If the law has a SW for something in particular (gun, blood, rope…) and they don’t find it on the first search, do they need a new one for any other return trips?
In other words, is there a time frame or time limit on the SW?
and the SW has to describe exactly what they’re looking for?
thanks for clearing this up.
IANAL, and one’ll be along in a minute. Nevertheless, while I don’t know about time constraints, I do believe they must specify what they think they’ll find when seeking a search warrant.
So, if they’re looking for the getaway car, they can’t reasonably search your hard disk.
And in the time it took to go take a leak it occurred to me that something on your HDD or in your underwear drawer might lead to the location of the getaway car.
Bleah.
I need to just stay out of these IANAL posts.
Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Another non-lawyer.
According to this PDF file, they need to get a new warrant unless the second visit can reasonably be considered a continuation of the first search.
“Once the search is considered completed under a warrant, officers need a second warrant to reenter the property… The Sixth Court of Appeals held that a single warrant might authorize more than one entry into a premise as long as the second entry is a “reasonable continuation” of the original search.”
They give an example of officers having a warrant to search a car, but not being able to open the hood. In this case, coming back the next day with a mechanic would be legal, as the first search had not been completed and the return was thus a reasonable continuation.
The second example is of a group of officers who search a house for drugs, using dogs and thoroughly searching every room, and find a small amount of evidence. One officer thinks that something was missed and comes back the next day, whereupon he finds more evidence. In this case, because the officers had everything they needed to conduct a satisfactory search on their first visit, and because the officers had left after deciding that they had completed their search, the visit on the next day required a second search warrant, and therefore the evidence gathered in that second visit was inadmissible.
It would seem from this, tcdaniel, that if the police search your house looking for a murder weapon, it would be ok for them to come back the next day with a locksmith to open that closet you said you lost the key to, but not ok for them to show up again and say “by the way, we’d like to have another look through your kitchen.”
As for time limits, I’d assume (in my non-lawyerly way) that the police would need state exactly what part of the search was left incomplete and why they would need to come back, and that this would have to be done in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise, it appears that once they decide to pack their stuff and leave, the search is over.