4 ms·

Point of clarification: I know the police are allowed to lie and fudge the truth to suspects and defendant, but is there a legal requirement for them to be fort

Point of clarification: I know the police are allowed to lie and fudge the truth to suspects and defendant, but is there a legal requirement for them to be forthcoming and truthful to Judges in warrants? Also, tending to agree that even if they had included TOR in the search warrant, the judge would have most likely signed it anyways becasue child porn is a big "must do something" thing, and the technology would have probably gone over the Judges' head anyways. In this day if the police use the words "child porn" they could get a warrant for just about anything under the sun.

dsp1234 11y ago
is there a legal requirement for them to be forthcoming and truthful to Judges in warrants? This is called Perjury[0]. There is no law enforcement exception to it. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury
- merpnderp 11y ago
  There is no legal exception to it, but there is in fact a de facto exception to it, since a DA must decide to press charges. How else can all those videos contradicting sworn testimony go nowhere?
  - Overtonwindow 11y ago
    Good point.
r0m4n0 11y ago
It does get really hairy. Having read a few technical related warrants (and by no means can I speak to many), they are truly using every last bit of persuasion to convince a judge to sign the warrant and usually request to sweep as much information as possible. They start off with all their goofy worthless technical qualifications eg "3 week cyber security training at McAfee Sleuthing Summit". Then proceed to go into the facts of what they discovered, blending it with the story they believe is true (and in the case I know of wasn't true and was a narrative that was an extreme over exaggeration). The judge signs the warrant then later on if you were actually charged, you have the legal knowhow, and/or massive amounts of money, you could challenge the sweeping nature of the warrant or grounds it was signed upon. In this case it didn't really matter much though... they were able to cause great annoyance to a third party and the law enforcement folks involved will likely never be held responsible. I think its really important for the judge only to look at the facts and to decide to sign based only upon that. In this case, the facts were probably very weak. I'm not sure what other contents could be possible other than, "this was the last known IP address for this packet containing child porn, can we search their premises and copy all their data plz"
- schlowmo 11y ago
  You can read those mentioned qualifications for this particular officer in the Affidavit for Search Warrant at page 2: https://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2016/04/08/1460142130-search_warrant_redacted3.pdf https://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2016/04/08/146... My favorite is "Basic Computer Skills for Law Enforcement" which could be literally everything, starting with "How to play minesweeper?"
eric_arrr 11y ago
Yes, there is. See Franks v. Delaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_v._Delaware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_v._Delaware The instant case is one of material omission rather than false statement, but there is a substantial amount of case law recognizing that material omissions should be treated the same as false statements.
- nkurz 11y ago
  You might be answering a slightly different question. If there is material omission, the "poisonous fruits of the illegal search" conducted under the fraudulent warrant may be inadmissible in a trial. But that's separate than whether the intentional omission is itself illegal. Is there any legal consequences for a law enforcement agency to mislead a judge through omission to obtain a search warrant? Clearly these sort of omissions are happening, especially in the context of parallel construction, and arguably they are technically perjury, but have there been any cases where law enforcement officials have received punishment for this?
blakeyrat 11y ago
It's perjury, but I imagine it'd have to be REALLY blatantly wrong for a DA to go after a cop for that. If they ever would.

dsp1234 11y ago

is there a legal requirement for them to be forthcoming and truthful to Judges in warrants? This is called Perjury[0]. There is no law enforcement exception to it. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury

merpnderp 11y ago
There is no legal exception to it, but there is in fact a de facto exception to it, since a DA must decide to press charges. How else can all those videos contradicting sworn testimony go nowhere?
- Overtonwindow 11y ago
  Good point.

r0m4n0 11y ago

It does get really hairy. Having read a few technical related warrants (and by no means can I speak to many), they are truly using every last bit of persuasion to convince a judge to sign the warrant and usually request to sweep as much information as possible. They start off with all their goofy worthless technical qualifications eg "3 week cyber security training at McAfee Sleuthing Summit". Then proceed to go into the facts of what they discovered, blending it with the story they believe is true (and in the case I know of wasn't true and was a narrative that was an extreme over exaggeration). The judge signs the warrant then later on if you were actually charged, you have the legal knowhow, and/or massive amounts of money, you could challenge the sweeping nature of the warrant or grounds it was signed upon. In this case it didn't really matter much though... they were able to cause great annoyance to a third party and the law enforcement folks involved will likely never be held responsible. I think its really important for the judge only to look at the facts and to decide to sign based only upon that. In this case, the facts were probably very weak. I'm not sure what other contents could be possible other than, "this was the last known IP address for this packet containing child porn, can we search their premises and copy all their data plz"

schlowmo 11y ago
You can read those mentioned qualifications for this particular officer in the Affidavit for Search Warrant at page 2: https://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2016/04/08/1460142130-search_warrant_redacted3.pdf https://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2016/04/08/146... My favorite is "Basic Computer Skills for Law Enforcement" which could be literally everything, starting with "How to play minesweeper?"

eric_arrr 11y ago

Yes, there is. See Franks v. Delaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_v._Delaware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_v._Delaware The instant case is one of material omission rather than false statement, but there is a substantial amount of case law recognizing that material omissions should be treated the same as false statements.

nkurz 11y ago
You might be answering a slightly different question. If there is material omission, the "poisonous fruits of the illegal search" conducted under the fraudulent warrant may be inadmissible in a trial. But that's separate than whether the intentional omission is itself illegal. Is there any legal consequences for a law enforcement agency to mislead a judge through omission to obtain a search warrant? Clearly these sort of omissions are happening, especially in the context of parallel construction, and arguably they are technically perjury, but have there been any cases where law enforcement officials have received punishment for this?

blakeyrat 11y ago

It's perjury, but I imagine it'd have to be REALLY blatantly wrong for a DA to go after a cop for that. If they ever would.