Alcohol & Drugs: MIP, MIC, Intoxication son arrested on bogus warrant

[slbach]

My son was in Escanaba with friends they were stopped for speeding. The officer ran checks on all 3 boys, there was an outstanding warrant for my son. He was then arrested and searched in which they found .3 grams of marijuana. Come to find out the warrant was from a different county and it was a "mistake" it didn't really exist, someone conveniently forgot to cancel the warrant. He was held on $2000.00 bond and all of the phone numbers within the area code of his home were blocked internally by the jail. So he coudn't call home to even let us know. Finally he was able to reach his grandfather who lives in a different area. The judge accused him of hiding out and slapped him with the maximum bail amount. This whole situation seems wrong. My questions are if there shouldn't have been a warrant to begin with, would it be an illegal search and seizure. and can they block all of those phone numbers on a whim. Had he not been able to reach his grandfather, we would have never known he was in jail.

 

[NYClex]

This is not legal advice, you need to discuss this with a criminal defense lawyer, but I can give you an idea about the law:

What seemed to have happened here is this: The police officer received the message from his computer that there was a valid arrest warrant out for your son. The police officer then arrested him and began a "search incident to arrest." Whenever a person is arrested, the police may search the person, the vehicle he was travelling in and some other spaces. During this search the police officer found the drugs.

Now it turns out that the arrest warrant was not valid, or did not even exist any more, but the computer file erroneously said that it did.

Normally, when an arrest is illegal, it is a violation of the 4th amendment rights and any evidence found in a search based on this arrest is excluded from trial under the "exclusionary rule."

However, the Supreme Court created an exception to the exclusionary rule in a case named Arizona v. Evans . The Court there ruled, that even if no warrant existed, but the police officer in good faith relied on the information he received that it did exist, any evidence found in the subsequent search can be used and the exclusionary rule does not apply. In this case the court had made an error, but the police officer relied on this erroneous information in good faith and therefore his search was legal and the evidence could be used. It was important to the court in this case, that the mistake was not made by the police, but by court employees. In a case 20 years earlier a lower court had ruled that the evidence had to be excluded, because the police themselves made the mistake in putting the info in the computer.

So, there might be other issues in your son's case that could lead to a more positive outcome, but this is just a summary of the law on this issue. This cannot be any legal consultation, so he should discuss this issue and all others with his defense attorney.