The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Millender v. Los Angeles. Here are the background facts: Bowen shoots at his ex-girlfriend with a sawed-off shotgun. The police obtain a search warrant for the home of Bowen’s 73-year-old former foster mother. The warrant application does not disclose that Bowen last lived with his foster mother 15 years ago. (The girlfriend suggested to the police that Bowen might be hiding there.) The warrant authorizes the seizure of all firearms on the premises, not merely the particular gun which had been used in the crime against the girlfriend.
The police executed a 5 a.m. dynamic entry, and in the course of their search, seize a firearm which is lawfully owned by the 73-year-old woman, Augusta Millender. She sues, and the 9th Circuit en banc rules that the warrant was objectively unconstitutional. The officer who procured the warrant (and Los Angeles, by respondeat superior) are not entitled to qualified immunity, because the warrant to seize all firearms was so clearly unconstitutional, based on settled law.
In the certiorari grant, the Questions Presented are:
This Court has held that police officers who procure and execute warrants later determined invalid are entitled to qualified immunity, and evidence obtained should not be suppressed, so long as the warrant is not “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 920, 923 (1984); Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335,341,344-45 (1986). The Questions Presented are: 1. Under these standards, are officers entitled to qualified immunity where they obtained a facially valid warrant to search for firearms, firearm-related materials, and gang-related items in the residence of a gang member and felon who had threatened to kill his girlfriend and fired a sawed-off shotgun at her,
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