I have had many clients come to me feeling hopeless about the situation they are in. They  needed a good Ohio criminal defense attorney. They were arrested with a search warrant that contains misrepresentations. They were nervous, scared and confused and felt that it was their word against law enforcement and there was nothing they could do.

There are so many kinds of lies or misrepresentations in search warrants. Some are simple and minor – maybe it’s just a typo.  But, the list is long where the mistakes are just blatant; here are just a few:

  • An officer obtained a no-knock search warrant for a couple’s residence based on a woman’s call to a city hotline stating that her sister was a felon possessing a gun unlawfully. The caller, however, had not seen her sister or the gun in five years and the officers stated it as five days on the warrant application. He was not entitled to qualified immunity on an unlawful search claim. A reasonable jury could, under these circumstances, find that the officer knowingly or with reckless disregard made false statements in his warrant application.
  • A police officer made reasonable efforts to obtain a search warrant for a residence based on information from a gang informant, and the warrant was supported by probable cause. Because of the existence of multiple living units in what was mistakenly believed to be a single family residence, however, and the failure of the warrant to specify which unit to search, officers entered a unit occupied by someone other than the suspect, a woman who was over seven months pregnant. The officers, from the fact that they first found the front of the bottom floor occupied by an office, and saw that they could not get to the rest of the building from there, should have realized that the building was not a single family residence. They could see that there were separate doors for first and second floor apartments, and should have called off the search, the court reasoned. Instead, they searched for an hour before acknowledging that they were in the wrong place. The search violated the woman’s Fourth Amendment rights.
  • A married couple and their two children sued a city and one of its detectives for unlawful search, failure to “knock and announce,” and excessive force. The detective, while searching for suspects in a stabbing, received information from a confidential informant in which the names of a suspect and his mother were similar to the husband and wife’s names. He used this information to obtain a search warrant for the plaintiffs’ residence. The search was carried out by a SWAT team and a K-9 unit, who entered the home with drawn weapons. All four residents were “rounded up,” but the officers then realized that they were in the wrong house. A federal appeals court found that there was sufficient evidence from which a jury could find that the search warrant was not supported by probable cause and that the detective had made representations about the location of the suspect that were either knowingly false or made with reckless disregard of the truth.

The Bottom Line:  Before a search or arrest warrant is issued, the Fourth Amendment requires a truthful factual showing in the affidavit used to establish probable cause. If you believe there were misrepresentations or omissions in the warrant, you need an experienced Criminal Defense Attorney to help show that the false statement to get the warrant was a known or intentional omission and to prove that your rights were violated. Call me.  I can help.  513-260-2099