Because making a case takes a team as sharp with their wits as writs, detectives receive an update on the law from prosecutors.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published April 22, 2004
DADE CITY - You're a detective. You're outside someone's house in the dark, ready to search for drugs, guns, whatever.
You bang on the door: "Police! We've got a search warrant!"
Then silence. Or maybe an unsettling click. Or the flush of a toilet.
If there's no answer, the law entitles you to rush in. But how long must you wait for an answer?
Pasco County sheriff's detectives gathered to discuss such questions with officials from the State Attorney's Office in training sessions held Wednesday at Pasco-Hernando Community College.
"It's like a technical update for mechanics," Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett said of the sessions.
So how long must you wait? The answer is dictated by past court cases. In one case, five to 10 seconds were not enough. In another, 15 to 20 seconds were. But there can be a variety of complicating factors.
In executing search warrants, detectives must keep one eye on the bad guy, and another on how his future defense attorney might try to suppress the evidence against him. As new precedents are set by emerging cases, detectives have to keep updated on those changes as they collect evidence, Bartlett said.
"They are the ones that are going to be applying the results of the decisions that are handed down," Bartlett said.
Bartlett said Sheriff Bob White asked for Wednesday's refresher in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that potentially exposes detectives to greater personal liability in the event a search warrant is botched.
Law officers typically are immune from lawsuits over their conduct on duty, but in Groh vs. Ramirez et al., the court upheld a suit against an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives by a Montana man alleging a search violated his constitutional rights.
Bartlett said White's request had nothing to do with any recent local cases.
But a judge's ruling in Dade City in February illustrates what can happen when sides disagree over the proper way to search a potential crime scene.
In a ruling that prosecutors plan to appeal, Pasco-Pinellas Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper tossed out potentially critical evidence in one of Pasco County's highest profile cases of late. Tepper accused Sheriff's Office detectives of being vague in requesting warrants and overstepping their limits when they investigated the death of 6-year-old Mathew Rotell at his Land O'Lakes home in 1999.
Authorities charged his mother, Kristina Gaime, 39, with murder. But Tepper's ruling could keep a jury from ever seeing evidence taken from the house, including 41 pages of seized letters, one of which appears to describe what investigators call a botched murder-suicide plan involving her and her two sons.
It is such suppression of evidence that prosecutors hope detectives can help them avoid.
"They build it, we fly it," Bartlett said of detectives and their cases. "It doesn't hurt to have the builder be aware of some of the issues when we're flying."
- Times staff writer Chase Squires contributed to this report. Steve Thompson covers crime in Pasco County. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6245, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245. His e-mail address is sthompson@sptimes.com
