are best promoted by applying State constitutional standards" (Johnson, 66 NY2d at 407) and when the "constitutional protections we have enjoyed in this State have in fact been diluted by subsequent decisions of a more recent Supreme Court (Scott, 79 NY2d at 504 [Kaye, C.J., concurring]). The converse is also true. Our decision in Dumper rested on two grounds. This site is maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the Federal Judiciary. Yesterday, Judge Feuerstein issued anorderconfirming that information gained from the search would not be admissible. . . Decided on February 18, 2021 upon the magistrate determining probable cause"]). The majority's "clarif[ication]" of the cases (which comes nearly a half century later), transforming them into state constitutional decisions, is nothing short of judicial legerdemain (majority op at 19). On appeal, the Appellate Division affirmed, and we now do so as well. We explained that: "a warrant must describe the premises to be searched, and this warrant did not include the automobile, which was not on the premises when the police came with the warrant but which was driven into the driveway while police were there, [and therefore] it did not justify [a] search of the car" (id). Nearly 30 years ago, an Appellate Division court applied Ross to reach the same conclusion (see People v Powers, 173 AD2d 886, 888-889 [3d Dept 1991] [interpreting Ross to permit the search of a vehicle owned or controlled by the owner of the premises authorized to be searched by the warrant], lv denied 78 NY2d 1079 [1991]). A search and seizure is not valid unless it is based on either a warrant that was issued based on probable cause that a crime had been committed or upon an exception. at 128). Shield's allowed government prosecutors to submit their objections but they took a pass saying that they intended toreturn all of the records seized in the raid as well as destroy the electronic images it created as a result of the seized information. In the appropriate case, Dumper may be relevant in assessing how we would decide that issue, but it is not relevant here. D E C I S I O N. LEONEN, J.: To be valid, searches must proceed from a warrant issued by a judge.1 While there are exceptions to this rule, warrantless searches can only be carried out when founded on probable cause . a premises) does not impliedly encompass the others. In Hansen, it appears that the Court rejected the argument that the affidavit on which the warrant was issued provided probable cause of trafficking, because it was factually deficient and the trafficking-related allegation was unreliable hearsay, thus undermining the related argument that there was probable cause to search the van as part of a drug business or because it was otherwise connected to the drugs in the house (id.). ILLEGAL SEARCH AND SEIZURE: RECENT DC COURT OF APPEALS DECISION February 27, 2019 11:07 am | Comments Off The Court of Appeals in Posey v. US, decided on February 21, 2019, reversed the trial's court denial of the suppression motion and thus vacated the conviction. In Ross, the United States Supreme Court held that, where police officers have probable cause to believe that contraband is concealed somewhere within a vehicle, they may conduct a warrantless search of every part of it and its contents, including all containers and packages, that may conceal the object of the search (id. People v Hansen (38 NY2d 17 [1975]), also cited by the Court in Sciacca, is likewise factually inapposite and not controlling. We concluded that there was probable cause to search the target residence for the drugs observed by the police, as the information in the warrant was not stale, but there was no probable cause to search the van, as the presence of the drugs in the house was not indicative of more than possessionin other words, no evidence of narcotics trafficking (see id. There is no "constitutional distinction between 'worthy' and 'unworthy' containers" (id.). . Indeed, the observed pattern, as described in the affidavit, was for Mr. Gordon to proceed from the residence to the street and back, without detouring to any vehicles parked at the residence. This case considers, for the first time in Georgia, the effect of the State's delay in obtaining search warrants for data contained in electronic devices when those devices were originally seized in a warrantless, but lawful, manner by police. Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law 431. Williams, 2019 U.S. App. Mr. Gordon relies primarily on New York precedent; the People look instead to federal caselaw for guidance. 2021 NY Slip Op 01093 Our conclusion that the officers in this case exceeded the scope of the warrant finds support both in our prior cases and in the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) (see Hanlon, 36 NY2d at 559 ["(P)robable cause (must be) demonstrated as a matter of fact in the manner prescribed by statute (CPL art. . Instead of attempting to ameliorate the concern by, as other courts have done, fashioning an appropriate rule (see n 1, supra), the majority categorically prohibits the search of vehicles pursuant to a premises warrant unless the vehicles are identified in the warrant application and supported by a separate showing of probable cause, making vehicles concealed on premises effectively search proof. InJune 13, 2017, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan delivered a blistering account ofthoseFBI raidsWey's attorney. Because the supporting affidavits did not describe the vehicles to be searched at all, never mind with any particular allegations connecting them to criminal activity, the record supports the affirmed finding that there was no probable cause to search the vehicles. Instead, we exercise our independent authority to follow our existing state constitutional jurisprudence, even