Court To Cops: If You Can’t Prove A Warrant Existed, You Can’t Expect Us To Consider It ‘Valid’

Legal Issues

from the where's-the-warrant,-lebowski dept

I don’t know what kind of warrant system they’re running in Pennsylvania, but it doesn’t sound like a good one. Either the system is deliberately broken, or the testifying cops were playing fast and loose with the facts. Whatever the case is, the end result is the loss of the evidence obtained with Schrodinger’s Warrant, which exists somewhere between valid and invalid until a court starts asking questions. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

Call me old-fashioned, but when someone in power aims to deprive someone of their liberty, privacy, or property, they’d better have the legal backing to do so. And not just “well, I thought there was a warrant” legal backing. Dotted i’s, crossed t’s, actual probable cause, etc.

None of that is present here. I’m going to quote quite a bit from the ruling [PDF] because if I just paraphrase it, it’s going to sound like I’m just making shit up.

In February 2019, Newberry Township (PA) police officers Keith Farren and Taylor Nauman joined forces to arrest Marcease Easter at his home for (allegedly) failing to show up in court to respond to a citation for driving with a suspended license.

Seems like a waste of resources, but whatever. Anyway, the officers arrived at Easter’s house and then immediately decided they had found something much more interesting than “failure to appear.” (Although that’s kind of Easter’s thing, apparently, as a footnote points out: “Proceedings in this matter were delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, Easter’s failure to appear at several proceedings, and a period when Easter was without counsel.”)

Here’s how this warrant service went (actual existence of warrant still unconfirmed):

When Easter answered his door, the officers smelled marijuana; they conducted a pat-down search of Easter and found numerous pills and a large amount of money on his person. See Search Warrant Affidavit of Probable Cause, 3/14/19, at 1 (unnumbered). The police applied for, and received, a search warrant for Easter’s vehicle and residence and discovered more drugs when they executed the warrant.

A cop “smelling marijuana” is like a “dog alerting.” It’s a meaningless assertion that means nothing more than cops wanted to perform a search but didn’t actually have the probable cause to do it. The less said about that, the better. But these cops still got their warrant, still got their search, and still got some evidence that backed a better criminal charge than “this dude just won’t show up in court.”

Annnnnnndddd… then they lost all of this evidence. First, they had to have a reason to accost Easter at his home and “smell” the “marijuana” they used to obtain the search warrant. The arrest warrant used to initiate this is apparently nowhere to be found for reasons that are both inexplicable and literally unbelievable.

At the hearing, Sergeant Nauman testified he “believed” a summary arrest warrant had been issued for Easter based on his failure to respond to a citation for driving with a suspended license. Sergeant Nauman further stated he “believed” Sergeant Farren wrote the original citation to which Easter had not responded. Sergeant Nauman explained that prior to service the arrest warrant was maintained on a computer database called “MISSILE,” but was inaccessible on that database once service was made. Sergeant Farren did not testify at the suppression hearing.

What’s supposed to be a thing of facts suddenly becomes a thing of personal belief. Even weirder than this shift from tangible evidence to the ethereal realm is Sgt. Nauman’s assertion that warrants simply disappear from law enforcement databases once they’ve been served.

That cannot possibly be how the system operates in Pennsylvania. Some system must retain records of warrants, whether they’ve been served or not. It shatters the mind to accept, as a matter of legal fact, that warrants simply are deleted permanently from any law enforcement database upon return of service. This cannot possibly be true because if it were, EVERY SINGLE ARREST could be successfully challenged due to the lack of documentation.

And yet, that’s Nauman’s story and he stuck to it. I mean, as much as he could have, considering it was literally unbelievable.

On cross-examination, Sergeant Nauman admitted that following service of an arrest warrant he is required to complete a return of service; he could not remember if he did so in this case. Sergeant Nauman acknowledged there are other publicly available Pennsylvania computer records that contain information about warrants. Sergeant Nauman testified he did not believe he had seen the arrest warrant but stated Sergeant Farren “had to” have seen it, and further “believed” Sergeant Farren had looked up the warrant on MISSILE.

Set adrift on lack of memory bliss. Nauman crafted a quick narrative, found nothing to back it, and flailed during the suppression hearing. Another law enforcement officer was brought in to shore up Nauman’s claims that warrants just kind of vanished from the permanent record if any cop was “believed” to have “seen” them. (It’s rather telling that Farren, the other arresting officer, decided not to participate in this shit show.) That didn’t do much for Nauman’s credibility, much less the credibility of Pennsylvania law enforcement in general. York County Deputy Sheriff Sam Snider said arrest warrants are indeed purged from the MISSLE database once served, but pointed out that this only happens after the arresting officer contacts the county to have the warrant “canceled.”

The lower court somehow found this all very plausible and acceptable and denied the suppression motion. The appeals court, however, finds all of this to be very… well, bullshitty, to use a legal term of art.

First off, it points out you shouldn’t try to pull this shit off anywhere, but you’re definitely not going to get away with it in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Our Supreme Court has long held the Pennsylvania Constitution does not recognize a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.

lololoooool get bent, coppers. You’re “but I thought I was right” assertions don’t fly here. Maybe take the case federal if you want to get away with rights abuses. Welcome to the Commonwealth, officers of the… um… Commonwealth:

The Commonwealth failed to prove the existence of a lawful arrest warrant, and the evidence seized thereafter was fruit of the poisonous tree. At the suppression hearing, the Commonwealth presented an officer who had no first-hand knowledge of the warrant that was the subject of the arrest at issue. The Commonwealth also presented a deputy sheriff who, in summary, testified that arrest warrants in the MISSILE system essentially disappear once an arrest warrant is served, and the county is notified.

That’s the harsh part. This is a reiteration with more details and a bit more civility. But it’s still the same thing: if you choose to engage with a system that vanishes warrants and rely on officers who think it’s someone else’s job to ensure the proper paperwork exists, you’re going to lose a lot of evidence. And there’s a bit of shade being thrown, which I have highlighted with the shadiest of font variations, <strong>:

The record fails to demonstrate which rules regarding the issuance of citations were followed and how the unproved arrest warrant came into existence. We are thus squarely presented with an issue this Court has not directly decided: has the Commonwealth met its burden to prove the existence of a valid arrest warrant at a suppression hearing where it fails to produce the warrant, fails to produce any testimony from anyone with firsthand knowledge of the warrant, and fails to produce any documentary evidence which would confirm the existence of the warrant? In light of the facts of the record before us, we must conclude the answer is “no.”

If nothing else, I would desperately hope this provokes the Commonwealth to take a long hard look at the system it uses to handle arrest warrants. And if that’s not actually problem, I would hope the employer of this officer takes a long hard look at his record and whether he’s still worth paying. It’s all pretty shady and it should never be considered an acceptable use of government power. Fix it or GTFO. Allowing the status to remain quo is unacceptable.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, evidence suppression, newberry township PD, pennsylvania, warrant, wrongful arrest