your honor is pleased this case the rose as a result of a raid upon the home of the walker family in september of two thousand and five acting under the authority of a search warrant issued by a magistra judge twenty heavily armed members of the swat team for the city of wilmington without prior warning or knocking announcing who they were broke into the home of the wayne walker in the early morning hours there's a conflict whether it's likely before six am in the morning or slightly after it is uncontested it is absolutely uncontested that no conduct of any member of this family or any person they had contact with  existed which would justify the intrusion into their home it is your honor please the fact that the woman can police in front of the members of the family with automatic weapons which directed laser beams upon members of the and and and and the family was absolutely terrified it was thirty minutes of of terror that produced a lifetime of heart the total circumstances demonstrate warrant say that a man by the name of wayne walker committed a murder and that he is staying at his mother's house in newcastle and that there is in newcastle by name by weight by age by height and by his date of birth the police knew that they had a problem here and i'm getting into the second part ok they say they cooked that they withheld the confidential informant until we required that he appear for a deposition the confidential informant who was certified by them as proven past reliable testified that he never said that what he said if you're i would like to hear is that the way walker which was at his sister in law's house and if he was not there then most i would call it a half truth in this kind of situation that you're trying to identify a location and that simply does not take anything there may be dozens of walkers in the city of newcastle which is the confidential informants version has been credited by the judge as she had to at this stage because they were moving for summary judgment and what and what the city's excuse at this point is ok he didn't say and getting ready to flee delaware the cia never say see i says he never saw any of those things at this stage of the proceedings we must accept that it's true it's clear as we go through the asked this question aside from this affidavit that you're challenging they already had an arrest warrant for d a w there's a little bit of amnesia out there in the neighborhood but they get they get bits and pieces of information and in their affidavit for the search warrant lawson says that he's currently hiding at the mother's house  argue that's false it's it's clearly inaccurate based on what the c i said but it's not totally an act that it it's it's it's a little bit over the top you're running won't now not me let me finish ranks requires you to reformulate that affidavit yes if you reformulate that affidavit and say what silver said there was a probability that he was at the mother's house would you agree with that i would agree with the ok and walker at the home of this man when there is nobody that man has never been to the wayne walker's home that nobody in the family has ever had contact with him so you think one letter and a suffix means the difference in this case no sure i think there are a whole lot of letters here are and to me let me just explain to you the man's name they were looking for is the way a walker twenty two years old is with that entry have been illegal i think even without a search warrant i think you would have violated every concept i have ever believed in the fourth amendment they have to have the the none of those allegations is factual not of mr truthful and each of them is fabricated and the worst of all is paragraph nine where they took young fifteen year old the wayne junior no middle name they they took his name and they separated it from the rest of his name and they inserted what other purpose could they have had for inserting the date of birth of after that this young boy that's a fifteen year old boy and they were looking for a twenty eight year old man in addition your honor please i point out to you that they have actually done i saw a surveillance and they can so your argument really is they had no information that should have led them there period absolutely correct your honor please one hundred percent correct but had not a bit of honest information i see my time has expired i'm happy to try to and you have time on the informant had said had been accurately reported it would give probable cause to believe that what the guy they were looking for was at this not in road place did let's start off where we just left off this is a case where to their credit the police tried to find some corroborating evidence for what the informant said but in which they didn't find it would if that if what the informant said had been accurately reported would there have been probable cause you think the ma would have issued a warrant if he knew that all the informant said was if he wasn't at my sister's house that's probably more of the most likely place it would be with his mother the answer is absolutely absolutely her honor i think you know he didn't report to have any knowledge he didn't even know where the mother lived he didn't report to have seen the suspect or been told anything about the suspect he was speculating winning well your honor he said that he he told detective silver that the suspects mother lived in wilton it's answer question is in new castle  he said that he believed the home was actually i think he said behind wilton which is in newcastle and then what he said his exact quote is the informant stated walker this is with the well the informant testimony separatists and he testified that walker's mother lives in wilton and if he was an add a sister in law's house which they had already checked that's probably the most likely place he could be found the first thing walker would do was run to his mom which he always done whenever he got in trouble i think if you substitute that statement for last since statement in his affidavit that the informant stated walker currently hiding in