Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

Being subjected to a police search is a harrowing experience. Even if the person who is subjected to the search is completely innocent, it is nerve-racking to have someone sifting through your possessions and looking for any evidence they can find that may lead to your arrest. This is particularly true if the police have already obtained a search warrant, because that generally means that law enforcement was able to provide a magistrate with probable cause to believe that evidence of illegal activity would be found in the home or area that is the subject of the search.

The Constitution provides a variety of different protections for persons who are subjected to searches. In fact, the invasion of a person’s right to privacy in their home has been designated by the United States Supreme Court as the primary evil that the Fourth Amendment is meant to prevent. One way in which this protection takes shape is through the requirement that a search warrant describe with particularity the things or evidence sought to be seized. This means that a search warrant can’t just authorize a general search of a place or dwelling; rather, it must describe with reasonable particularity what those who are performing the search are looking for. This is supposed to prevent those conducting the search from using a general warrant and ransacking the entire house or business in order to find any piece of incriminating evidence that they can. Whether it works this way in reality is sometimes a different story as many motions to suppress are made every year on the basis that the law enforcement agency conducting the search exceeded the scope of the search.

When law enforcement officials overstep their bounds by exceeding the limits of a search warrant, the defendants against whom evidence was gathered may be able to get the evidence suppressed depending on the circumstances surrounding the search and whether or not law enforcement officials were acting in bad faith when they exceeded the search parameters. The likelihood of success of such an argument would depend heavily on comparing the facts of the defendant’s case to those in previous search warrant cases in order to see if the actions taken by law enforcement warrant exclusion or inclusion of the evidence. This can be a complex process, one which would be best-handled by an experienced criminal defense attorney who has the knowledge and expertise to advance the defendant’s best argument to the court.