Fascinating legal issue
July 17, 2007
he issue is this: Coffee County law enforcement contacted the Dale County Sheriff’s Department to ask if there were oustanding warrants on Bennie Dean Herring. A warrant clerk in Dale County said there was, and a Coffee County investigator made a traffic stop on Herring within 15 minutes of the information being received. However, during that time, the Dale County warrant clerk could not find the oustanding warrant for Herring, and soon found out the warrant had been recalled. The clerk immediately tried to call her counterpart in Coffee County to relay the information the warrant had been recalled.
By that time, Herring had been pulled over and searched. The search turned up methamphetamine and pistol under his truck’s front seat. Herring was subsequently indicted and convicted on meth possession and a felon in possession of a firearm charges and sentenced to 27 months. He moved to suppress any evidence of the methamphetamine and firearm on grounds that the searches that turned them up were not incident to a
lawful arrest, because the arrest warrant on which the officers acted had been rescinded.
Should the evidence have been suppressed?
Click below for the full text opinion of the Appeals Court:
