A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how judges issue search
warrants. These are often very serious
and very urgent decisions that need to be made.
Officers may be searching for a weapon used in a homicide, or drugs, or
child pornography.
Not all search warrants are life and death matters,
however. I had one search warrant
experience when I was the Sibley County Attorney that was actually pretty
funny.
I received a call late one night that the Department of
Natural Resources Conservation Officer (when I was growing up, we called them
“Game Wardens”) had received a tip that a deer was being processed in a garage
in Sibley County.
It was not deer season.
I met the Conservation Officer and several other law
enforcement officers at the law office.
(Fortunately, Sibley
County is a pretty boring
place for police officers most nights.
When something out of the ordinary happens, especially something that is
urgent but not necessarily dangerous – like a search warrant - lots of help
arrives!) I was typing up the affidavit
to show Judge Bull that we had probable cause to go to the garage to
investigate the apparent crime of taking a deer out of season.
We worked on the warrant for probably a half hour or
more. I needed two more pieces of information
before the application was complete, and we’d call Judge Bull to wake him up to
consider our application. I told the
officers I’d finish up what I could, and I’d meet them at the Sheriff’s office
to get the remaining information, that I’d then type in and we’d call the
judge.
I finished typing and drove the eight miles to the county
seat. It was well after midnight by the
time I arrived at the Sheriff’s Office.
When I parked the car, the Conservation Officer came up and asked, “Can
we call this search off?” I replied that
I sure would like to avoid being embarrassed later if we didn’t have probable
cause to search the garage, and asked him what had changed.
“Well,” the officer said, “I just remembered that I have a
receipt for a car-killed deer that was issued to our suspect.” The deer was being processed legally!
This was long enough ago that Lyle’s Café in Winthrop – home of the Pie Lady of Winthrop, who was still baking pies daily –
was still open 24 hours. The
Conservation Officer bought pie and coffee for me and about eight other
officers that night!
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Next week: The
Choices We Make
