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Search and Seizure — search warrants – execution — liability

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 21, 2014//

Search and Seizure — search warrants – execution — liability

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 21, 2014//

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Civil

Search and Seizure — search warrants – execution — liability

A county is liable for, in the course of executing a search warrant, permitting animal rights activists to damage property.

“We have no basis for disturbing either the jury’s finding of negligence or its finding that the search was unreasonable. The search warrant was valid, but the conduct of the search unreasonable, making the search unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65, 71 (1998); Tarpley v. Greene, 684 F.2d 1, 8–9 (D.C. Cir. 1982). Police can’t be permitted, merely by virtue of having obtained a search warrant, to allow an untrained, unsupervised mob (however well-intentioned, as we may assume the animal-rights activists who conducted the search to have been) to conduct a search likely to result in gratuitous destruction of private property because of the mob’s lack of training and supervision. What the police could not have done lawfully had they conducted the search themselves they could not authorize private persons to do in their stead. Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1003–05 (1982); United States v. Shahid, 117 F.3d 322, 325, 327–28 (7th Cir. 1997); United States v. Feffer, 831 F.2d 734, 737 (7th Cir. 1987); United States v. Momoh, 427 F.3d 137, 140–41 (1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Parker, 32 F.3d 395, 398–99 (8th Cir. 1994). Police cannot hire the Hell’s Angels to conduct highway patrol and, though failing to train or supervise them, shuck off responsibility when one of the Angels beats a speeder into a bloody pulp with a tire iron.”

Affirmed.

13-3603 & 13-3700 Petkus v. Richland County

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Conley, J., Posner, J.

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