Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest and treatment

Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by boredguy8 on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @10:32AM (#1494290)

  and found is in quotes for a good reason, as the drugs “found” near
  me were “found” in the execution of a warrant for computers only

For what it's worth, the Fourth Amendment protects against 'unreasonable' searches and seizures. Anything found in the reasonable execution of a search warrant is admissible.

I don't know where the myth came from that only evidence related to the probable cause of the warrant is admissible. This is an on-face absurd interpretation: by that logic, if the police entered a house to search for evidence of felony tax evasion and stumbled upon a murder in progress, that wouldn't be admissible because the police weren't in the house searching for a murderer.

There is plenty of case law establishing limits on reasonability. For instance, in the execution of a lawful search of an apartment looking for weapons, officers saw a stereo that 'didn't fit the furnishings'. They lifted up the bottom of the stereo to take down serial numbers, and the person was arrested for having stolen the stereo. The problem, of course, is that weapons aren't stored under the bottom of a flat-bottomed stereo, and certainly the serial numbers weren't a reasonable part of the search for weapons.

But having drugs out in the middle of the room in 'plain view' is clearly reasonable. Even from weev's own post, the drug evidence passes the Horton test.

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by cschep on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:36AM (#1494457)

If you don't know what a Horton test is, like I didn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by sp332 on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:37AM (#1494459)

His point is that the original warrant had no probable cause. So any evidence collected in its execution should be inadmissible.

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by boredguy8 on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @12:53PM (#1494675)

The argument that there was no probable cause is very unlikely to hold up in practice. The law is very lenient to the issuance and execution of warrants.

  Warrants are favored in the law and utilization of them will not 
  be thwarted by a hypertechnical reading of the supporting 
  affidavit and supporting testimony. For the same reason, 
  reviewing courts will accept evidence of a less "judicially 
  competent or persuasive character than would have justified an 
  officer in acting on his own without a warrant." Courts will 
  sustain the determination of probable cause so long as "there 
  was substantial basis for [the magistrate] to conclude that" 
  there was probable cause.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/..., citing United States v. Ventresca, Jones v. United States, and Aguilar v. Texas.

If you're interested in some of the intricacies of 4th Ammendment jurisprudence, http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/1994Fourth.pdf is a phenomenal article.

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by invisible on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @01:51PM (#1494854)

Shouldn't the person the warrant applies to be served and/or notified of the warrant and given a copy? I was under the impression that a warrant was a way to give police rights that they do not typically have according to civil rights. It's a civil contract that they will not exceed the rights they are given, so I'd assume he should be given a copy with an explanation of why his rights are being lessened temporarily.

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by edanm on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:48AM (#1494495)

Is that really the case? If the police is executing an illegal warrant, but comes across someone, say, murdering someone else, is that not considered evidence?

(This might very well be the case, considering the "Fruit of the Poisonous tree" doctrine).

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by Zak on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @12:10PM (#1494566)

It is, but there's a loophole: the prosecution can argue that the police inevitably would have discovered the evidence eventually. It's fairly easy to claim for something like a murder because hiding a body permanently tends to be fairly difficult, and arguing that the murderer would have successfully hidden the body is very close to an admission of guilt.

Edit: if the police interrupt and prevent a murder, the testimony of the murder victim is also admissible. I don't think the argument "if the police hadn't illegally searched the area, the victim would be dead and unable to testify" works.

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Re:Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest an... by thwarted on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @01:13PM (#1494736)

if the police entered a house to search for evidence of felony tax evasion and stumbled upon a murder in progress, that wouldn't be admissible because the police weren't in the house searching for a murderer.

But they couldn't cite the murder as admissible evidence of felony tax evasion, it would need to be separate charges, wouldn't it?

Well, at least you were able to dodge the tax evasion charge by distraction/misdirection. Now, about this little murder thing...

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