its mother's house in newcastle and is making plans to flee delaware even if you found that that statement somehow was so if you found there was a deliberate lie or reckless disregard and were forced to substitute that statement with uniform is testimony you would still have probable cause just based on the uniforms that's the search to get a search warrant to search his mother's house to get a  and if if you were a magistrate and somebody came to you and said look it's he said he always goes to his mother when he gets in trouble give me a search warrant to go bashing into the mother's house what would you say to the that's the most likely place now i don't think the suspect had to say that with certainty the suspect only know but he said that it would be the most likely place he would go and from that testimony the officers did adel just search they found eight to wayne walker spelled exactly like the suspects name the w a y n e not an have anything to do you would agree with whether he was that at the  know that statement doesn't not the fact that the only thing the only thing we have here there's no corroboration of the informants testimony that i know him and he goes to his mother when he gets in trouble correct your honor i can see that there was nobody that i know for a fact he was at this residence he just said that if you have the affidavit says that the aff in dubai a reliable source that he is testified to assuming that's not what was told to the officers originally but yes if we're going to base in a what the informant later testified to probably should say was probably there and i submit that if you change the language just were required to do for franks even if you found that this was a false wood which i don't think it is i think still think it's a reasonable paraphrase as the strict court found but even if the court did not if we substituted that language with the language that he's probably there and then combined and once you go from that to the diligence report which found that the wayne walker the w a y n e no junior no middle initial there  i think that that as a whole would provide probable cause to search what do you say to your opposing counsel's insinuation that this was intentional finder studies are you know he said that the officers intentionally put in the suspects date of birth i guess insinuating that they they knew it was the wrong house what they wanted to do a swat attack on the wrong house is the only data that the only argument that plaintiffs make regarding detective l go to any length to obtain a warrant to raid plaintiff's home this is plaintiff's theory as a detective law since motivation the lawson deliberately falsified the probable cause affidavit soley because of his prejudiced were african americans that is explicitly what they said how do plaintiffs reach this conclusion well according to plaintiffs lawson admitted at this deposition that race was the quote unquote the sighting factor to enter plaintiff's home if you look and why would that be answer because that would drop a flag to me that maybe it's a different walker from when i was being told at the risk of stating the obvious this is only common sense if the delta support had indicated th were white and the officers knew already that the suspect was african american it would provide it's a text of lawson white the red flag that he would have had the wrong home one could only imagine the justifiable outrage that would have occurred the witness statement from the victim report on the bicycle i thought you could piece together how old the wayne walker jr was if you spent a couple minutes you could probably deduce that couldn't you couldn't he have done that he may have been able to do that and you know what's i think important to keep in mind here there is a suggestion here that we're blaming the tech of lawson for not doing a good job policing but that's really not the issue not the question the question isn't whether he could have done more or whether his investigation was adequate the issue here is whether detective lawson deliberately lied to the magistrate or wrecked can or act or if he's reckless you lose it i guess if he acted in reckless disregard we would lose on this although i submit that with the similarities in the names it when you have the dillard's report these are understandable yes unfortunate errors but they're understandable in the situation should there be a different analysis depending upon the gravity of the offense and by that i mean in this case it was the greatest offense right we have a horror story murder ok and if you're chasing someone for that kind of grave offense it stands to reason you're going to have a lot of guys have we armed the whole force right  haps absolutely now if this had been a burglary of a corner grocery store and let's say an armed was seen on armed robbery and you were going to have instead of the whole swat team armed early in the morning you were going to have three or four officers should the the a firing the finance police officer be held to a lower standard of care for the unarmed burglary pursuit then this sort of pursuit where they know if they get the green light from the the magistrate it's going to be pretty intense should there be a different standard in the water well i think that there it's i think it's not necessarily a different i wouldn't advocate a different standard with regard to applying for the warrant either i mean with regards to send forth the problem cause affidavit but i mean as to what what reckless this requires so much in other words should should be if i had be required to be more careful when it's a grave situation in you're going to bring the whole swat team on to somebody's house then the officer who's just going to go with one other officer to inquire about an armed robbery or i think that when you're looking at the recklessness analysis you have to consider the officer as he is as he is sitting in that situation and when you're dealing with  murder suspect as opposed to say a shoplifter or something else you have to consider the evidence is involved in catching somebody that's clearly