I recently rented the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. In one scene, the cops show up with a warrant, Crown calls for his lawyer (who is coincedentally in the house), and then we see the cops leaving, pissed that they didn’t get to search.
So what legal basis could the lawyer have used to kick the cops out if they had a legal warrant to search the premises? They warrent was legal, issued by a judge, presented upon arrival to search his home. What could the lawyer have said to make them leave, or is this just bad screenwriting? (Like Double Jeopardy, I can’t see that movie cuz the whole premise is bogus - of course Ashley Judd can be tried again if she kills her husband for real, it’s a different crime than the one she was convicted of!).
In general, if the police show with a warrant, they’re going to search whatever it was they came for.
If your wily attorney was able to point out an obvious flaw in the warrant (i.e. the address is wrong) that might turn them away. The police know if they do a search on a faulty warrant anything they find would be thrown out of evidence in a court. Better to leave and get the warrant ‘fixed’ than to press the search and have everything found be worthless as evidence later.
Thanks Jeff_42. I was pretty sure once the cops shows up with a valid warrant, that means they now have the right to search, regardless of how highly paid your lawyer is. Assuming that the wily lawyer noticed some flaw in the warrant, I guess the director or screen writer didn’t think that was important enough for the audience to know.
If you want to preserve the surprise, skip the following…
I THOUGHT that Denis Leary and the police DID get to search the THomas Crown house, and left in anger and frustration because the stolen painting they HOPED to find wasn’t there! In fact, it wasn’t there because Crown had hired a forger to put a different painting OVER it, and had returned it to the Museum.
Yes, that’s the exact impression I got from the film as well. I’m sure he called his lawyer just because that would be the thing to do, even if the warrant was legit.
They left in anger and frustration, and Rene Russo’s line was, “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to get in.” (Or something like that) leading me to believe they weren’t allowed to search. Then she steals his keys from his jacket, enters illegally, finds the painting behind the wall (which turns out to be a fake)
If they were allowed to search the first time, and she was with the the first time, wouldn’t this have been found then?