The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." There are three big United States Supreme Court cases that speak about attacking search warrants. When a criminal defense attorney attacks a search warrant and the Court finds that the warrant needs to be thrown out, all of the evidence that the police found also needs to be thrown out of Court and the case against the defendant is then dismissed for lack of evidence.
When attorneys in Court fight over whether evidence should be thrown out or not because the police violated the defendants rights in some way, the attorneys have to understand the main cases in that legal area. .
In order to understand the issues in a given situation it is important to understand exactly what happened factually in the given case and then what finding the Court made. Then, when an attorney argues the case they take the facts of the big case and compare it to their current case and hopefully convince the Court that it is similar enough to the big case that the ruling should be the same. In this paper I will try to explain three major cases in search warrant law, starting with the facts of the case and ending with what ruling or finding (often called a holding in the legal community) the Court made.
The first of the three big cases is Franks v. Delaware (1978) Volume 438 of the United States Supreme Court Reports, Page154. In that case, Franks was convicted of rape. His accuser described her assailant's age, race, height, build, facial hair, and gave a detailed description of his clothing. She stated at the time that her attacker wore a "white thermal undershirt, black pants with a silver or gold buckle, a brown leather three-quarter length coat, and a dark knit cap.
