What Is Needed to Obtain a Search Warrant in Florida?

What's needed is probable cause, which really is not actually a very high standard. It just means that the officer that happened to be at the scene believed that there was criminality afoot, and he provides information in an affidavit that is then submitted to a judge, and the judges just often sign off on it. Under the Fourth Amendment, we have these enormous protections to not be searched, whether it's in our homes or our persons, and a lot of times these protections that we have are violated all the time by search warrants that are not properly filled out, that are incomplete, that contain false statements that officers put in there that the judges were not aware of at the time. Just because there was probable cause and just because a warrant got signed does not mean that we cannot attack it. It does not mean that that is the end of the case. In fact, that is just the beginning. We are experts at looking at these warrants and going through the affidavits. What does it include? Was it sufficient? Did the judge understand when she was signing it, that there in fact was probable cause? So you must have an experienced criminal defense attorney, who has analyzed hundreds of these probable cause affidavits in the past, look at them to determine whether they were sufficient on its face or whether it's something that we can attack.

By Jeffrey S. Weiner, P.A.