Mississippi's Missing Search Warrants Prevent Scrutiny of No-Knock Raids

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Charles Ornstein
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No-knock warrants authorize police to burst into someone’s home unannounced. Search warrants are supposed to be filed at the courthouse, but they’re missing from many of Mississippi’s justice courts. https://propublica.org/article/no-knock-warrants-missing-mississippi… @CalebBedillion

propublica.org
Mississippi’s Missing Search Warrants Prevent Scrutiny of No-Knock Raids
No-knock warrants authorize police to burst into someone’s home unannounced. Search warrants are supposed to be filed at the courthouse, but they’re missing from many of Mississippi’s justice courts.
4:31 AM · Oct 4, 2022

https://www.propublica.org/article/no-knock-warrants-missing-mississippi

*snip*

She had learned that most search warrants issued in Greenville were no-knock warrants, which allow law enforcement to barge into someone’s home unannounced. She suspected that many of those raids violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches.

“When I saw that they had orchestrated a confidential informant to purchase $10 worth of marijuana, and based on that went and asked for a no-knock search warrant — that, to me, was really egregious,” Nordstrom said. “That’s not what the Fourth Amendment is for. That’s not what our government is supposed to do.”

She faced a major obstacle. Though she had the search warrant for Bryant’s home, she couldn’t find records for most other raids in the city. The search warrants and supporting documents weren’t at the courthouse, even though the state Supreme Court’s rules require law enforcement to return warrants to the court.

Instead they were at the Greenville Police Department, hidden from view because law enforcement agencies, unlike the courts, can claim a broad public records exemption over records in their possession.

*snip*

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