if federal constitutional jurisprudence has changed, because "we are persuaded that the proper safeguarding of fundamental constitutional rights requires that we do so" (Scott, 79 NY2d at 480; see generally William J. Brennan, Jr., State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv L Rev 489 [1977]; Jeffrey S. Sutton, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law 16-20 [2018] [counseling against state high courts engaging in "lockstepping" and describing instead the virtues of independent assessments of parallel constitutional provisions]; Goodwin Liu, State Courts and Constitutional Structure, 128 Yale LJ 1304, 1311 [2019] [noting that "redundancy (of constitutional interpretation) makes innovation and variation possible and, for that reason, is a vital feature of our federal system"]). Facing steeper political headwinds than past cycles, the executive branch is packaging the spying authority known as Section 702 as more than a counterterrorism tool. Collins v. Virginia . The Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the Appellate Division affirming Supreme Court's judgment ordering the suppression of physical evidence seized from two vehicles, holding that the search warrant materials failed to provide probable cause to search the vehicles. Order affirmed. at 402 [the "ultimate mandate of reasonableness" "depend(s) upon the facts and circumstances"]). With respect to its treatment of the New York State Constitution, the majority, without clarifying whether it interprets the relevant state constitutional provision as diverging from its federal counterpart, reaches two very problematic conclusions: first, that defendant preserved an argument that our State Constitution provides more protection than the Fourth Amendment, by simply citing New York cases, even though those cases contain no discussion of the State Constitution; and second, that those earlier decisions by this Court somehow justify, with no further analysis, a constitutional rule applicable to this case. The items that could be seized in the raid were listed as; "Records, documents and materials that memorialize or reflect financial transactions between Kayla and its source(s) of cash, including, but not limited to contracts, receipts, invoices, letter, bank statements, notes, ledgers, cash receipt journals or records cash shipment records, and/or cash delivery records". Prosecutors did not provide a date for when Drago should expect that indictment. Ross itself does not govern the situation here, and we are skeptical of the wisdom of the federal appellate cases extending it [FN1]. The search, like at least two others conducted at locations associated with President Biden, was undertaken with the cooperation of the president and his legal team. Federal law enforcement has issued its share of search warrants, but now another one has been ruled to have been a violation of a defendant's4th Amendment rights (unreasonable search and seizure). InAugust 2013,Special Agent Michael Snedekerprovided an affidavit to an Eastern District of NYmagistrate judge to request a search of Kayla. Steve Eder,Matthew Rosenberg,Joseph Goldstein,Mike Baker,Kassie Bracken. In the Supreme Court of Georgia Decided: March 11, 2019 S18A1090. Federal courts, applying Ross, have found that vehicles located in the area to be searched are a type of containerworthy of no more protection than other types of containers (see e.g. The notion that the Government will now, at this late date,seek to add new charges and additional detail, but only in reaction to being embarrassed byhaving lost the suppression motion, smacks of impropriety and desperation on theGovernments part. In all cases, the alleged sales followed the same pattern: a car would arrive on the street outside the residence, Mr. Gordon or another person would emerge from the residence, approach the prospective buyer, and then return to the residence a few minutes later. Like Sciacca and Dumper, Hansen focused on the basic tenets of probable cause of criminal activity in the warrants at issue and did not address the question here. The significance of that conclusion relates back to the basic standards for issuing and reviewing search warrants (see Nieves, 36 NY2d at 402 [ "In reviewing the validity of a search warrant . However, we held that the police lacked sufficient evidence to search a vehicle that had been seen coming and going from the residence. To further that role, our constitution assigns to the magistrate the tasks of evaluating whether probable cause exists to initiate a search and defining the subjects to be searched (see Nieves, 36 NY2d at 402 ["In reviewing the validity of a search warrant to determine whether it was supported by probable cause or whether it contained a sufficiently particular description of its target, the critical facts and circumstances for the reviewing court are those which were made known to the issuing Magistrate at the time the warrant application was determined"]). The Supreme Court did not address whether a search of an automobile could be upheld when the information supporting a warrant application is determined by a magistrate to justify the search of a premises but makes no mention of vehicles located on the property. I disagree. However, Siegal struck back with a letter to Judge Feuerstein regarding the prosecutor's intentions to pursue criminal action against Drago: In its letter, the Government has asserted that, notwithstanding the suppression of theevidence, it intends to proceed with prosecuting John [Drago]. No such connections were made here. . Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed. We cannot accept the argument that the entry into the private garage was a permissible incident of the right to search pursuant to a warrant. at 21 [emphasis added]). The State appealed that decision. Wilson, J. at 20). So important is the role of the neutral and detached magistrate that we have in the past parted ways from federal constitutional jurisprudence when we believed that an emerging rule of federal constitutional law "dilute[s] . The warrant here authorized the search of a particular van and nothing else. Nevertheless, in our view, that does not render our repeated citations to the State Constitution meaningless. Although some Federal Courts of Appeals have interpreted the Fourth Amendment in a manner that might permit the search here, we decline to follow suit. The majority sets out for new territory both in terms of preservation of the issue and in determining when our decisions establish a state constitutional standard greater than that of the Fourth Amendment. Our prior decisional law and the CPL's differentiation between premises, vehicles, and persons both support the view that specific descriptions or designations, backed by particularized probable cause, are required for a search of each. The People and dissent contend that we should extend the reasoning of Ross to hold, as some Federal Courts of Appeals have, that vehicles located outside a residence are no different from any other "closets, chests, drawers, [or] containers" located within (id. . As explained below, the constitutional principles we have developed in this area, including judicial monitoring of the search warrant process and the importance of probable cause and particularity, strongly weigh against the People's proposed rule. Counts 5 through 9 rested in large part on the physical evidence seized from the two vehicles. This Court has never held that a mere reference or citation to both a state constitutional provision and its federal counterpart is enough to preserve an argument that the parallel state provision provides for heightened protection. When the People invoked Ross in their response papers, defendant ignored the argument.[FN8]. By Alan Feuer,Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess. It's a fact that check cashing businesses handle a lot of cash and with a lot of cash comes a lot of reporting. The Fourth Amendment provides important constitutional limits on abusive policing. The parties dispute the proper standards for evaluating the sufficiency of the warrant application and whether the search of the vehicles conformed to the warrant's directives. Court of Appeals . . We agreed, and held that "[f]or purposes of satisfying the State and Federal constitutional requirements, the searching of two or of more residential apartments in the same building is no different from searching two or more separate residential houses. His sole contention was that the search of the vehicles was outside the scope of the search permitted by the warrant, noting that the vehicles were not in an attached garage and thus not part of the home. Video, 68 NY2d at 306 [distinguishing federal constitutional law in part of the grounds that New York imposes a "rigorous, fact-specific standard of review . The Justice Department cited the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege in demanding testimony from a lawyer representing former President Donald Trump in his documents case. Prosecutors appealed, hoping to. Our statement in that case, unrelated to specific facts before the Court, that "a warrant to search a building does not include authority to search vehicles at the premises" (id. Get free summaries of new New York Court of Appeals opinions delivered to your inbox! The majority's rejoinderthat the absence of any discussion of the State Constitution "does not render our repeated citations to [it] meaningless" (majority op at 18)makes a parallel citation the equivalent of principled state constitutional discourse. Because the search warrant in this case contained no references to the vehicles and the record supports the finding of Supreme Court that the search warrant materials failed to provide probable cause to search the vehicles, the evidence seized therefrom was properly suppressed. In Dumper, the search warrant was similarly directed at discrete structures, including "a one story wood frame cottage with white sidewall, green roof" and a "cottage east of a main house" (id. In the proceedings below, Supreme Court held that although the police had probable cause to search Mr. Gordon and his residence, the warrant did not encompass the search of two vehicles located outside the residence, and the police lacked probable cause to search those vehicles. This case presents the question whether the Fourth Amendment tolerates a dog sniff conducted after completion of a traffic stop. You already receive all suggested Justia Opinion Summary Newsletters. As the Court made clear, the fact that the warrant in Sciacca "authorized the search of a particular van and nothing else" did not mean that "a vehicle may never be searched while on private property" (id. Nevertheless, the majority argues that defendant's reliance on those cases, without more, was sufficient to preserve a state constitutional argument (see majority op at 16-17). As in Hansen, "no observation was reported as to any movement of persons between the house and the [vehicles]" (Hansen, 38 NY2d at 20) that would substantiate a belief that the vehicles searched were utilized in the alleged criminal activity. Thus, the majority upsetsto say the leastthis Court's well settled preservation rules holding that defendant preserved an argument that the State Constitution provides heightened protection simply by citing several New York cases in which the sole reference to the New York Constitution is in a parallel cite with the Federal Constitution. Washington CNN The Supreme Court on Monday wiped away a lower court decision that held that law enforcement could enter a Rhode Island man's home and seize his firearms without a warrant.