Court Opinion

ID: 9469763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:48:37.331047+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:33.359885
License: Public Domain

RONEY, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in all of Judge Kravitch’s opinion in this case except to the extent that the entire body of law announced in Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978), and its progeny, is mechanically applied to the judicial consideration of warrants prior to an administrative search. It seems to me the considerations involved in an attack on an ex parte warrant prior to an administrative search differ from those involved in the attempted suppression in a criminal case of incriminating evidence obtained with a duly authorized search warrant. Judge Kravitch relies almost wholly on post-search cases in suggesting the district court, in a pre-search case, can take additional evidence to prove false statements or material omissions in a warrant application only if they are “made deliberately or with reckless disregard for the truth.” Since it is not necessary to do so in this case, I would not issue the dictum that the district courts in these administrative search cases should be restricted to the standards which apply to post-search cases. I would leave that question for later decision when the issue is actually in controversy. We may then find that justice requires a more flexible standard and that well intentioned, carefully set forth but nevertheless false facts should not necessarily be accepted by the court.
I agree that where a warrant is based on “specific evidence of an existing violation,” *964the district court is to determine whether there is probable cause, tested by a reasonableness standard less than that required in the criminal sense, and should not focus on whether there is in fact a violation. In this ease, the company tried to prove and the district court considered more than should have been considered in the search warrant proceeding.