Let’s say that multiple, independent Investigations have been opened against a single individual, Patrick.
One of the teams running an investigation - far before any other group is liable to do - swoops in and grabs all of Patrick’s things.
Under the process of a normal investigation, those materials would - as I understand it - go through a taint team and most materials would be returned to Patrick in as quick a time as reasonable.
But, in this case, where there are other Investigators who were thinking that they might want to one day issue a warrant for much the same materials, is there any process for them to request that those materials not be returned to the owner / for copies to be made / etc.? Or will Patrick have a chance to retrieve and destroy the materials that are released by the first team, if the secondary teams are still not to the level of being able to issue their own warrants before the materials are returned?
IANAL, but I’m pretty sure if the first team looking at the material finds evidence of crimes other than the ones it’s investigating, it can either start a new investigation or share that information with a second or third team already investigating that particular criminal activity. They’re all on the same team.
Let’s assume that these are largely financial crimes or otherwise not obvious unless you go through the materials very carefully and that the first crime was something unrelated to financial crimes so, unless one of the other teams can all the taint team to look for materials like X (?), they’re probably going to ignore most of the materials that would be of interest to the other teams and certainly they will not find any obvious crimes other than the one they were looking for.
Does the second team have the legal right to examine the seized materials, or would they need a warrant to say they are entitled to look at that? I imagine it makes no difference whether Team A or Patrick have possession, for Team B to look they need legal authority? Then presumably they can either (a) tell Team A “here’s our warrant, let us look over your shoulder or share the table” or (b) tell Team A “here’s our warrant, whatever you are finished with, pass on to us to vet, and we will take care of returning it”
oddly, there’s a discussion related to this topic on TV right now.
Yes, if evidence is in “plain sight” which I assume means it is evident too when the Team A examines the seized materials in detail, they are then allowed to pass those materials to a second team. (I.e. “we’re looking for discussions about high finance and we hear him on tape arranging to procure underage girls” - presumably they’d pass that on to the sex crimes unit and be entirely within their rights, if the tape was seized under a legal subpoena)
But presumably they are also allowed to ignore such material in the first place. “We’re the high finance international money laundering police, we don’t give a … hoot … about your petty drug paraphernalia laws so we didn’t keep the glass document box so you could check for cocaine residue on the lid.” Unless Team B shows up with a warrant.
I have seen discussions that “plain sight” means “plain sight”. If you have a warrant that says “look for illegal guns” you can open a box that is big enough to contain a gun, but you cannot open an envelope and read the contents, since there’s no way it can contain a gun. not sure you are entitled to seize a wad of cash with that warrant, but I would assume no. (As I understand, usually warrants are written fairly broadly to cover things like any money that may be proceeds from the crime under investigation if that’s relevant)
ZOMG that reminds me of a story from my area a while about a guy who IIRC was involved in some pretty serious financial shenanigans, and they searched his roommate’s laptop in case it held more evidence.
It did, but not the financial type. They found numerous videos of the roommate having sex with various women, and it was really obvious that the women did not know about, or consent to, the filming, so he was arrested for that.
Presuming the warrant as written allowed them to search a third person’s private property. For example, sometimes you hear that a warrant can be looking for anything related to Bob dealing drugs - so they can search Bob’s room and the common areas, but not Fred’s room which is private and not somewhere Bob goes.
All depends on what the warrant says and whether probably cause backs it up.