Opinion ID: 172792
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutional violation in Rector's execution of the warrant[6]

Text: The district court found that there was a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether, in executing the warrant, Rector seized an excessive number of items or items that were not fairly encompassed in the description of items to be seized. (Dist. ct. order at 6.) We do not review that finding, but simply ask whether Rector violated Bowling's Fourth Amendment rights by exceeding the scope of the warrant when he executed the search. See Dixon, 553 F.3d at 1301. The Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement targets the constitutional evil of general exploratory rummaging in a person's belongings pursuant to a warrant. United States v. Carey, 172 F.3d 1268, 1272 (10th Cir.1999). Where, as here, a warrant clearly and precisely specifies items to be seized, and the officers executing the warrant seize additional items, those officers act unreasonably for Fourth Amendment purposes unless their conduct may be justified under an exception to the warrant requirement, such as the plain-view exception. See Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 138-42, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990); United States v. Angelos, 433 F.3d 738, 744-47 (10th Cir.2006); Carey, 172 F.3d at 1271-76. Therefore, in allegedly exceeding the scope of the search warrant, Rector violated Bowling's rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The search at issue took place on July 18, 2006. By 1927, the Supreme Court had held that [t]he requirement that warrants shall particularly describe the things to be seized makes general searches under them impossible and prevents the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another. Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196, 48 S.Ct. 74, 72 L.Ed. 231 (1927). And in 1990, the Court explained that [i]f the scope of the search exceeds that permitted by the terms of a validly issued warrant or the character of the relevant exception from the warrant requirement, the subsequent seizure is unconstitutional without more. Horton, 496 U.S. at 140, 110 S.Ct. 2301. As it would have been clear to a reasonable officer in July of 2006 that exceeding the scope of a search warrant was unlawful, the constitutional right at issue was clearly established at the time of Rector's conduct. See Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1114.
Because Rector's alleged conduct in exceeding the scope of the search warrant violated Bowling's clearly established right under the Fourth Amendment, the district court correctly concluded that Rector was not entitled to qualified immunity on this claim. Thus, as to Bowling's § 1983 claim that Rector violated his constitutional rights by exceeding the scope of the search warrant, we AFFIRM the district court's denial of Rector's summary judgment motion.