In an attempt to take down marijuana growers, it appears that one Kansas county has decided that having indoor gardening equipment is all it takes to give probable cause for the search of a home. According to a report in the Kansas City Star, the couple told this story:
“This is how we were awakened: banging, pounding, screaming,” the mother, Adlynn Harte, said Friday. “My husband opened the door right before the battering ram was set to take it out.”
The father allegedly was forced to lie shirtless on the foyer while a deputy with an assault rifle stood over him. The children, a 7-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy, reportedly came out of their bedrooms terrified, the teenager with his hands in the air....
Deputies told the Hartes that they had the couple under surveillance for months prior to the raid. But the Hartes “know of no basis for conducting such surveillance, nor do they believe such surveillance would have produced any facts supporting the issuance of a search warrant,” the lawsuit said.
Over the course of the raid, the deputies appeared to get frustrated that they weren’t finding anything, the suit said. The suit also said deputies “made rude comments” and implied their son was using marijuana. After two hours, they brought in a drug-sniffing dog, but still found nothing.The couple, both former CIA employees, used indoor gardening equipment to grow tomatoes and squash in their basement. After law enforcement refused to provide documents after an open records request, they filed a lawsuit seeking to know why the search warrant was approved.
“This was an egregious overreach, and there was no basis for the search,” [the couple's lawyer] said. “These are highly educated and very patriotic people. They feel very strongly about it.”In 2001, the Supreme Court held in Kyllo v. United States that the use of a thermal imaging device to find heat often associated with indoor gardening equipment was a search under the Fourth Amendment and therefore required a search warrant to use it.
They probably left out the extensive training of the officers and the training of marijuana sniffing dog that alerted with a tail wag.
ReplyDeleteseriously, most search warrants are signed regardless of what is in them. I'm convinced a magistrate will sign almost anything, and what reason is there for them not to? No evidence would be suppressed due to good faith if there was a warrant generally, and there's no recourse against an issuing judge. I'm not even sure this could be a tort unless there's a Franks issue.