dangerous killed someone in cold blood less than thirty six hours earlier and was report making plans to flee delaware i think that when you consider the edge and see in the seriousness of the crime there i think that does play a role into the analysis of whether the officer acted recklessly you know there are certainly more of an urgency more of a speed you know the officer has to act faster to get a murderer off the streets compared to a minor crime as you are suggesting so i think in that sense it would play a role of recklessness canine unit and they have no information no reason to believe that walker is armed other than possibly he might still thirty six hours later the night although we don't know whether he left that the record doesn't disclose whether the knife was at the scene of the so what it and then event there's no reason to believe he has a gun you've got twenty swat heavily armed swat people and a canine unit  how do you answer the thing the challenge that reasonable fourth amendment requires that you knock and announce your presence well the  requirement is obviated when the police officers have a reasonable concern a reasonable belief that they're under the threat of physical violence and just because the police officers had unnecessarily mean and you know we didn't necessarily know the off this suspect did not have a gun we knew the suspect had a knife or at least at the time i think when you're considering the circumstances suspect killed someone in broad daylight out on the streets the officers had a reasonable believe to fear for their safety and i don't i think that the use of twenty swat team officers here and canine unit was reasonable under these circumstances aligned i'm not questioning that the question is what or when you have all that manpower and dog power surrounding the house you are justified  d knocking on the door and breaking up the furniture going in the process of doing it well as a district court found there is no evidence in the record that the off search had all means of escape covered that they knew all evidence of this result we have that the suspect would know the area better than the officers there's no record any evidence that they had everything covered we might assume it but there's no record there's no evidence that effect know you you would infer from the presence of twenty twenty swat team officers and canine unit you could couldn't you infer that they might have surrounded the house well i would hope  i would hope but that being said i think it's it's not unreasonable under these circumstances when the officers had word from the confidential informant that the suspect was or missions in the affidavit if if we find that that is the case and if we find it as modified and with the with the false statements corrected in the emissions included that there was no probable cause were we in this case i think the issue is whether or not because here you did have a magistrate the signed off on the warrant i think the question for the court is whether you find that detective lawson deliberately lied or acted in reckless disregard if we find there's no probably cause either modified or as issued well first i would hope for us that i did that i thought the question and i said where are you ok i cause i i believe that with the magistrate okaying the warrant in the situation i think that under franks the question is whether it's false i think that's the way to hold the city liable did you raise qualified immunity here qualified immunity was raised but interesting and i see my time it's ok ok qualified immunity was raised as was the modelled defense that the mono defense was raised also the district court never found never never reached those issues because she the court found at the outset that there was no constitutional violation so she never reached the issues of an immunity or more no thank you by we're minutes but let me say that i noticed that mr lipton justified the use of the extraordinary force on the fact that the informant told him that this man was at his mother's house and planning to flee delaware opposed to what truly were actually was happening no sir this is the second part of what the informant said they said the informant said that he was his mother's house i think his mother's house and planning to flee delaware the confidential informant denied ever saying anything knowing any plans that he had to flee what the confidential informant said if you're honest please was that if i knew that he were going to flee then i think he would probably go to his mother's house to get some money that's what the confidential he said was not that i recall i think we were maybe thinking this may have been a relative and yet your honor this is an abuse of the fourth amendment which which officer testif i and the question was raised whether or not they knew that there was a young boy there there were surveillance a couple of days or days before and they noticed the mother young boy and a little girl i'm just not sure i understand if you're saying that they'd be sieged the home of an innocent family and intentionally they knew that this was an innocent family that they saw a young child you talked about the dat birth and now you're talking about the surveillance where they see a young child etc is your theory of the case that they intentionally assaulted this innocent family your honor we see it every day at racetracks all over america somebody goes to the racetrack with a hunch that big red the horse is going to win the race and starts compiling facts and figures to support its rationale that's what they did he made he i don't know if that's a yes or no i'm sorry  yes that they intentionally besieged innocent family with twenty armed men and within minutes of doing so they the lead investigator said oh my i'm very sorry here's my card call me and we'll pay for all the da serve the city of lemington he's been disserved by the police i don't want to end up being disturbed by me but i so i thank you for your kind consideration thank you thank council for your arguments and your briefing on the matter and will take it under advi