THE POLICE CAN'T KEEP THE ONLY COPIES OF SEALED SEARCH WARRANT AFFIDAVITS
The Cal. Supremes here decide when the police can retain all the copies of a sealed Hobbs (7 Cal.4th 948) search warrant affidavit. Their answer effectively bars this.
To obtain an order to retain all copies, the police have to show that disclosure would endanger an informant, that security procedures at the clerk's office are inadequate, that police security procedures are adequate, that the police have procedures to ensure retention of the affidavit for 10 years, and the magistrate must make a sufficient record of the documents reviewed to make sure that later on everyone can tell what was reviewed.
That didn't happen here, so letting the police keep all the copies was error.
And when are the police EVER going to be able to show that the clerk's office leaks like a sieve? Never.
So what happens to this defendant? The Supremes find that it's not impossible to reconstruct what happened here. So they remand for a full hearing to determine whether meaningful appellate review of the actual affidavit is in fact possible. If not, apparently the
warrant gets quashed. The police can't keep the only copies of sealed search warrant
affidavits any more, and we can still seek suppression if what was in those affidavits can't be reconstructed.
People v. Galland; 2008 DJ DAR 18856; DJ, 12/30/08; Cal. Supremes
