UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. SAMER WALID ABDALLA - Articles

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. SAMER WALID ABDALLA

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Aug 27, 2020

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Andrew C. Brandon, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant.

Attorneys 2: ARGUED: Sofia M. Vickery, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee.

Attorneys 3: ON BRIEF: Andrew C. Brandon, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant.

Attorneys 4: ON BRIEF: Sofia M. Vickery, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., Robert McGuire, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Judge(s): ROGERS, KETHLEDGE, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Cookeville

NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judge. Challenges to warrants based on typographical errors or factual inaccuracies typically fall under this Circuit’s clerical error exception. We have consistently found that inadvertent drafting mistakes, for instance transposing a number in a street address or listing an incorrect nearby address, do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. That is because those errors create little risk of a mistaken search or a general warrant granting police an unconstitutionally broad authority to conduct searches.

Abdalla makes much of this mistake. He argues that a warrant cannot be valid if it contains a mismatch between the residence in the authorization section and the residence that the police searched. Along with this theory of invalid formation, Abdalla also asserts that a judge’s failure to notice an address outside his jurisdiction in a warrant’s authorization section demands the inference that the judge impermissibly rubberstamped the warrant. Yet the affidavit supporting the warrant listed the correct address and county at the top of the first page. And the warrant itself directed officers to the correct address by providing step-by-step directions along with a detailed description of Abdalla’s residence. So the warrant’s singular incorrect address posed almost no chance of a mistaken search. Despite the government’s irregular mistake, this clerical error case demands the usual result for technical mistakes that threaten no constitutional harm. We AFFIRM.

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