defendant was borrowing from the owner, the police found heroin, marijuana, cocaine, money, and drug paraphernalia. Government prosecutorssaid that they intend to seek a superseding indictment on new allegations. Before Supreme Court, Mr. Gordon cited the same New York caselaw discussed above to argue that New York law has "consistently adhered to the position that a search warrant must specify the area to be searched." at 20). Shield ruled on September 10 that the items seized from Drago's business shouldbe suppressed and that the agents' reliance on a warrant without aspecification of a crime was one of "recklessness.". recent illegal search and seizure cases 2022 recent illegal search and seizure cases 2022. at 37). Two cases recently argued before SCOTUS could narrow or expand warrantless searches - and they could reach back to what police are doing now Feb 2, 2018 2018 started off with a double-feature in the U.S. Supreme Court starring the Fourth Amendment and police authority to search and seize. Thus, to be valid, a search warrant must be "specific enough to leave no discretion to the executing officer" (People v Brown, 96 NY2d 80, 84 [2001], quoting People v Darling, 95 NY2d 530, 537 [2000]). The actions of the investigators in breaking and entering into the building were unreasonable, as there was "no evidence whatever which would indicate that the garage was a premises where the controlled activity was taking place.