Court Opinion

ID: 9465870
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:58:13.877629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:24.949372
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The rule allowing search warrants to be issued on the telephone requires that the officer who requests the warrant on the telephone “shall prepare a document to be known as a duplicate original warrant and shall read such duplicate original warrant, verbatim, to the federal magistrate.” The rule requires the federal magistrate on the other end of the line to have before him from the beginning the “original ■ warrant” and to “enter, verbatim, what is so read to such magistrate on a document to be known as the original warrant.”
After the officer on one end of the line gives the information from the warrant to the magistrate on the other end, the magistrate must then decide whether the oral information given is sufficient to permit the search, now precisely described on the “original warrant.” If the magistrate decides to issue the warrant, the procedure is for him to direct “the person requesting the warrant to sign the federal magistrate’s name on the duplicate original warrant” and for the federal magistrate then to “immediately sign the original warrant and enter on the face of the original warrant the exact time when the warrant was ordered to be issued.”
In the instant case the officer who requested the warrant by telephone did not, in accordance with the rule, “prepare a document to be known as a duplicate original warrant and [then] . . . read such duplicate original warrant, verbatim, to the federal magistrate.” Since the officer requesting the warrant did not fulfill his part under the rule, the magistrate did not, in accordance with the rule, “enter, verbatim, what [was] so read to such magistrate on a document to be known as the original warrant.”
The correct handling of the “duplicate original warrant” and the “original warrant” is, it seems to me, the crucial portion of this new rule. In my mind, it is much more important than when the oath is administered. I would not reverse this case because the oath was administered during the telephone conversation rather than at the beginning, but I would reverse the case because the officer and the magistrate did not properly prepare and read information from the duplicate original warrant and enter such information on the original warrant.
The “duplicate original warrant” process is important because it requires the officer to write down, and therefore deliberate and consider in advance, the precise nature of the search to be undertaken. He may not simply pick up the telephone and call the magistrate. He must first get out pencil and paper, consider his actions, and write down the scope of the search with sufficient *590particularity for the magistrate to know what he is authorizing. The law often requires writings. The purpose of such a requirement is to slow down the process and to require actors to deliberate before they act. I believe that this is the crucial part of the rule, and I would strictly enforce it.