Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, folks, Lawyer Talk podcast off the record, on the air. Q and I style, Q and A style. This is what I call the Circle 270 media follow up question. For those who've followed this series, what happens is we, Our producer, Brett Circle 270 Media listens to all this and he's got great questions. And he had a question. I just talked about search warrants. I just talked about the four corners of a search warrant affidavit. And the question in response to that was, well, what happens if the police, they have a valid Four Corners warrant? In other words, there's probable cause and warrant and they go into a suspect's house and they're supposed to be looking for a kilo or a brick of cocaine and then they find something else they find maybe unlawful or an unlawful firearm, we'll say, or some other instrumentality of crime.

Steve Palmer [00:00:47]:

It's a good question. So here's how this shakes out. First of all, we have the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment says no searches without a warrant. And you would think, well, that means just what it says, no searches without a warrant. Except over the years, the U.S. supreme Court has decided that there are exceptions to the search warrant requirement. One of those exceptions is something called plain view.

Steve Palmer [00:01:13]:

All right, so here's what that means. If the police are lawfully in a place, and that place may be your home, if they have a search warrant and they're allowed to be in there and they see some contraband sitting there in plain view, they're not required simply to ignore it and not seize it. They can act on it. So the police are in your house and they have a search warrant to look for a brick of cocaine. And lo and behold, they find a brick of cocaine under your bed. And next to the brick of cocaine is an automatic as a machine gun, a fully automatic machine gun, which is an unlawful gun, they're not required to ignore that evidence. In fact, we would all think, even as a criminal defense lawyer, I think, well, it makes sense they should be able to seize that because it was found in plain view. Now, if it turns out we go to court and the search warrant affidavit isn't valid, then the police were not there in good faith or in a place they were allowed to be rather, and they see something in plain view.

Steve Palmer [00:02:11]:

Now everything as a result of that invalid warrant gets thrown out. We call that fruit of the poisonous tree under the exclusionary rule. So any of the tentacles out there, like think of the branches and the fruit that comes off those poisonous branches Meaning it's a bad search ab initio from the beginning. So everything the police saw while they were there gets thrown out of court. It's a great question and I guess there's one other thing we should say. So sometimes we get a search warrant, say for. Just say it's a. They have a search warrant for a machine gun and they describe the machine gun as three feet long with four magazines because they know they did a direct sale or something and they have a search warrant for a machine gun.

Steve Palmer [00:02:55]:

There's an old adage that I think courts have used over the years is like the police are not allowed to search for an elephant in a shoebox. So what the police can't do is start in theory, they can't start looking for or looking in places where there's no way that machine gun would be. So for instance, you could not fit a three foot machine gun in a shoebox. If the police are rummaging through the house and the search warrant only gives them authority to look for the machine gun, then the police in theory cannot open up a shoebox or a small safe. And let's say they do and they find drugs or something that in theory would exceed the scope of the warrant. Generally police are wise to this and a good detective will include language in the search warrant that also that would give them the authority to look for other instrumentalities of crime. You know, receipts, documents, something that gives them broader authority than just to look for the one thing. But anyway, great question.

Steve Palmer [00:03:54]:

There's lots more that we could do on this fourth amendment stuff. If you've got your own question, just like Circle 270 Media, shoot it to us at LawyerTalkPodcast.com, q&A style off the record on the air till now.