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Appeals Court Says Address Mistakes On Warrants Are Mostly Harmless, Not Worth Getting Excited About

Appeals Court Says Address Mistakes On Warrants Are Mostly Harmless, Not Worth Getting Excited About

4 years ago
Anonymous $UzyKJJH9oy

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200829/12434745207/appeals-court-says-address-mistakes-warrants-are-mostly-harmless-not-worth-getting-excited-about.shtml

In a case involving a drug bust utilizing a warrant with erroneous information, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had this to say [PDF] about the use of boilerplate language and typographical errors:

Challenges to warrants based on typographical errors or factual inaccuracies typically fall under this Circuit’s clerical error exception. We have consistently found that inadvertent drafting mistakes, for instance transposing a number in a street address or listing an incorrect nearby address, do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. That is because those errors create little risk of a mistaken search or a general warrant granting police an unconstitutionally broad authority to conduct searches.